This week has been wild. That’s the only way I know how to explain it.
Month 9 in Chile ended on Friday, September 20th as we sat at a bus stop with our incredible host family. We said our tearful goodbyes after we prayed, and then got on the bus that would take us to Bolivia.
Except we never actually made it into Bolivia. We left San Pedro, Chile mid-morning, and made it to the Bolivian border by mid-afternoon. We knew it would be tricky to get visas into Bolivia. As we were in line to get our visas, we found out that instead of receiving the visas, we were instead being deported.
Yes, you read that correctly. We were DEPORTED. We were told at the border that our best option was to go to Calama, Chile to apply for visas there (even though one of the other teams on R-Squad made it across the border in the same location mere minutes before we got deported). So we were taken back to the Chile border with our stuff to figure out a plan.
We talked to our Month 9 hosts, some Chilean Border Agents and our Stateside Leadership. After doing so, we decided to go back to Calama, a city in Chile about 2 1/2 hours from the border.
During the five hours between being deported and arriving back in Calama, our Month 9 hosts talked to some friends who got us free housing, food and hot showers. Upon being picked up at the bus station, we were told that we could stay as long as we needed in order to figure out how to get into Bolivia.
The only problem with getting our visas in Calama was that we arrived in the city at 11 pm on a Friday night, so the Bolivian Embassy was closed until Monday morning.
Saturday was truly a blessing that none of us saw coming. Our Month 9 hosts are from Antofagasta, but we had spent a week in San Pedro with them on a family vacation. Calama just happens to be sandwiched in the middle of the two cities, and our hosts were planning on staying in San Pedro with family until Friday night (the night we got deported). When we told them that we didn’t make it into Bolivia, they decided to stay in San Pedro for an extra night, and then drove to Calama to see us one more time before heading home. So we got to spend an extra nine hours with them that none of us had planned! NINE. WHOLE. HOURS. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but when you thought you said goodbye already, and you had awesome hosts, the Lord blesses you with nine more hours. Late Saturday night, we had another round of tearful goodbyes as we stayed in Calama and they headed to Antofagasta.
Sunday morning, we participated in the church service where we’ve been staying and spent the afternoon printing papers to get ready to go to the Embassy.
Monday morning arrived and we ventured to the Embassy, papers in hand. We were told that we might need an appointment, but we figured we would try anyways. Marilyn (one of our Spanish speakers) and our Calama host went inside to do the talking while the rest of us stayed outside.
They came back outside to give us the news. We would not be getting visas, we had to fill something out online and try again Wednesday.
So what did we do? We filled out the paperwork on Monday, and tried again on Tuesday, because why not? So we head to the Embassy Tuesday morning with our new set of papers, ready to take on the world. And what happens this time? They tell us that they only have five visas available (we need seven), and to come back on Thursday with a particular code printed on our papers.
So we do everything we can to get these codes on our papers (we couldn’t get any of my papers to print, with or without a code, nothing was coming out of the printer). And then we tried again on Wednesday – because that’s what the guy told us the first time.
And this time, they literally told us to go back to Antofagasta. The city where we spent the entire month in Chile. Something important to note here is that we love our hosts so much that we were saying all month long that we didn’t want to leave, and that we were going to sneak into their car to go back to Antofagasta from San Pedro. And the employee at the Embassy literally told us to go back to the place we all said we wanted to spend more time.
So we have now arrived at lucky number four. We attempted to get visas four different times with no success. At this point, the entirety of Brushed with Glory was pretty certain that the Lord didn’t want us to go to Bolivia.
After talking to Stateside Leadership again, we were given permission to ask the Lord where to go as a team, whether that be back to Antofagasta, stay here in Calama or go somewhere else. We spent roughly 24 hours in prayer as a team to see where the Lord wanted us to go. We come to a decision, which will come in a blog soon.
We have learned a ton from the Lord this week. His plans are always far better than anything we could come up with on our own.
