I’ve heard it said, “coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” It’s true, I think—just think of all the times you’ve heard someone exclaim, “what a coincidence!” when really, in my belief, it was completely God-orchestrated.
One of my best friends on the race, Rachel, is one of the logistics coordinators for our squad. She and one other girl are the ones on the field that basically make sure we all get from Point A to Point B in one piece. They handle booking hostels, booking buses, making sure we all fill out our visa paperwork, and ensuring none of us miss the plane or get lost in giant international airports.
Rachel always says that one of her favorite parts of being a logistics coordinator is that she gets to see all the God-miracles that inevitably occur when moving 50 people from continent to continent. Myself and the rest of the squad rarely if ever get to see all those little details that somehow fall together perfectly just in time, but she’s always quick to share all the ways that God worked everything out.
This last travel day, however, I got to see many of them for myself.
The origin: Calama, Chile.
The destination: La Paz, Bolivia.
The itinerary: Depart Calama at 9:45 pm, Thursday night. Arrive in Arica, Chile at 5:15 am Friday morning to meet up with the rest of the squad so we could all cross the border together. Depart for La Paz at 7:00 am the same morning, cross the border to Bolivia, and arrive in La Paz at approximately 4:00 pm Friday afternoon.
We arrived at our bus station in Calama on Thursday night after a lovely going away party, and it was pretty clear pretty quickly that something was wrong. My teammate, Mariana, who is fluent in spanish, was in the bus station a little too long. Had we missed our bus? We were early.
As it turns out, the bus company completely overbooked our bus to Arica, and once that bus had filled with people, it just left—leaving my team and about ten others stranded. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long to book us on another bus. Unfortunately, our new bus didn’t arrive in Arica until 8:00 am the following morning—an hour after the rest of the squad was to depart for La Paz.
Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, it should now be noted that we had given our one working team phone to our interns who had taken a bus alone from Calama to Santiago. Additionally, wifi is hard to come by in the desert of Chile. We had no way of contacting our squad to tell them that we were not going to be there at 5:15—and our bus driver was hustling us to hurry up and get on the bus.
After some quick thinking, we decided to have our sweet Chilean friend Belen, who had driven us to the bus station, find Rachel on Facebook and send her a message telling her everything. We just had to pray that Rachel would receive the message and be able to translate it.
We arrived in Arica around 8:30 Friday morning, and of course, the squad was already on their way to La Paz without us. We brushed our teeth and washed our faces, waiting for the little internet cafe to open up so we could check if Rachel had received our message. Thankfully, she had! And she was already started on helping us figure out how we were now going to get to La Paz as well.
A couple hours later, my team had officially secured seven tickets on the noon bus to La Paz. Minutes after that, my team leader got a message from Rachel: “It doesn’t look like there are any more tickets with any company to La Paz until the 25th. Here’s a link to an airbnb you can book for a couple of nights.” Wait…does this mean we just snagged the LAST SEVEN TICKETS to La Paz for the next few days?! When we told Rachel we had just purchased our tickets, she was in awe. She had checked everywhere. Thank you, Lord.
Around noon, we hopped on our bus to La Paz and started the climb from sea level to the border, which sits around 15,000 feet. We were feeling pretty good—that is, until we reached the border and realized, despite what they had told us, there was no ATM. You see, each visa cost $160 USD, and there were 7 of us—meaning somehow, we had to find over $1,100 in cash to get us into Bolivia. We had a team credit card, but no way to pull out any money.
We immediately went into problem solving mode. Mariana had a few hundred bucks of our emergency cash, and each of us began digging through the hidden pockets of our bags scrounging up whatever dollars we had. $62 here, $97 there. It was slowly adding up, but it didn’t take long for us to realize we didn’t have enough.
The questions were slowly creeping in: were we going to have to sleep at this border crossing? Were we going to have to find a bus back down the mountain? How?
And then, the miracle: one of the men was going over our passports when he coolly turned to us and said, “U.S. only.” It took a minute for us to figure out what he was trying to tell us, but eventually it dawned us and we all turned to look at our teammate, Hendrika. She’s CANADIAN! She doesn’t need a visa! The only Canadian on the whole squad, and she’s on my team, saving the day. With her not needing the visa, we had just enough money to get across the border—within dollars. PRAISE.
The whole process took an extraordinarily long amount of time, and all of our bladders were bursting. Of course, no bathrooms in sight. When we finally got through, we stepped outside into the thin air with our 50 lb. bags, and realized we couldn’t even see the bus due to how far away it was. We nearly cried. We had zero energy, couldn’t breathe and were now facing the daunting task of hauling our bags across a football field or two. And then, a guardian angel appears: a sweet old man with a cart, willing to haul or bags for us in exchange for Chilean pesos (which we had to get rid of anyway), AND he’d let us use the bathrooms on the other side. PRAISE AGAIN. I’ve don’t think I’ve ever been so thankful.
Finally, we were back on the bus and in Bolivia. Of course, we didn’t make it to La Paz without first blowing a tire and being stuck on the side of the road for an hour, but we finally pulled into the bus station around 10 pm. Next was the chore of getting from the bus station to the hostel—we still didn’t have a phone, it was getting late, and we didn’t know the area. And then, another guardian angel: as we stood there shivering and clueless, a woman walked up and told us she was from the hostel and was there to pick us up. We piled into a couple of cabs and she directed us to warm beds and the rest of the squad for a sweet reunion. We made it!
There were so many instances where we saw God at work in getting us to La Paz. The last seven tickets, the money for the visas, the people that showed up when we were exhausted and just needed help. I don’t look at these as mere coincidences or us being “lucky.” As with all things in my life, I see it as the Lord playing a direct role. He knew how much cash we had in our bags. He knew how many tickets were left at the ticket counter. He pushes us when we need to be pushed, and he carries us when we need to be carried. He’ll even help you fix a tire on the side of the road, put a Canadian on your team, and send a sweet man to cart your bags around when you just can’t anymore. Jesus was on that bus with us, knowing every twist and turn of events before we ever boarded. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, always. Amen.
