Kenya Help Us Out
Doing logistics for a World Race squad can get pretty hairy at times. Drew and I first saw this in Kenya when the border office wanted USD instead of Kenyan Shillings like we had. These are the things that always come up. Little things that you totally skip over before you travel to a different country. We scrambled to find enough USD to pay the border. Drew and I ran from border to border looking for anyone who could help. No luck.
This is when you pray and watch God take over. It’s the only way to keep your sanity as you try to communicate to an African that you can’t pay in USD for the 100th time. We end up finding enough money to cross the border. Drew and I survived our first border crossing. God’s favor.
Sketchiness
The bus ride was going smoothly from Bangkok to the Thai border. When we reach the border town a man gets on and asks us if we need to get our Cambodian visas. I say yeah man can you help us out? He says yeah just get everyone’s passport and meet me over here at this restaurant. My first thought is heck no, I’m not giving you all our passports. I have no idea who you are and you sound like you only know how to say that sentence. The paranoid American in me starts to think of all the ways this could go wrong. My spirit and discernment tell me something different. They say it’s kool, so..Gimme all your passports! I still find it awesome how much trust the squad puts in Drew and I ha. If they only knew how many times we talked about running away with their passports and selling them on the black market. Guess they do now ha.
So we follow this guy to his “office”. We start filling out the forms. He calls people over to help and they just start grabbing passports. Drew and I are both like Woah Woah Woah! The guy says they are staff so it’s okay. Again, my discernment isn’t going crazy so we let it happen. After a while we finish all the forms and the guy brings all the passports into a room to get our visas. We ask to be in the room, but he says no. Again with the sketchiness. We let it happen, but stay close to the room. I remember praying that this all works out and that these guys are legit.
Finally, they come out the room and tell us they’re done. We take the passports and head to the border. This is the beginning to the longest border crossing we’ve faced. After about 2 hours of getting across, Drew goes in search for our bus. Turns out it’s not there. By this time it was 3:00 and we still had an 8 hour bus ride. Finally Drew found this dude who worked for transportation and knew how to get us a bus pronto. Oh yeah, and it was cheaper. God’s favor once again.
China Visas
Oh, China visas, the weight that has been on Drew and I’s shoulders for the past 3 months. We had already tried to get them in Rwanda, but were denied because we didn’t have a valid enough reason for being in the country for 6 months. Then we were told that our pictures weren’t the right size. The whole squad had to fill out new 4-page forms at least three times.
After countless prayers and edits to our applications, we finally received our visas. It couldn’t have been easier. We literally just put all 44 applications in a slot and got a receipt back that said to pick them up in 3 days. Amen! We were ready for any questions they had to throw at us, nothing, nothing at all. No questions about why we were going there or who had invited us. Totally God’s favor.
Pray it Out
Before you do any sort of travel with the squad, Drew and I make sure that we take time to pray. We thank God for His favor over us and we ask Him to put people in our path that will help us out. Every time God has come through and so far, we haven’t faced any major issues. The only way to survive herding 44 people from country to country is to put it in God’s hands. We have His favor, so we might as well use it.
