The Story

Well, it’s not hello from Chile as I hoped this blog would be, but neither is it hello from Bariloche. Rather..hello from Mendoza, Argentina. Our flight back to Colombia left at 4am out of Chile this morning. So, we aren’t exactly going as planned, but we haven’t been for 5 or 6 weeks now! If I could describe our experiences in the last weeks in one word it would be WAIT. We have done this more than anything else, but our time has not been wasted. Every day the Lord has something new in store for us, something more to teach us. Here’s the continuation of our story:

By the time I can actually put this blog on the internet, we will certainly be in Colombia, but I figure you may find the story interesting anyway. J

So after I wrote the last blog, we continued working in Bariloche waiting for the parental permissions to arrive in the mail, the post office to open after the repeated aftereffects of the volcano, waiting for the passage to Chile to open back up. The weather would improve and we would have power and hot water for a day or so, then the conditions would worsen with another storm. We called over and over tracking where the permissions were in the mail and why they had not arrived to Bariloche. The first problem they told us was that the address we gave them in Bariloche was not a house, so they would have to send the papers back. Then the problem was supposedly that the papers were in Buenos Aires but could not get to Bariloche because of the airport closure due to the volcano. Then we called them again and they tracked the papers and found they were mistakenly taken to Brazil! But we had to leave for the north of Argentina (Mendoza) because we needed to make our flight and the passage to Chile was open in Mendoza but not in the south where we were in Bariloche.

 So, the Chilean console said to have the papers sent to Mendoza and if they didn’t arrive in time we could probably use the emailed copies that the parents had originally sent to Chile 5 weeks ago. So we bought bus tickets with nearly all the money we had and road 10 hours, but because of a delay we missed our connection bus. So they left us in a bus terminal at 1:30am and said to wait for the first bus to leave at 8:30am. Miraculously a bus showed up and accepted us at 3am. So, we continued by bus for another 12 hrs or so until we finally reached Mendoza. There we found the friend of a friend who would take care of us for the night before we had our bus ride on Saturday to Chile. She met us with the permissions in her hand—praise the Lord! The pieces of paper that had held us up for going on 6 weeks! We got up the next morning and road to the terminal where we waited 3 or 4 hours before they told us that the entrance to Chile from Mendoza was closed due to a snow storm and no one could pass. We returned to the house, and waited until the next day and they said the same thing. That was our last chance to cross before missing our flight that left early this morning. The passage is still closed and the parental permissions expire today. Everything is closed today due to a holiday here so we cannot leave to do anything because all is closed and it’s Andres’ birthday. NEVERTHELESS, we are doing well! We have enjoyed our time here, celebrating father’s day gathered around a table full of people we didn’t know. It has been wild. But God has provided us with a place to stay, food, beds, warm showers all for free. We are still waiting on God and His perfect timing.