After the going away party at church, we came home and finished packing. We were up all night--did not sleep at all! We had A LOT to do in a little bit of time.
During the packing, we had several friends stop by: Dan, Michael, Scott and Linda, not to mention Bruce's mom and younger brother, my parents, and of course--Pappy, Sara and Micah, it was nice to see everyone one more time.
We finally finished packing at about 2:30am and we left for church at 3:00am. There were many things that were left behind because there wasn't enough space or time! I hope to bring some of it the next time we are home.
Arrived at church and loaded everything into the church trailer. The kids were 1/2 asleep, we were tired and by this time had been awake for 19 hours. We said our goodbyes and we were off to the airport.
We arrived at the airport and unloaded all of the luggage. We could have up to 32 checked bags and we had 34! But God was apparently there, because the man who was checking our luggage did not charge us for any extra luggage which would have totaled $280.00. PRAISE GOD!
The flights were good. Kids slept and I tried to-but could not comfortable!! When we arrived to Houston we ate and just hung out. Then off to San Jose.
When we arrived in San Jose, we arrived at Immigration. We were the last people to go through Immigration, and we were stopped. They asked us for proof of leaving the country and why we were here. We told them to study Spanish at the Institute. We showed them the letter of acceptance, and the bus tickets to Panama. She looked at them and said, "these bus tickets are dated for 3 days ago and are no good." (7/18/12). Then she started asking us different questions that we tried to answer, but nothing was coming out right. She said the bus tickets were scanned, so not acceptable, then they had the wrong dates, so not acceptable, then lastly we wrote our own names and dates on the tickets, so not acceptable. She told us we would probably have to buy airline tickets leaving the country. We were being kicked out of the country before we even got in! But we were praying and we found out our team was praying as well. We walked over to the Immigration office and sat down and waited while she called her supervisor. She told us that whatever he decided was the final answer. She talked to him for a short time and finally came back and said he approved our passports for a 90 day tourist visit. Which she told us that if we don't leave within the 90 days we could receive a negative status and not be able to return to Costa Rica. Needless to say, we said, "no problemo!"
THE POWER OF PRAYER WORKS!!!
By the time we were through Immigration, all of the bags had been cleared and were being loaded on the bus. They had no problems with any of the bags except the 25lb bag of rice that looked suspicious, but when they saw that it was just rice, they let it through! After all of that, it was onto Casa de Franco (the bed and breakfast) where Leyton and I took a nap and Bruce and Emme went to Jason and Kerby's to go through some of the bags to find stuff that we needed for Rincon. That night, we ate dinner, showered, and were in bed by 8pm--by that time, we were basically for 36 hours, except for the little cat naps here and there on the airplane! Then we had to be up again at 4am to leave for Rincon by 4:45am!
Casa de Franco
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