>June 30th to July 5th: What a dilemma! Should we book a flight home to Canada? Should we book a flight to somewhere else? Like Belize maybe? That sounded so comforting when we were in such turmoil and frustration with all the red tape and agonizing waiting over trying to get visas to stay in a place where I’m always freezing at night anyway! Ahhh… the warmth of the Caribbean! But, maybe this was just Satan tempting us to give up! We were having success in the ministry here…so many people we met seemed really hungry for Bible truth! The little English group had so much territory to cover…from Cayumbe in the south all the way to the Columbian border in the north! It had seemed that Jehovah had directed us here. Isaac and Jo were certainly needed in their sign-language group in Otavalo! So, after much prayerful deliberation, and the fact that a brother near the Columbian border had offered to help us and put us up for the night, we decided we should go ahead and try it! That Saturday, July 2nd we, along with Monica, caught a bus to Tulcan, a city on the Ecuadorian side of the Columbian border. We had been quite nervous about going near the Columbian border because of the warnings on the Canadian government website, but after checking that information again before making our final decision, we saw that it said ‘with the exception of Tulcan’… that was sort of reassuring… sort of.
Bus rides in Ecuador are always memorable, and I’m not talking strictly about the scenery, although that is often pretty awesome, no, I’m talking about the terror! Wide-eyed, white-knuckle terror! I’ll spare you the details. All you can do is sit somewhere where you can’t see the road ahead, pray and occupy yourself with something distracting!
What I find the best is to focus on the beauty of creation wizzing by and imagine what this country will be like in the new system, sauntering along by horseback or walking through the rolling countryside dotted with palms, banana trees and adobe houses.The scenery became more and more breathtaking the closer we got to Tulcan!
Finally, after a 3 hour ride, we reached our destination and grabbed a taxi to take us to the border crossing where the brother was to meet us and give us instructions.
To make this long story short, we stood in line to get stamped out of Ecuador for a couple of hours, then walked over to the Columbian border entrance and stood in that line for another couple of hours… got our passports stamped entering Columbia, then because it’s dangerous to stay in the border town on the Columbian side, we went back to the brother’s house on the Tulcan side to spend the night safe and secure at his home. What a wonderful brotherhood we have! The next morning he drove us back to the Columbian side to once again stand in the long line to get our passports stamped out of Columbia, and then back over to the Ecuadorian side to get stamped into Ecuador. After another long prayerful wait in line, finally it was our turn to go to the counter. We went to separate windows. At my window, the official carefully perused my passport with suspicion walked over to the official who was doing the same with Richard’s, had a lengthy exchange of words in Spanish, came back to me and said…in Spanish… what I gleaned to mean that I could go through, but ‘no esposo’ (no husband)!! I said ‘no entiendo’ (I don’t understand)… so he got someone from the lineup behind me to translate. Basically he wanted to know if I wanted to go ahead without my husband!! Of course, I said no way! The kind German man who was interpreting got right into it and wanted to know why so he was sent over to Richard’s window to get the explanation. Came back to me and said that according to the record on the computer, Richard could not get another 90 days because it said he had already used up two visas concurrently… the official who stamped his passport in Quito back in January had stamped the correct 180 day visa into his passport, but had entered a 90 day T3 visa into the computer!! And, of course, this could not be undone at a border crossing… only in Quito! So, now, we were technically ‘stuck in Columbia’! We went out of the immigration office in a daze wondering what we should do now! The brother and Monica were waiting for us and when we explained what had happened, the brother took Richard’s passport and marched back inside and straight up to the guard, explained the situation and was taken straight up to the window where Richard had been rejected. After hearing the reason for himself and seeing the mistake on the computer, he got out his cell phone and called up one of his Bible studies… guess who he was… the chief of the immigration police! After hearing the situation he asked to speak with the guard, who, once realizing who he was speaking to, was suddenly very attentive and gave permission to our brother to take us to his home for the night with instructions to go to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Columbia on Tuesday (because Monday was a holiday) and Richard would be able to purchase a visa there. (weird, eh).
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| Richard on the border bridge between Ecuador and Columbia. |
Anyway, that is exactly what happened, and after a few minor snags, they did give Richard a visa, which he had to pay for, but it was only for 60 days, whereas I was given the 90 day stamp.
In the meantime, we got to attend the Sunday meeting in Tulcan, which we couldn’t understand but it was fun to meet the friends there!
We also toured around Tulcan for a few hours and took some interesting pictures of a very unique cemetery there! Here are some pictures:
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| Here we are at the entrance to a labrynth…all the trees are sculpted into shapes |
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| Richard does the ‘typical’ pose |
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| Note how folks are buried here, in tombs above ground |
Next day we headed back to Otavalo, confident and relieved that we were both legally back in Ecuador and now had 60 more days to accomplish the task of obtaining our work visas! Surely that would be enough time!