Some of you may have heard Sam's passport saga, but I need to share it again because we have been overwhelmed by God's goodness to us as He has answered our prayers very specifically and with perfect timing. Let me explain....
When we arrived in Costa Rica we applied for student visas. But immigration refused to stamp Sam's passport because as it turns out, after using his passport for 3 years in at least 6 different countries, the order of his name was incorrect. All the right names, but in the wrong order: Tacheny Samuel Michael instead of Samuel Michael Tacheny.
OK, after 3 trips to the American Embassy, a request for another official birth certificate from Washington state, some money and a few more weeks of waiting, we had his new passport. But unfortunately not in enough time to send it back to immigration for his Visa before we had to leave for the states in December.
Sooo,
In February, after we returned to Costa Rica, we gave Sam's passport to the school who then takes care of bringing it to immigration--all the paperwork, etc. It is a huge help! We went back to pick up his passport a week later and it wasn't there, a week later--and still not there, a few days later and now we are getting a bit worried...and for the first time in the history of the school (and I don't know how many hundreds or even thousands of passports and trips to immigration) Sam's passport had been lost! It seemed to have disappeared into a black hole somewhere between our school and the immigration offices.
So no big deal, right? Just another trip to the embassy for another passport--no big deal except for the fact that we had just received all of our documentation for our Ecuadorian visas and all of them included Sam's old passport number. And now we were running short on time as we had planned on leaving Costa Rica in several weeks, and with a delay in getting a new passport and then receiving new documents for the visa---it wouldn't happen in time. Ugh!
Well, we began praying that his passport would show up. It was possible we knew, but truly I didn't think it would show up so we began making plans for a trip to the Embassy. We decided we could wait until the end of the week before we went to the Embassy for his new passport. So every day we would pray that the passport would be found and every day we would ask at the office---no luck.
On Thursday we expected the same thing. We prayed that it would be found. But forgive me God, but I just didn't think it would happen. We did however have peace that even if we had to go through the headache of getting a new passport and new documents, etc. that it would all work out in God's timing. And we were ok with that. So Thursday we went to the office and asked again--and guess what? It had been found!
Get this, it had been accidently given to another family at the school. Now that's fine, but they had put it away 2 weeks previously, not realizing that they had Sam's passport too. They happened to be traveling out of the country on Thursday of this week and just happened to check through all of their documents that morning when they found the passport. There are so many "what ifs" in this situation. What if they hadn't been traveling that day? What if they hadn't checked their passports until they got to the airport and couldn't let us know that they had found it?--they didn't know that we needed it. Either way, we would have been on our way to the Embassy on Friday or possibly even that afternoon to start the whole process over.
Isn't God's timing perfect!
Well, his passport is on the way to immigration again--he still is not officially stamped. So keep praying. But we praise God for his provision! He is so good!
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