Home.

It's a quiet moment here in our apartment in Mallasilla. Scotty and Natalie are taking nap #2 and I am unpacking and cleaning up around the kitchen. The kitchen is that space in my house that makes me feel like things are somewhat in order and clean if it is clean. The last 2 days have been absolute insanity, but also so clearly under the guiding hand of the Lord. You might not want this much detail, but here we go: Thursday morning we find out that we possibly need a special visa to get back into the country because our visa is no longer valid (because we were out of Bolivia for more than 90 days) and because the country is no longer giving out missionary visas. We're a bit alarmed at this news, but convinced that there must be some way to take care of it from within Bolivia's borders, without needing to postpone our trip. We were scheduled to leave Orlando Friday afternoon. As we are reading over this information, a guy who works in the SIM office here skypes us to talk about it. We are able to find out in a matter of minutes that we do, in fact, need to reschedule our flights and get this documentation taken care of. Strangely, and amazingly, we are not too shaken by this, even though our minds were well into Bolivia-mode and we had already said our good-byes and were looking forward to being back in La Paz. We do some searching on the Bolivian embassy website both in Miami and D.C. and find that only D.C. does this kind of visa and they state to allow 6 weeks prior to departure for the transaction. Mom and I had a date planned, so I leave Scotty to cancel our flight and try to talk to someone in the embassy to see how quickly we can get this done. As mom and I sit in the nail salon, we talk about potentially going to the zoo this weekend and maybe even being around for her birthday a week or so later. Getting back into the car to head over to lunch, Scotty calls to say that in that hour that transpired, he was able to get through to the consulate in Miami (thanks to my brother who knows a guy) who informs him that the paperwork can be done there and if we could show up the next morning at 9am, he can make it happen in time for our flight that evening. Whoa! This is where the flight of the bumblebee music starts and we kick it into high gear. Mom and I head home and all of these things happen between 1pm and 5pm: finish a significant amount of packing, rent a car, book a hotel room, cancel Orlando-Miami leg of the flight, run to Walgreens to take photos for visa documents, connect with the dr.'s office where I had just been the day before to find out results of blood test (which usually doesn't come back for a couple days), pick up prescription drug at Walgreens (which usually can't be processed so quickly) as well as passport photos, call a good friend to say a final "good-bye", pick up rental SUV, pack it up nice and a final farewell to my parents. Then we have 6 hours on the road to think about all that just happened. But it happened so fast that we didn't even know how to process it and spent most of the time in silence. Are you amazed at what God has done so far? Then Scotty happens to throw a "hey, man" to the guy standing next to us at Subway with his lovely wife and 3 children and within a matter of 5 minutes they find out we're missionaries, we find out they run marathons for charities and we get another family praying for us. Love it! After a very rough night with Natty who didn't want to sleep in her hotel crib or in bed with us, we book it out early to get to the embassy downtown. Bad traffic and expensive parking later, we find that the embassy is no longer downtown (that would be helpful information to convey on the website) and we proceed to go to the new address which is mere blocks from our hotel. Oh, well. The consul is awesome, he gives us his personal cell number in case we need some strings pulled on the Bolivian end and we have our visa in 15 minutes. I wish I could say we spent the rest of the day wandering around balmy Miami and strolling the beach, but we had to get our rental car back in by 3, so instead, we spent from 3pm-11pm sitting in the Miami airport. Never want to do that again.

The only way we could get Natty to fall asleep in the airport was to backpack her around for half an hour.

And we're here! Tired, dirty, and with lots of stuff to unpack and organize in the house. But, so thankful. We are floored by how it all turned out and even Natalie didn't suffer any ill-effects from altitude like last time. Our friendly neighbor, Sergio, came to get us, stocked our fridge and left us to rest. It's good to be home.