This week I worked on emails and phone calls and text message conversations to get everyone and everything lined up for purchasing tickets to Peru. That has been rather exciting. I am very much looking forward to getting back home!
Obviously, our family plans to fly, but we will have more persons going with us, Lord willing. China is planning to join us again with the plan of making Peru a longterm home for at least a year or two more. Caleb and Belinda and Ashlyn will also be moving down on this trip with the hope that accompanying us will make their travels simpler. We will also have Elisabeth Wenger with us on the leg from the States to Lima; Elisabeth had lived in Peru with her parents Gordon and Betsy for some years before.
That makes fourteen people to arrange for. Goldon Rule was very helpful in getting the tickets purchased after I had collected all the information from everyone. It took only a day and a half to have the tickets for October 1, a Friday.
I also talked with Javier, our attorney, about anything we can or should do to make travel smoother. He suggested three things, including two official letters proving Caleb’s and China are in the process of obtaining residency, as well as apostilled INTERPOL reports for all the adults.
The biggest possibility for trouble looks like it could be Covid-related. We will need to be careful to get the correct tests in the correct amount of time and have the correct documentation for the airlines and governments involved. On top of that, we need to test negative. That has me a bit nervous because we have been around a lot of people who have Covid–though some of them insist it is all fake, even while coughing their lungs out.
While it may be fake for them, it is very real for us that we might be banned from going home by spending time with people who may cause us to test positive. But what can we do about it? It doesn’t seem prudent to avoid all humans here when the very point of our trip is to fellowship, and there is no way for us to know who is actually positive for the virus as many people are refusing to be tested almost as vehemently as they are refusing to be vaccinated.
It is a bit tricky. Maybe you have advice for us. I don’t know what else to do but to keep being friendly and loving to our friends while trusting that God will help us get home in the right time. I suppose we could isolate from everyone the last two weeks before traveling, but that doesn’t seem like a great option. I don’t feel worried or upset or anything like that, but I have been thinking about it.
In the meantime, tomorrow I plan to travel to Florida with a couple men from the GCM board. We are zipping down tomorrow to be at Caleb’s commissioning service on Sunday morning before sailing home again Sunday afternoon. I am planning to be tired Monday.
After that, we will be looking forward to Steph’s surgery on Wednesday the 8th. I’ll try to keep you posted on that.
I have taken very few pictures the past two weeks. I’ll have to take a few more so we can remember our happy times here.
Juan David 