Ninety days came and went rather quickly for us. We have to leave Costa Rica every three months because we have a tourist visa. So we packed up the car and started our adventure. And this adventure started early with two very energetic little boys yelling, "We going on adbenture!"
Seeing the country side of Costa Rica was incredible. I'm so glad we could make the five hour drive. It's green, open, lots of farms, couple of volcanos, and lots of construction.
By 9 o'clock we parked our van on the Costa Rican border and paid for a guide to get us through the boarder. In hind site we are so thankful that we had a guide because there were no signs and we had to stop at six different stations before we were officially in Nicaragua. Some of the stations were in buildings were we paid fees and other stations were on the side of the road under a tent. It was very confusing, hot and smelly.... seriously, we were thankful for a guide! Oh and before we finished Caleb and I had to use the bathroom. We were stopped before going in and the lady said it cost five córdobas, nineteen cents, so we gave her the money and she handed us a wad of toilet paper. Yes, very weird.From arrival at the boarder to arrival at our hotel we had spent 2.5 frustrating hours doing the necessary to get through. When we finally arrived at our hotel, we were hot, exhausted, hungry and very happy to be in our room!
The boys did surprisingly well. Thank you for praying. They took it all in and they minded well as we walked from station to station, slept in new beds and endured the long drive back home. And Judah slept most of the time because he was fighting something.While we were there, we were able to see a community event. A lot of families came out and participated as they were raising money to clean the barricish river. This event lasted all day, followed by a loud party at night...till the power went out. Ha! I've never been so happy about the power going out.
We enjoyed being in the ocean again. I loved seeing the sunset on the west coast. Delicious food, crazy moments but great memories.
Monday morning around 3ish I had finished feeding Judah and could not fall back to sleep easily because of a migraine starting. Migraines are no joke! Thank you all for praying that it would lighten up so that we could go home. We were ready. We needed to be back in our beds, have a hot shower, and drink water from the sink. So we pulled it together and left our hotel at 9:30. We made it to the border through all six stops and in the car by 11:10. We made our way home, through more country, over mountains, and some rain storms and pulled in at 4:30. (Insert clapping hands emoji)
We called our trip a forced vacation. It was needed, it was different and oh so good to finally pull back into our garage Monday afternoon. Costa Rica is starting to feel more and more like home, even with us being here for over three months now.
Now for the exciting news. A month ago we began speaking with a lawyer about getting our short term residency. He told us that he guarantees that he will get us our visas and in 3 years we could apply for residency. The cost was expensive though. It was too expensive we couldn't afford it. So God in His true mercy provided for us. We started a fundraising campaign and through many significant donations and one big one God provided for all the cost. If you are one of the many that God used to provide through, from the bottom of our hearts, Thank You!
Please pray that we get all the documents signed in a timely fashion and back to us safe and sound. We have to send all our birth certificates, marriage license and FBI background checks to various places to be apostilled and then back to our lawyer.
It's all in God's hands! So thankful for that. He is amazing!
