Paperwork and the unexpected

A week later we are still in the city - definitely not what we were expecting when we left Caazapa last Monday. Neither did we plan on having to have some costly repairs done on the truck. Originally our plan was to stay in the city until last Friday, working on finishing important paperwork to hand in for our cedulas (permanent residence cards), renewing my passport and getting a US passport and birth certificate for Silas. As we come to the end of our first term as missionaries we have come to a clearer understanding of what it means to be "rigidly flexible" because obviously things didn't go according to "our" plan.

But, a week later, after many hours of going from office to office, this police station for one paper, that police station for another paper, this signature, that signature, numerous copies of documents stamped and authenticated, fingerprints, pictures, and lots of waiting we can, with great relief, say its done. All the paperwork that needed to be filled out and handed in before we left the city is done and now all we have to do is wait for it all to be processed.

Of course there were a few hiccups along the way. We weren't able to get everything by the time offices closed on Friday so we had to stay the weekend till they opened again on Monday and yesterday when we got to the final office - identificaciones - we found out one of our documents had expired and they wouldn't accept it. Across town we went to the appropriate office and thankfully made it in time before they closed. Another hour later we headed back to identificaciones and whizzed through only to be stopped at the very end with Silas's because of a name discrepancy (that's anothor post!) and his was supposed to be the easiest because he was born here (Toby and Sammie both already have their cedulas while Dan, Eli and I were the ones that had to go through the long, tedious process).

Despite all the running around we have been incredibly blessed during our stay at the guest house. Our good friends and teammates, the Camerons, were also in town going through the same process. We've been taking turns watching each other's children while we run errands and the boys have had a blast playing with their three year old son Caleb. We've had dinner with our director and his wife (although within five minutes of arriving Sammie broke a valuable plate - I cried!), a cook out at another teammate's house, the Stouts, with 18 of us, girls' movie nights, walks and a picnic at the park, dinner at a restaurant, seeing parts of the city we've never seen before, many late nights with popcorn and hot chocolate and just tonight meeting at the mall to share a cooked chicken in the food court and then ice cream at Burger King.

It has been stressful living in one room again but God is so good and we feel so blessed beyond our expectations.

Tomorrow...the plan is to head home.