Pastor Kevin's favorite word at the end of a mission trip is "uneventful". He won't be using it this time! I drove down to Houston with Alison Beck a little early because she was flying out with the Salem teams. That way, I was there when the rest of the team arrived and could help with footlockers and luggage while the others parked in long-term garages. The other teams went right through check-in. We found out later it was because they all had gotten evisas through a new system that was just implemented September 1st in Kenya. We had received notice that the system had so many challenges that the Kenyan government had decided around September 15th to continue to allow for the manual purchase of tourist visas at the airport. Air France never got the memo and would not let 3 of us board. Sandra was able to apply for, pay for and get an evisa issued on her phone. My phone and laptop would not connect to the Internet, but Dr. Zoch gave it the college try for me on his iPhone. The application can take up to an hour on a computer, you can imagine how painful it is on a phone. We needed to take selfies, pictures of our passports, upload our itineraries, etc and they all had to be just right. We worked from 12,:30 until 3 pm on it, never having lunch. I get pretty snippy when I don't get lunch, so it was not the best afternoon of my life, but I was surrounded by good friends and we had a few laughs at gallows humor type jokes. We finally got to the point where we had to send the team without any leaders, a new first. We had alerted the leadership of the Salem team and no matter what, our team members would be safe and serve somewhere in Kenya, whether Kevin and I made it or not. Kevin and I tried until 4pm, since Air France said they could rush us through security, but no bueno. We called the long-term parking about a shuttle and were informed that they only drop off at the departure terminal, we had to make our way with all of our stuff through a series of elevators and tunnels to a passenger pickup area. At least our pre-paid parking will be good when we return today.
I stopped for dinner in Hempstead at a McDonald's after battling Houston rush hour and eating a candy bar and a granola bar to tide me over. I thought I could try the evisa again on their wi-fi, but it was pitiful, so I gave up until I got back to Austin. I got a hot shower around 8pm and went to work. The visa system kept crashing. I gave up at 10:30 and went to bed, figuring I would try anytime I woke up in the night. I tried at 1 am with no luck, but got it to work at 3 am by taking a fresh scan of my passport and a selfie with my phone and making them nice in Adobe Lightroom. I usually don't do photo editing in the middle of the night, but I have to say, I made myself look GOOD! And it worked. Woohoo.
I'm writing this about an hour before heading to Houston once more. I'm good to go, Pastor Kevin has a receipt for his application, but it hasn't been issued yet. We hope KLM is not as strict as Air France and we do have copies of emails showing that we could get a visa in Kenya and also Catherine, our friend and liaison there has suggested we have them call the Nairobi aiport to verify it, since we couldn't make contact with the Kenyan Consul in Houston yesterday.
We did get word back from our team that they made it to Paris and should be in Nairobi by around noon today, Austin time. Thank you, Jesus!
I'm ready for another round, wish us luck and keep the prayers coming!
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