In Colombia

I is 12/28/2023 and the plane landed at El Dorado International Airport. There is always something more you have to have done before stepping out. The problem is that is never ending. This year I said it would be this year, ready or not, and at the last minute things begin to snap into place. God always seems to rearrange things and this was no exception. I had a plan, started executing the plan and ran into obstacle after obstacle trying to contact the orphanage people I had worked with for advice on good hotels in the area but we kept missing each other. I had also called a mission organization I had worked with before. The girl who answered the phone said they no longer have presence in Colombia. I started looking at hotels on my own to make an educated guess and start there. Just as I was going to book, I received an email from someone who is the Americas area director for a global mission alliance of organizations. He said one of the alliance members has a guest house in Bogota. So somehow it percolated up the alliance chain to him. He mentioned, “They don´t speak Spanish, but if you need assistance to copy to me.  They are good friends of mine.” I received no response but then, hours before, I received an address back from the guest house and that they would be expecting me. I followed all of the Colombia requirements listed by the airline, at the airport 3 hours early, and learned from maintenance people that the airline didn’t open for another 2 hours. When I went to pick up my boarding pass, I was informed that I needed a form from the Colombian government that had to be filled out 72 hours in advance. She said this is their URL and you can go online and fill out the form, see if they will accept it, but I need to see acceptance. Boarding starts in… It was not easy to interpret but I got through it and they accepted it even though the date was today. It appeared that I would have an 1:15 layover in Miami and time to take care of some items in my checklist. Sitting in the plane that long, running would feel good. I was not dropped off at the main terminal and as soon as I was inside I realized that the gate was going to be a long ways away, but I should have plenty of time. However, when I arrived, it was 13 minutes to boarding, just enough time to use a restroom, which I hadn’t used in 9 hours. My checklist fell apart at the Bogota airport when my new phone would not accept the SIM and with 6% battery remaining, and its battery life is not as impressive as advertised. I got a taxi and when I arrived at the guest house, I learned the director had misspoken. It wasn’t Spanish they didn’t speak, it was English, which means I’ve also been de facto enrolled in a Spanish immersion course, which I need. I had been running in high gear for 37 hours straight and happy to unwind and sleep. I recognize that the contact form spam protection needs to be fixed to make it usable again and some software updates performed, but I purposely built it using WordPress so I could delegate its maintenance.

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