Back Against a Wall

I really don’t like roller-coasters! Perhaps it is because our lives as a couple and family are often like one. We have no need to take one for “entertainment” 😃 Ever since I got involved in missionary work, back in the 70s, I have never liked getting on any “ride” that even looks, or portends to be, like a roller-coaster ride.

Our latest “roller-coaster” began around noon last Saturday (10th April). As a pre-flight requirement for entering the USA and Ireland we had learned that we needed a “negative” Covid test with results received in under 72 hours before landing in Dublin. Challenging enough, when you consider that 30 of these hours would be spent on a plane travelling to Europe from Mexico via two American airports.

We booked a test, and then had it on Friday morning last at 08:15. We were emphatically promised that we would receive emails with the results by noon on Saturday (the following day).

It was a weekend. We did not know when the Mexican clinic (which did the testing) would close. So when noon came and went, and then it was getting close to 12:30, we were beginning to sweat bullets.

You see, we had already had our first flight itinerary to Ireland cancelled. As the airline were behind that cancellation we managed to get a free replacement itinerary. If this new itinerary should be cancelled by us because of a failed Covid test or one for which the results arrived too late, we would be paying some huge fees and also would have to purchase another ticket. Add to that the need to extend our hotel stay at short notice and cancel transport to the airport for our departure, and obviously, having to pay for and do another expensive Covid test under 72 hours before the new departure, the potential for mounting costs was very high. There was a lot resting on a timely arrival to these results!

We began to involve hotel staff, and even the Hope4Cancer clinic where I had been earlier in the week and which had helped me connect with the Covid test in the first place. No one had any answers. No one could get news nor any sense out of the Covid testing clinic staff.

Time was passing. It was now 19:00 (7 p.m.) and we had heard nothing. Amarilis and I went out for “a breather” and walk round a nearby marina. With absolute certainty that the clinic was now closed for their weekend we knew there was no way we could fly out the next morning (on a Sunday). Our hearts were absolutely stretched and squeezed and we really did not know what we were going to do. The thought of missing that flight out of Mexico and the costs involved had us crying out to the LORD for His intervention as we confessed to Him our powerlessness and absolute need for Him to come through for us.

At 20:00 there was still no news. I began getting in touch with my travel agent (just before her bedtime in another time zone) to say we did not have our promised results, we could not take the Sunday flight, and would she look into another flight for us. We did this realising that if our flight early the next day left before we were able to cancel it we would be penalised for a “no show”. She promised to cancel our flight and we soon headed to bed as well.

At 21:30 I noticed a WhatsApp message from a friend in Hope4Cancer, who sent us a copy of the results we had received from the Covid clinic. As it did not come directly to our email addresses, as promised, I was not at all sure what to believe or do.

In the morning we awoke and re-checked the messages and found that indeed the “forwarded” copy was real, we had our needed “negative” test results, and I checked with the travel agent, who said that she had been unable to cancel our flights to Dublin because she could not get through to the airline. Amarilis and I looked at each other, then our watches, and, despite being an hour later than we should have left for the airport, we thanked the LORD for packed cases (from the day before) and fresh clothes for the trip being the only things lying around unpacked, and then we scrambled to shower, check out of the hotel and in half an hour we were on the road to the airport to try and catch our flight.

After navigating all the Covid and other bureaucratic airport nightmare, we got the flight with minutes to spare, and, as we prayed together as we took off (like we always do), we shared how amazed we were at what the LORD had just done for us! Despite what we later learned was sheer incompetence on the part of the Covid testing clinic, God had heard us when we had nowhere to turn, and He had paved the way for us to be on that flight … and the two others that followed, all the way to Dublin.

The travel agent told me by text later that we were extremely “lucky” people. She did not understand why she could not cancel our flight! I told her it was not luck at all. We had put the word out to a number of friends around the world who prayed for us and as a result Help was on hand (because God hears the prayers of His saints and loves to deliver, especially when their backs are against a wall!).