Surprised by God

These are the faces of surprise and relief. But honestly, we were not expecting it, at least not so soon. We had grown so accustomed to disappointing calls to the Spanish Consulate that we expected nothing different from this call. And since we had tickets to return to the States on Tuesday, on Monday we figured we should make one more call to the Consulate just in case, by some slim chance, our visa applications had been approved. We especially were not expecting our visas to be approved since we had just spoken with a government official in Cordoba who did not think the visas would be approved for another week or so. Call us pessimists, doubting Thomases or faithless believers...maybe we had simply become content with the fact that our visas would not be approved on our timeline.

So we were shocked, almost breathlessly so, when our amigo Hector at the Consulate told us that, in fact, our visas were approved and we could pick them up ASAP! So at 3 p.m. on Monday afternoon, our plans for the week changed drastically: we had to get from Cordoba to Madrid to Newark and finally to New York to pick up our visas. So we hopped on a train Monday evening, stayed at Rachel's parents' house overnight to catch our 1 p.m. flight on Tuesday from Madrid to Newark. We stayed overnight in Newark and took the train into New York (where the above photo was taken) on Wednesday morning to pick up our visas. We're now in Myerstown, PA, waiting to ship our things and return to Spain next Saturday.

Put simply, we've seen God's hand at work, providing means of transportation, places to stay, people to help us, and a visa that opens the door for us to be a part of what He wants to do in Spain. It seems that when we finally become content with whatever outcome in certain situations, God loves to "surprise" us by showing up and providing what we need just when we need it.