Tuesday, February 9, 2010

What a Crazy Day!

We leave tomorrow! But that almost didn't happen. We were supposed to receive our Passports/Visas from FedEx before 10:30am yesterday. 10:30am rolled around and no passports! Jason called FedEx and they said they were in Memphis, TN but still in a container. Apparently the container was the size of a small bedroom and would be difficult to go through to find our package. They would have to wait until our package was sorted through the normal process. 6 hours, 50 phone calls and countless tears later they had sorted through the container it was supposedly in, but our package was not found.

We reached the Administrative Assistant for the CEO of FedEx and she was able to sort out that our package wasn't even in Memphis yet. It was "most likely" still in Washington DC. WHAT?!?!?! How could they not know where our passports were! Mom, Dad, Leslie, everyone was calling anyone they knew to help us. Leslie used to work at Senator Durbin's office, so she connected me with a very nice lady there. They could help us with our passports, but not our Russian Visas. In order to travel to Russia, you have to have a Russian Visa attached to your passport. To get that Visa you need to send your passport to the Russian Embassy in Washington DC. It takes 5-7 business days at the accelerated rate! This is why our passports were caught in transit.

To make a really long story short, the Admin Tanya was able to narrow down the containers that may be holding our passports, and get security and the evening crew on the lookout. They located our package and had it flown to Memphis at 1am. It must have been sorted quickly as it was on the plane to Chicago 3 hours later. It got in right before the airports pretty much shut down! The FedEx man came to our house at 9:00am with our sacred package! WE CAN GO!

We had LOTS of people praying for us. Sandra even had Nuns in Ecuador praying! So now we are hopeful that the snow will slow down and that we will get out on time. And it will be time for our BIG ADVENTURE to begin! I can't wait.

Sandra and Sandra made it safely and are currently in Moscow. We can't wait to join them! Here we come Maks!

3 comments:

  1. So glad to hear the passports/visas finally showed up! Enjoy the trip of a lifetime.

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  2. We are glad to hear hear you got your visas and passports. We are praying and keeping our fingers crossed that the weather is good. Best of luck.

    Chris and Liz

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  3. Treasure every moment of this commit everything to memory even the difficult times will make the great times that much greater and God will use your experiences to help others.

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