Busted

Okay, so I wasn't actually busted, but Scott and I did spend the morning at the police station being fingerprinted. How does that sound for a fun way to spend your morning? Picture walking down a long, narrow hallway, past offices with chipped paint and torn carpet to a tiny room marked Fingerprinting. On the table there's a pile of ripped pages from a telephone book used to blot the ink, a tube of black fingerprinting ink, and a roller used to spread the ink on a metal plate.

Despite the interesting methods used, I have to say that the officer who took our fingerprints was incredibly friendly and made us laugh through the whole experience. That included telling us that traditionally it's believed that our right hands are stronger because they are given to us from our father, while our left hands are weaker because they are from our mothers.

Hmmm. . .I'll have to think about that one.

Now I'm sure you're asking why the fingerprinting? Why the background check? Well, God has an amazing way of saying no to what we think we want, then showing us what He wants. Something that's always better. A couple weeks ago, we were set to go to Portugal for six weeks to work on our Portuguese before moving to Mozambique, but our teacher suddenly backed out on us.

And we were back to square one with little time left.

After a lot of prayer, fasting, and getting advice from several people, God put us in touch with a school in Brazil. Yes, Brazil! A week later, not only do we have a school that will give us private lessons, but a furnished, three-bedroom house to rent within walking distance from the school! And the house is even set up with internet!

So, we started working on our Brazilian visas today--thus the criminal background check. If everything works out we'll be headed off to Brazil the first of November for six months. (instead of original six weeks).

And speaking of police stations and being busted, we also found out that our visas for here in South Africa were done wrong, and in fact, when Scott flew back into South Africa from Mozambique last week, they told him he could be arrested even though the mistake wasn't ours. Scary. The person who gave us the visas actually gave us too much time! So after the police station, we rushed on to Home Affairs to straight out that mess which hopefully will be resolved by tomorrow--without any surprise trips to the police station for another round of fingerprinting!

Blessings,

Lisa

PS Since they didn't me take a photo in the police station, I thought you might enjoy this sunset from Mozambique.