Monday and Tuesday were very busy this week as we said our goodbyes to church friends and our badminton friends at the walking park and made preparations to leave Vizag. We took careful inventory of our food, discarding things we wouldn’t be using and nobody else wanted. We did a great job of planning which included ordering lunch from Pizza Hut! We thoroughly cleaned our flat, did laundry, packed and filled out online forms for our tourist visa to Nepal. We were ready to go…
But alas, our “exit certificates” did not get processed in time for our Wednesday flight. (You have to have your flight before they will do the paperwork!) I guess since that has come and gone and our papers are in process we will book a flight when we know we can leave. It has been a daily “wait and see” week and I keep wondering what we need to be learning or doing here before we are allowed to depart. Limbo may be cool, it may be fine, but my back is sore!
Since our food was figured to the day, I ended up creating a couple meals from bits of this and that. Chicken onion soup is pretty tasty. We ordered meals delivered two more times and managed for three days, but we ended up going to the store knowing we would not be leaving before Tuesday. I really don’t want to need to buy more groceries.
As we have been expecting to leave any day we haven’t been going anywhere except to the grocery store and the Foreigners Registration Office. We have had many exchanges with church employees here in India who are trying their best to get this taken care of. Because Vizag is a “small” city (only 2.4 million) they don’t actually have an FRO here. It is just done through the police and then goes through the office in Hyderabad. It seems like it should be simple but is a rather complicated process. We have been to the police barracks four or five times now. Not something I expected to do as a missionary.
To quote another song, which we actually heard in the Uber on the way to the police barracks a couple of weeks ago, “You can check out anytime but you can never leave.” Unfortunately I do feel a little like we have “checked out” as we hang out in our flat and wish we had more snacks to eat. We have found some constructive things to do though. Rick is proofreading a book for a friend and I have been working on family history.
Because we have needed to stay close to home to handle this business we discovered that we have a rooftop garden! There is even enough room up there to play a little badminton. Plus a helipad, which we knew was up there. I guess that since our apartment building is still being finished I didn’t expect the garden to be completed. The fitness room and swimming pool don’t exist yet. And no, I don’t know why we have a helipad.
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Great 360 degree views.
Pretty plants and flowers.
And the helipad.
We are fervently praying that at this time next week we will be settled into our new apartment in Nepal and ready to head out on a project called Helping Babies Breath. It is training that teaches essential neonatal resuscitation and newborn care skills to support babies that do not breathe on their own after birth to reduce infant mortality rates. The couple currently serving in Nepal will handle it, along with the skilled instructors, but we want to share in the experience. We are so very absolutely and completely ready to be working as welfare services missionaries!!!
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