Peak to Peak: From the Mountains of Colorado to the Mountains of Ethiopia
Garden of the gods: Colorado Springs - July 2024
Landing in Ethiopia:
“I’m sorry, we cannot let you in.” The worst words that you can hear after a long 15-hour flight, with tired and cranky kids tugging at your legs and a line starting to form behind you at the visa-on-arrival area in the airport.
“What do you mean you can’t let us in?” I asked.
“No, sir. We can let YOU and the children in. We cannot let HER in.”
But let’s rewind a few days to see how we got here…
We had just wrapped up a month-long training in Colorado, learning about cultural and language acquisition, and made some great friends that will be serving all around the world. We flew to Atlanta to meet up with our future teammates (Rachel’s parents) as they had driven in from Columbia, SC alongside one of our supporters, David, as he graciously volunteered to drive our crates from storage to meet us at the Atlanta airport.
D-Day – Departure Day for the Cobos family. A day that I had honestly been dreading and worrying about for months. Not so much the leaving part, but the logistical nightmare of having to maneuver four kids, four adults, and countless number of bags and crates from a hotel, through the airport, to get checked in at the airline counter. But God has an easy answer for problems that we usually think are impossible or too difficult to answer. For us, that was David.
David sacrificially took time from work to pick up a twelve-foot U-haul trailer and to collect 18 crates from Columbia and then met us outside of our hotel in Atlanta to pick up seven more of our bigger checked bags as well as four more from Frank and Karren. This allowed us to travel lighter as all we needed to maneuver was our carry-ons and backpacks and ensure we had four kiddos with us. As we arrived at the international terminal, the next task was trying to block off enough space for David’s truck and the trailer to pull up near the curb so that we could unload.
And then the baggage madness started. Bag after bag, crate after crate, they kept coming as we occupied a large area of the terminal curbside and garnered some funny looks from people passing by. But it was a beautiful team effort. David was inside the trailer, passing crates to Frank and me. We would lift them to the curb, where Rachel would load them onto carts, and Daniel and Emma would use all their might to push the carts into the terminal.
As we stepped up to the airline counter, a mass of humanity and an enormous amount of luggage, I was dreading the looks from the airline personnel, but the Ethiopian Airlines representative couldn’t have been nicer. She told me that she was grateful that she got to help us! She said she would much rather help one person (or family in this case) with a bunch of bags than a bunch of people with a few bags. After sorting our luggage and distributing some of our weight so we wouldn’t get hit with too many fees, our final luggage bill came. Knowing that we would have a fair bit of luggage, we had already pre-paid for a good portion of it, but of course, as you get closer to game time, the number of bags grew a little, so we still owed $600. This is where God is great.
I’ll give you guys a little background info: whenever somebody donates to us, we usually get an email the next day that notifies us that somebody has supported us (I say “usually” because it probably works about 75% of the time if I’m being honest). On D-Day morning, I happened to check my email, and I saw that we got a gift from an Anonymous donor… the amount… $600. You can’t make this stuff up! So, anonymous donor, whoever you are, please know that your gift was perfectly timed and greatly appreciated, as all of the financial gifts are.
With the chaos of unloading and checking in luggage all behind us, all we had to do now was sit back and enjoy the 15-hour flight ahead of us.
Okay, let’s fast-forward to landing in Ethiopia and trying to get a visa on arrival for me and the kids…
As I was dreading the logistics of the airport drop-off, Rachel was not looking forward to the arrival part of our trip. She sensed that we were going to get stuck for hours at customs at the airport and was doing her best to mentally prepare me and the kids for this.
Our plan was to get a business visa for Rachel, and the rest of us would get 3-month tourist visas that are only available in person once you arrive in the country. We applied for her business visa while we were in Colorado and seemingly everything was approved. As we approached the visa desk, the man looked a little overwhelmed seeing such a large family. I tried my best to alleviate some of his fears by telling him that we would only need five visas and not six as Rachel had a business visa. That was apparently the wrong thing to say as he immediately called over his supervisor, a short, but stern looking Ethiopian lady who demanded to see proof of Rachel’s business visa. We tried to show her the screenshot of our email confirmation, but she was not satisfied. She said it was not approved.
As I struggled to figure out what exactly the problem was with Rachel’s visa, I started to get this uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was not going to go our way. Not exactly the best feeling, when you have sold most of your stuff, moved halfway across the world with your four kids, and have the rest of your possessions spread out amongst the 27 checked bags and crates that are currently circling a lonely airport baggage claim below.
As we desperately tried to show the airport officials that Rachel’s visa was approved from the screenshot on her phone, the airport official was not impressed and had to make a phone call to verify. As she spoke rapidly in Amharic to the anonymous official who seemingly held our fate in their hands, we called our future teammates who were anxiously awaiting our arrival down below. They rapidly got to work to help us get it sorted. They sent a wonderful lady (we’ll call her K) who frequently helps the hospital staff with their immigration paperwork to the main immigration office.
As we slowly pieced together the puzzle of the business visa, apparently, we had applied for the wrong type of business visa. We had inadvertently selected the investment business visa option and not the business visa for NGOs and other organizations. When we tried to explain that we had selected the wrong type and asked if she could then get a tourist visa like the rest of us, the lady was VERY emphatic in saying that this was not possible since we had already told her that Rachel was here for business. Basically, it came down to the following options:
We all leave the country and reapply for the correct business visa, leaving our stuff behind in the airport
All of us wait in the airport until the visa situation is sorted out
All of us (minus Rachel) go into the country and Rachel stays behind to sort the visa debacle (with the caveat that if she can’t, she might have to leave the country and come back for a tourist visa)
We obviously weren’t thrilled with any of the options, but we had to make a quick decision and ended up going with Plan C. As Rachel explained the situation to the kids, I took care of getting the tourist visas. After we were granted the tourist visas, we said a quick goodbye then wrangled the kiddos down the escalator to pick up our bags which of course were the only ones left on the baggage claim carousel after the two hour debacle. Thankfully, the customs agents saw the chaos headed their way and did not give us a lot of hassle and let us get through rather easily. In Ethiopia, its not uncommon for foreigners to have to open every single bag and explain everything they have brought in and make the case for whether or not they should pay an import tax. We know of one family that had to pay a tax for every black key on a keyboard they brought in!
As we met our future teammates and loaded up our bags, it was surreal driving to the guesthouse where we will be staying for this upcoming year. It was nearly exactly a year ago that Rachel and I were driving the same route imagining what this day would be like when we finally arrived in country. As we were driving, K was busy talking to people and negotiating a way for Rachel to reapply for her business visa. As Rachel worked on her phone to re-submit all of the appropriate documentation, K was able to get it in real time to the correct people to process it. Around 1:30pm (about 5 and a half hours after we landed) Rachel was finally approved for her visa and allowed to enter the country!
Praises and Things to Pray For:
The last bit of our recurring support to come in. We are currently short about $200/month for our recurring support. Please pray that some more people will decide to jump on our support team. As we said in our last update, if you have already given a generous one-time gift, if you would consider making it an annual gift, we can then shift your generous support to a yearly basis, which will help us get to 100%. You don’t need to donate again; we will just take your donation and divide it by 12.
Praise for our time in Colorado. We made some great friends who will be serving around the world. We feel like the training has equipped us and our children for the stresses and challenges of cross-cultural life.
Praise for the visa situation getting sorted out quickly and thank you to the people that were praying for us.
Praise for all of our bags/crates getting here safely and the smooth entry through customs.
Praise for all of our future teammates that have helped us in our first days getting settled into our new accommodations for our year in Addis Ababa.
Prayers/praise for a new potential visa option for Rachel’s parents that has just been discovered. Hopefully, this option will work out.
Thank you to all of you who have supported us financially, emotionally, spiritually, or in some combination of all of the above. You have been amazing, and we appreciate all of you who have reached out to check on us since we landed.
If you want to learn more about how to help us on this journey, please click the link below!
