A new forever friend

We made it. Our flight landed, and our driver picked us up right on time. After a long drive through the streets of Bogotá, we arrived at a beautiful apartment complex. Upon our arrival, we found ourselves in the middle of a communication gap, one that divinely left us stranded on the doorstep of an unexpected friend, Clarita. To be honest, she didn’t look too thrilled to entertain strangers on a cold, wet day, but two weeks later she admitted her gratitude to God for dropping us off on her doorstep.

No one could find the only people in the complex with the keys to our apartment, so we spent a few hours with Clarita, one of the apartment owners’ good friends. She also lived in Colombia as a missionary but no longer worked for the Christian school. Since she didn’t work for the school, we never would have had a reason to meet her, making this “accidental” appointment even more divine. She graciously let us use her computer to let our families know we made it to Colombia safely, and then we used her phone to call Julian.

“We’re here, Julian! We made it!” I finally got to say the words, but we still lacked that first embrace.

“Wow. You sound soooo close!!!” I’ll never forget the emotion in his voice.

“We will come to get you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

“Okay. I will wait outside for you.” Not even twenty-four hours remained until we could finally meet.

 Clarita took us to get some cash out at the ATM, and she walked us to a pizza place to have dinner, the first we’d eaten since two o’clock that morning. Already almost four o’clock in the afternoon, the long day began to hit us. While we ate, she inquired a lot about what brought us to Colombia. After we explained the whole story, she offered to accompany us to the orphanage the next morning to get Julian.

Hmmm. Did God provide for yet another detail? Scratch out our fear of taking a taxi by ourselves in this very foreign country.

Finally, the keys showed up, and we had a chance to get into our apartment to relax, unpack, and regroup. Then it hit us—we physically stood in Colombia, after all this time. Our lives would change forever the next morning when we met our “son” face to face.