96 Hours

96 hours.  International travel during COVID is a bit of a logistical puzzle. All travelers have to have a certificate of a negative COVID test taken within 96 hours of arrival into the country.

Enjoying US fall

96 hours sounds like lots of time. But then going all the way to Africa, you have to take into account that you lose 28 hours with the travel and time change.  That leaves 68 hours.  The fastest COVID test labs in Massachusetts promised results within 24-48 hours. That leaves 20 hours. But you can’t get a COVID test just any time.  Test centers work 9-5.  There goes another 8 hours—leaving just 12 hours. So it’s possible, but not lots of wiggle room.  

We timed it perfectly. We’d take the tests Wednesday morning, get results by Friday afternoon at the latest, and leave Friday evening. Arrive in Africa on Saturday night! Perfect!

Not Perfect.  
Late Thursday- a link comes for the results, but a mix-up means we can’t access them.
Friday, 12:00pm - We finally get access to Tom’s and our daughter’s results.  Both negative.
12:30 - Megan’s results come in.  Negative
2:00-  Our sons’ tests had not come.  We call the hotline and confirm that they both tested negative, but we have only oral confirmation. We need the official paper.
2:30 - One of the boy’s results is in.  Negative.
5:30 - We leave for the airport, one lab result shy.  Our youngest son’s results never came.

We went up the airline counter and handed all our paperwork, wondering if they would look closely for ALL the test results. Tom kept checking his messages for link to the fifth result, but it never came. Finally the airline worker asked for our youngest son’s COVID test result and we had to admit that we didn’t have the paper even though we knew he was negative. The airline insisted that they needed a printout. Africa required the paper, so they couldn’t let us on the plane without the paper. We argued that we should have the link to his result before we landed in Africa, but they held firm, we needed it now!

We called the hotline again and put it on speaker phone. She confirmed orally that our son had been tested and was negative. The airline asked her to send an email to that effect, but she said she couldn’t. We asked her to contact someone who could and she said she could only give an assurance of help “within 24 hrs”. We asked her to just take a screen shot of the result. We told her it didn’t have to be official. She would not be budged. She told us that she was putting an urgent note on our case for the help desk, but all we could do was wait for someone to call us back.

Leaving for the airport

So we did what we do in a crisis.  We got people praying.  We waited with all our bags sitting in front of the check-in desk. The airline employee helpfully noted that all they needed was one of the documents we already had with just our son’s name at the top instead of ours— subtly suggesting that we could just create it ourselves. It was tempting. After all, we had obeyed the spirit of the requirements— we had tested our son and we knew he was negative. The airline knew he was negative. All they needed was a physical paper attesting to that fact.  We opened up the test result documents and looked at them. We could do it, we could make a fake report for our son, but it would be fraud. We could change the name on one of the COVID test results, but all the codes and specimen numbers and case ID wouldn’t be valid. The lab letter head was not ours to use. We could do it, but it wasn’t right. We thought about all the prayers that were being said on our behalf and we knew that to fudge the document wouldn’t be trusting. So we waited.

Thirty minutes passed.

Then it came to us. Not a the fifth text, not a telephone call from the lab, but an idea. Tom suggested we simply type up a letter with everything we knew and could honestly confirm. So we typed up our son’s name, birthdate, gender, when he had his specimen taken, what his result was, what kind of test was done and the name and contact information for the lab that did the test. We showed it to the airline employee and he whisked Tom to a desk with a printer. And just like that, within a handful of minutes we were checked-in and heading through security. What a sweet relief, God had answered our prayers!

Made it to Africa with all our bags!

Fast forward a day and we land in Africa, the healthcare worker at the airport only looks at the first of our test results and doesn’t even count them before he tells us all to pass through. As we wait for our luggage, the text with the link for our son’s result comes in.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are very thankful that we made it safely to mainland Africa. We are thankful for how well our kids did with all the travel. We are thankful that we continue to be healthy. We’re thankful for being able to get so much done this past week and for the most part feeling good about how we were leaving things in the States. We are thankful for getting to connect with our administrative oversight here in mainland Africa and to our old team leaders giving us their house to stay in!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We had COVID tests done again this morning (Monday) for our flight on Wednesday morning. Pray that our results come in time. Pray for our continued health. We are feeling very jet-lagged. Pray for good nights of sleep and a quick transition to this time zone. Once we get to the big island we still have to figure out how to get all our luggage to Clove Island as our luggage allowance is less than half on the intra-island flights. This is sometimes a headache- pray for an easy solution. In mainland Africa, we met with someone who is interested in joining our island team— pray for clear confirmation if the islands is the right place for her. We have heard of a number of friends, brothers and sisters on the islands and their relatives, being sick.  Pray for healing and restoration.