good news

Short story: After many hours of trains, planes, and automobiles, we have arrived back at Mullartown House with a pair of wonderful new stamps on our passports. They say "Permission granted to stay six months" and we are very thankful to those of you who prayed with us through this and to our God who turns the hearts of kings and passport control agents.

Long story: Though Ange was very calm, I kept wanting to do things to make it work--things like creasing our passports to a different page so they wouldn't see the stamp from Shannon and checking all our papers fifteen times or even praying "enough." But as I was praying on the plane, I was reminded of Brother Andrew (I highly recommend his book God's Smuggler), who smuggled Bibles into communist Russia. He would often leave Bibles in plain sight on the seat of his car just so that his success couldn't be due to his own cleverness. I thought, "if Andrew can trust God in that way when the stakes are so much higher, surely I can trust Him now." God has promised that He loves us and will go ahead of us. Do I believe Him or not?

So with new peace in my heart (though still a bit of nervousness if I'm honest) we walked off the plane, down the corridor, and up to the passport desk. The agent was very pleasant. She asked us some of the same questions, although she never tried to make us prove that we had money. She looked through our passports quite a long time (so much for my little creasing scheme) and flipped through every page. On Ange's passport she probably looked at the stamp from Shannon three or four times, but never said anything about it. She asked to see our return tickets and after a few more questions, stamped us with the beautiful stamp and waved us through. As we walked towards the baggage claim, we were overcome with thankfulness.

This is the character of our God. He is the Redeemer. He took a stupid, inconvenient situation and turned it into a great time with old friends and a chance to see the beauty of the Germany and Switzerland. There is no greater pleasure than walking Him. It makes me think of the words of Joseph (who, admittedly, had a much harder time than we): "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good."

We had a good time in Germany. I'll post pictures as soon as I get a chance. Peace.

-mark

Strange fact of the day: In Germany, any street that comes in from the right side has the right-of-way, sometimes even if it's a smaller street. So you really have to watch because they might just pull out in front of you. It's really confusing.