What that means is that, for now at least, we must leave the country every 3 months, whether we want to or not. (Incidentally - this also means that we are filling up our passports quickly. It's 4 stamps - a whole page worth - every time we leave. Mark and I have already had to have pages added.) This is not at all uncommon for missionaries, and we're super blessed that our process is so relatively easy and cheap. One missionary friend of ours who was in the middle east was required to return to her home country (the U.S.A.) in order to renew her visa! Thankfully, we're only a 3 hour drive through the mountains from the border with Mexico. Many times, the process of crossing the border itself takes us as long or longer than the drive to get there. We have to stamp our passports out of Guatemala, pay a bridge fee to cross, pay to get our car fumigated on the Mexican side, go through a sometimes rigorous search process, fill out paperwork and get our passports stamped into Mexico, and then head on our way. Because everyone in front of us has to do the same, sometimes we have to wait a looooooooooong time in line. Sometimes we don't.
That's part of the "fun" of the border - you never know what it's going to be like. For the first several times through, I just took all the passports to the window for immigration to stamp out of Guatemala. On one visit, though, that was apparently not okay, and everyone had to get out of the car and come up one by one. Once, a border agent really, really wanted to convince me that we should just pay a fee at the border instead of staying the required 72 hours in Mexico. That was fine with me, since I was having this 15 minute conversation with the agent and her boss inside the air conditioned office. It wasn't quite as okay with Mark and the girls, though, who were waiting in the car with no idea where or why I'd been been taken inside the immigration building. Occasionally they hassle us for not having certain paperwork. Sometimes they charge an illegal 10Q per passport fee. We've been thoroughly checked almost every time on the Mexican side, but only once on the Guatemalan side. Once or twice, we've been told to go around the line and traffic on our return into Guatemala, which meant skipping out on being inspected AND sprayed. As you can tell, we never know quite what to expect!
While the border crossing itself can be interesting, and there's always something different, we tend to make the rest of the trip as uneventful (and cheap) as possible. When looking for a hotel in southern Mexico, it's important to consider safety. When looking for a hotel for a missionary family, it's important to consider cost. We had a place we were staying before, but they raised their rates and lowered their quality of service. Thankfully, we found another hotel (on recommendation from a friend) that's even cheaper and nicer, and on the beach! Because this place has a suite for rent, we have access to a kitchen, so we can bring our own food along (though, no fresh fruits and veggies, which are illegal to take across the border). This cuts down on costs for eating out.
Honestly, visa runs are a mixed blessing. We wouldn't choose to take this time or money away from our ministry work. Sometimes our 90 days runs out at a very inconvenient time, for example. But, we don't have a choice. As a family, we don't have any other vacations or time away except for these visa runs and our furlough trips back to the U.S. (which really aren't vacations, and are often much more exhausting than being at home even though we love every minute of them). So, we've chosen to embrace our visa run trips as a chance to really be together and relax. We take naps! We swim in a pool! We catch up on emails and other correspondence (like I'm doing with this blog right now)! We look for chances to pray for others or do any outreach that the Holy Spirit puts before us, but we also just soak up free time and the chance to be a family - not just missionaries.
We're prayerfully looking into other options - things that would change what we have to do every 90 days, or allow us two years with no additional requirements at all. I'm sure God will be faithful to help us wade through all the options and possibilities and show us the best possible fit. It would be nice to spend less money and time to stay legal with the Guatemalan government. To be honest, though, if it turns out that our best option is to keep making our visa runs just like we are right now, I'm ok with that, too!
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