border crossing | nuevo laredo, mx

Praise God! He has been with us all day and we have felt all of your prayers! Seriously, I cannot even explain to you all the ways that things went well. Of course we had a few bumps that you always expect when you're doing something like this, but God was everywhere, and we are so thankful. Border crossing went very well; so well, in fact, that I keep wondering what the catch is... we only had to pay $150 in import tax (which was much less than we were expecting) and we had all the papers we needed to import the two vehicles. Have I already said how much your prayers made a difference? Import tax is 16% - and I had listed all of our belongings and their approximate value on a piece of paper. We gave them that, but they looked inside and made up their own, really low numbers, and then charged us tax on that. Such a blessing. And, we only had to empty out about a tenth of the Ford - much more than that and we would have been repacking for hours.

Furthermore, I am now the owner of a Chevrolet Astro that is overheating. We stopped and got out at the border and the first thing that happened is that like the entire tube or whatever thing of coolant dumped onto the ground. So that was fun. (Side note from Grant: for those readers a little more mechanically minded, the van had not completely over-heated but the coolant was coming out the overflow tube). But we made it across, and then got to the vehicle import place where they told Grant that he could not import two vehicles. So we "sold" one to me, and I "imported" it, and that's that. And then they went to buy anti-freeze.

We could NOT have done today without Dad & Mom H. Originally, we were going to both stay in the same hotel on the American side and then we were going to cross over really early tomorrow morning with Grant driving the Ford and me driving the Astro (with Ivory) and Dad and Mom were going to fly home. I started to get worried about being responsible for Ivory while crossing the border, by myself, so we decided to cross tonight and that went so well. Almost no lines, and Mom took care of Ivory while we got everything sorted out. Plus, we got more $ in personal allowance because they were with us, which saved us money.

And now that all the stress is over, we are at a Holiday Inn Express in Nuevo Laredo, waiting on a Domino's Pizza delivery. We are blessed.

Praise God for all of His wonderful provision today! Thank you for praying! Please keep the prayers coming, for a long drive through the desert tomorrow. We're hoping the Astro does ok. And we're hoping we do ok. Pray that we could easily meet up with the Mexican brothers tomorrow morning at the bus station, Alfredo and Gabriel, and that they too could feel God's nearness.

We will probably not post tomorrow night, so don't worry if you don't hear from us. We hope to be in Ixtlan by then, but that would mean driving 12 hours not counting stops, and we're not sure if we or the van will be able to handle that. But we'll check in on Saturday. Good night!