The woman helping me needs my passport and visa and has to take pictures of everything along with a picture of me holding a SIM card and upload them to the system which often fails. After taking all the photos twice with 30 minutes of waiting in between, she held onto my passport along with the 8th form I have filled out at this place in the past month or so. Then she told me too ok sit and wait while she helped another customer. After helping him she called me up and asked for my old SIM card and then started looking for my passport. She couldn’t find it. After looking at her desk and going to the back several times for several minutes she told me I needed to be looking for it, because she probably gave it back to me. I emptied my bag several times, but I also knew that I never received it back from her. I asked if it might be possible that the previous customer took it from the desk since I had seen it there just minutes before. She showed me that he did not take her phones or cash that was lying around, so why would he take my passport.
After waiting for quite some time, I began asking other employees to help in the search. There was no manager around to ask for help. At this point I had been in the service center for over two hours and my patience was wearing thin. I also was asking if someone could at least check the security camera to see what had happened to my passport. I had begun thinking of all the implications of a lost passport while living overseas. Buying plane tickets, going to a hotel, even getting a SIM card, require a passport and proof of valid visa. As I tried to keep my mind from spiraling, I decided to dump my bag out once again to look in case I had somehow missed it.
As I was sorting through all the things in my bag, the woman who was helping me told me I just needed to sit and wait. I explained that I was rechecking my bag as she had told me to do. She then told me that the man she helped right before me had taken my passport by mistake. Apparently she had actually handed it to him on accident along with his other papers. I was so relieved and thankful that the passport was found!
She told me again to sit and be patient while she figured out how to get it back. I took a deep breath and tried to just be thankful. The man she gave my passport to was traveling and had gone more than half an hour away from town before realizing that he had it. She told me I could sit and wait or follow her to where she was going to pick it up. Since I had been sitting in the same place for almost 3 hours already, I decided that we would drive along. So David and I followed the service vehicle as it drove ridiculously fast, weaving in and out of traffic for 30 minutes heading away from town in the opposite direction of our home (30 more minutes.)
As we reached the taxi park, we drove up and were handed my passport through the truck window. This was not how I planned to spend my Friday afternoon/evening. But I am just very thankful to have my passport back. I guess this was another opportunity to grow in patience. I am praying that when I go back to the service center, God will enable me to be gracious, patient and kind. Please pray that I could reflect the love of Jesus to this young Muslim woman with whom I have had the opportunity to build quite a relationship through this SIM card saga. I’m asking God to give me his perspective even in the midst of stressful and frustrating situations. That is not my natural tendency or thought process. But I believe God has to be using this ridiculous series of events for some good purpose. That good purpose may be to just grow me in patience, or it may be an opportunity to show His love to others.
