If any of you knew the saga of Zach’s visa and passport, you’ll be happy to hear it is all resolved….

If you don’t the saga, then here’s a recap:

Shortly after Zach received his call to Tahiti, he was sent the package to apply for a French Visa (Tahiti was a French Colony and still requires a French Visa). We read through it all and followed the directions to a tee.

However, a couple things weren’t sitting well with the instructions and I made a few extra phone calls. They had asked us to make the appointment for the consulate as close to his departure date to the MTC as possible due to some restrictions Tahiti had on timing for visas. However, I couldn’t figure out how he could give the French consulate his passport for a min of 30 days and yet still get to Utah – across the border – without a passport by his reporting date (in 3 weeks).

Well, he couldn’t. Oops. Different procedures for Canadians. Oops we have a problem and now not enough time.

Long, long story – but we found out that you are able to get a duplicate passport if you can prove you need to travel while your passport is inaccessible for good reason. We had a good reason and they gave Zach a temporary passport and placed his real passport in “inactive mode” which it was in possession of the French Consulate. But, they also made him sign a paper saying he agreed to return the temp passport in person. When he returned the passport, they would activate his original passport again. The man at the office told us that his best bet was to come back to the Toronto office to hand in the temp and activate the old one, but thought it was possible to do it at a Canadian consulate in the US or at another passport office. We knew we had to figure it out, but hoped there would be a closer solution for him other than flying all the way home.

A few weeks after Zach entered the MTC, we got word that his French visa was complete and we could go pick it up with his passport. I picked it up – and my plan was to give his passport to Rachael who was entering the MTC a couple of days later. She would then give the passport to Zach. The Church travel office was going to arrange fo Zach to take an afternoon to either fly to the consulate in Denver, or go to Vancouver to hand in his temp passport and activate his real one. While on the phone to Passport Canada trying to figure out the best office to go to, they made us aware that it is illegal for someone to travel with a passport for someone other than themselves who is not travelling with them. If they searched Rachael at the border and found the visa on her she could be detained, his passport and visa cancelled etc. Not a good situation. That threw off our plan.

It ended up that the only safe and guaranteed way to make the exchange was for him to fly home.

Last Monday, I received a phone message and then an email that they wanted Zach to come home asap to get it all done. They wanted to do it early enough so if there were additional problems there was still time to deal with them , and he wanted to do it before he started learning Tahitian (next week). He was taking the red eye on Thursday night, arriving in Toronto at 9:15am and then flying back on the 5pm flight same day.

I was excited, stressed and concerned. I knew this was a big inconvenience and disruption to him. As much as I wanted to hug him, I did want him to have to deal with it all. But there was nothing we could do, so on Thursday night I waited for the text that said “I’m at the gate in Salt Lake City”.

I know every Mom can understand how I checked my phone, tracked the flight, and then waited to get the text that said “I’m at JFK waiting for my next flight”. By then it was time to get up and I eagerly checked the next flight status – and saw how the flight was expected 30 min early. I got to the airport on time and sat and waited. I was this excited and anxious to see him after 1 month – (imagine after 2 years, lol!) My eyes were glued to this board, and I was happy to see when the flight from New York JFK arrived.

Then I was excited to see this:

I quickly put my phone away and gave that boy a hug!!!

He was exhausted (and a bit grumpy, lol) and we hit the road, praying for no traffic to get to the passport office. He was annoyed at my selfies (he’s only been gone a month, so he didn’t see the need to be as excited as I was, lol) You can see the difference in our faces!!

We made it downtown and headed to the passport office:

We explained the situation and the first woman was awesome, gave us an urgent number and then the next woman was even more awesome and worked quickly as she wanted it all to get entered in the system so it would be updated by the time he got back to the airport. Thank goodness for tender mercies and these two women; we were out within 15 minutes!

I got a better smile:

Well at least he faked a better smile for me!

We had a couple of hours now! As we pulled onto our street, my friend and neighbour texted me to say Justin Trudeau (our Prime Minister) was on the Danforth (main road near our home) so we headed down to check it out! Zach had thought it would be a pretty cool to return back to the MTC and say he had met our PM! Unfortunately, he was gone, but my good friend (the Mom of one of Zach’s closest buddies since grade 2) was still there and excited to see Zach (she had met Justin Trudeau too!) We got a picture of her so she could send her son saying, “guess who I bumped into?!”

She took some pictures of us too (better than selfies!)

We headed home so I could show him the snacks I got him to take back, as well as some other things he had asked for. But first, I made him stop and take our traditional back to school pics, lol:

We sorted through the snacks and warmer clothes he wanted to take back for the next month (my sister in law kindly offered to pick up anything he doesn’t take to Tahiti and keep it for him. We are so blessed to have her close by and do all these little extra things!) so he loaded up with more ties too! It was amazing how many Canadian snacks we could squeeze in (I might have gone overboard – but we got most of this in!!):

He decided to take it all back in a small carryon bag. He didn’t originally take a carryon suitcase with him, but heard in the MTC that he might regret that when he gets to Tahiti if he is sent to a small island – they tell you to pack up a small carryon bag as your main bags get shipped by boat and can take a couple of weeks to get there. This way he now has a carry on to pack!

He was craving schwarma and schwarma poutine so we picked it up and had a nice lunch while he shared stories, and practiced his french (he sounds amazing!) He also taught me some of the Tahitian words that he has self taught:

He laughed at our countdown calendar – and I let him draw a little face on the little guy and fill in Friday’s circle (in yellow to mark he was home):

We spent a lot of time like this, as I listened to his stories:

And before we knew it, it was time to go:

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We decided that it would be best not to see anyone else (Rob, his Dad or the little boys) because he didn’t want to deal with all the goodbyes again. It’s really quite emotional and thought it best to just get back to it.

We headed back to the airport and I could feel my emotions surfacing.

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As unbelievable as it was, there was another family at the airport saying good bye to their daughter who was leaving to serve a mission! She is reporting to the MTC on Wednesday , but going a bit early to see family. It was hard watching their goodbyes, but so nice to have them take a pic of us:

With a big, long, tight hug, and some tears behind a big smile, I sent my baby off again. But I do say, with a very full and happy heart.

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He is so good. He is happy. He was excited to get back to the MTC! He missed his companions, he missed learning, he missed his new routine. My heart needed this. I needed to see and hear first hand how much he loves it – and that put my heart at complete ease. I miss him and will continue to miss him but there is something about seeing your child so happy, doing what they want to do that makes it all ok.

Godspeed my boy. You take a piece of my heart with you. Serve the people in Tahiti well.