At the beginning of July we planned a trip to Phnom Penh. Our two main purposes for going were to 1.) Obtain Micah’s visa, and 2.) Visit with some good friends who were preparing for a 7-month furlough. Traveling during the Covid season is complicated. We were told by our immigration officer that when we returned from Phnom Penh, we would have to home quarantine for 14 days. I spent the two weekends before we planned to leave stocking our freezer with enough meat from the market to last us 14 days. We also bought enough eggs to last us. The plan was to have our helper pick up produce when needed.

The two days before we planned to leave, we made pretzels, carrot cake, and sandwich rolls for our all-day drive to Phnom. We went to bed early Tuesday night (June 29th) with the hopes of leaving our house a little after 5:30am. We started out Wednesday great and had the car almost packed and were about ready to get the kids in the car when Isaiah came out of the bedroom and said he didn’t feel well. Turned out he had a fever. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but now that there are Covid check-points along the road – where they might take everyone’s temperature…you can’t travel if you have a fever! Who wants to have an unnecessary Covid test? So we unpacked the car and said we would try again tomorrow, hoping it was a one-day fever. The girls were very disappointed. Isaiah felt awful to be the cause of our delay (besides feeling crummy from a fever). And I was really hoping that the bread would stay good and that I wouldn’t have to remake all our food!

Unfortunately, Thursday morning Isaiah still had a fever and it turns out he had Chikungunya. It’s not a dangerous virus, but the fever usually last about three days. We kept waiting to see if we would leave the next day. I think we all felt like we were living in limbo – will we leave tomorrow? Will someone else get it? Will I have to make bread again?

Thankfully, by Friday night Isaiah was fever-free and fever-free Saturday morning when we got up to leave. We had a very good drive down to PP. We were only stopped at one checkpoint and only Josh had to get out. Since PP is where most of the Covid cases are coming from, it seems that the police don’t care if you’re headed to Covid-country.

We had some unexpected things come up while in PP with Covid cases limiting our access to certain areas in the guesthouse. It wasn’t exactly the week we had hoped for, but we had a good time and our kids enjoyed seeing their friends and spending lots of time with them. We even had a girls’ sleep-over. I enjoyed some great talking hours with my friends.

While in PP, we took Ezra and Micah to get their TDaP vaccinations. I also took Micah to an ENT at the recommendation of my pediatrician friend. I was visiting with my friend and asked her to look at Micah’s upper palate – which seemed unusually high to me. My friend thought that if we could fit a visit in to see the ENT, it would be good to have her check it out. I could see God’s hand in the timing of all this. If we had been on our original schedule, we would have been leaving the morning after I visited with my doctor friend. But because of our delay – we were still planning to be in PP a few more days and were able to see the ENT. The ENT confirmed that Micah’s upper palate is indeed unusually high, but she didn’t think it was a concern. She also recommended we continue to wait to see if he needs his tongue clipped. (He’s tongue-tied – but has no trouble nursing. We will reevaluate when he starts talking.)

Interestingly enough, Micah had a slight fever when we went to the ENT. They still allowed us to enter, when I explained he had just had a vaccination the day before. However, his fever continued for a few days, and I soon began to suspect it was not vaccination related. My doctor friend didn’t think it was Covid, and thought it was likely some sort of kid virus.

So once again, we were going to have to delay our travel plans because of a fever. We had been planning to leave Sunday, but since Micah still had a fever Saturday afternoon, we decided to wait until Monday. Then late Saturday night we found out that there was another positive Covid case in the guesthouse and this time it was someone who we had had contact with. Sunday morning we didn’t know what to do, as they announced that the guesthouse and property would be closing down for two weeks. We asked one of our leaders what we should do and she said get out of here. Basically, we could either leave right away or be stuck for two weeks. I still wasn’t comfortable leaving, with Micah’s fever, so I made a quick call to my doctor friend (who was now in the States visiting family). She picked up immediately and after listening to the situation, said that if it were her she would leave and go home. We made a mad dash and finished packing everything up and left. Thankfully, Josh had already packed the top of our car and I had already made sandwiches when we had initially thought we were leaving on Sunday anyway. I felt so frazzled by the time we pulled out – what an exit!

Turned out Micah was fever-free for most of the trip. I checked him a few hours before we got to our province, planning to give him some Tylenol if he had a fever – but he was still fever-free. And when they stopped us at the Ratanakiri border and made us all get our temperatures checked, they didn’t want to check the baby’s temperature!

So we made it back! What a trip! I still am shaking my head about the timing of the trip. We had a plan to go and then God stopped us. I prayed that He would continue to stop us if we shouldn’t go. Then when we were planning to return, He seemed to stop us again, only to have us tear out of there! God moves in mysterious ways and we can only trust Him to open and close doors. We get to walk the path He puts before us! It was sad that we didn’t get to say official goodbyes to our friends. That is in God’s hands as well.

The day after we returned home, Micah broke out in a rash very similar to his Chikungunya rash. After some research, I suspect that the vaccination somehow triggered a relapse in Micah’s Chikungunya from the month before. He was back to normal about a week later.

We served our home quarantine time. Josh worked from home. The kids could still play outside, so it wasn’t much different for them. After about 5 days, the neighbor kids started playing with them too. Our helper brought produce four times during the 14 days and the kids helped me with all the food prep. Thankfully it’s rainy season, so I only mopped once!

We had a successful trip to PP. We were able to obtain Micah’s visa and visit with our friends. It wasn’t as restful as I had hoped it would be, but it was the trip that God had for us. We are thankful we did not catch Covid and that we didn’t have any trouble on the road. Thanks be to God! (And I don’t want to travel again for a long time!)

• 

•