Dear Graham,
When you purchase a car in the US, there is a lot of paperwork to fill out, but usually, the same day you buy the car, you drive it off the lot. Not so in Panama — at least not for US citizens.
We have a Panamanian bank account, but we had to transfer money from our US bank account into our Panamanian bank account. You would think this would be a simple transaction, but it’s not. The banks are extremely cautious about money transfers, especially from foreign countries.
We spoke to our financial institution in the US late Friday afternoon. They said they could transfer the money on Monday, but the Panamanian bank said we needed to answer specific questions and provide additional documents. Daniel, the man who helped us open our bank accounts, has been working with us to transfer the documents and answer the questions. We are hoping the money will be approved and transferred today or tomorrow morning.
Once the money is transferred, the car dealer then needs to register the car. Registering a car in Panama takes about a week. So even after we pay for the car, we still won’t be able to have it for another week.
We are staying at a hotel outside Panama City near the airport. We are hoping that once we pay for the car, we can fly down to Chitré, a town about an hour from Pedasí, rent a car, and drive to our beach house rental in Pedasí. Fingers crossed this all works out soon because we are more than ready to get to our new home.
I would like to digress back to the $3,000 Tom lost.
I kept feeling like someone was going to find it. We called Mia’s Vegan Shack in Casco Viejo, thinking maybe it had fallen out of his wallet when he paid our dinner bill at the register. Mia and her staff know us and said absolutely not — if any money had been dropped in their restaurant, it would have been confiscated and put in their safe until it could be returned to the owner.
The night after that dinner, we took a terrible taxi ride back to our hotel. The traffic was horrendous, bumper-to-bumper, and the driver kept weaving through back roads trying to avoid it. Tom and I sat in the back seat, swaying from side to side. When we finally arrived at the hotel, I watched Tom open his wallet to pay the taxi driver. Later, I wondered if the $3,000 could have fallen out of his wallet and into the dark back seat of the taxi.
That night, when I fell asleep, I asked St. Anthony to somehow miraculously help us find the $3,000.
The next day, I had finally surrendered to the fact that the money was gone and that I needed to let it go.
That morning, Tom was rummaging through the down vest he had worn on the plane when, all of a sudden, he said, “I found it.”
“What?” I said. “What did you find?”
He pulled a white bank envelope with yellow smiley faces on it from a hidden inside pocket of the vest. Inside that envelope was the missing $3,000 in $100 bills.
Tom had found the money.
We both rejoiced.
Another lesson in letting go and letting God.
We are both deeply thankful — not only for finding the money, but for the reminder that sometimes we have to surrender what we cannot control and trust that things will unfold as they are meant to.
With Love,
CC
