Border Adventure

The other night a team of us from Baja Christian Church took a trip from Rosarito to Lakeside church in San Diego for a visit as they are now our new sister church. Before leaving we made sure everyone traveling with us remembered their passport before taking off. So we set out on our travels with the team chatting, laughing as we went along. As we were approaching the road to the border, we noticed the line wasn’t as long as it usually is and thought this was great. We later discovered that we had taken the wrong turning only to end up in the SENTRI pass lane and there was no turning back, only forward from this point on. As we approached the border guard he looked at all our passports and asked if we realized we were in the lane for those with a SENTRI pass only. The lane we were in cuts waiting time dramatically. The guard asked, “Do you realise this is the SENTRI lane? You know people pay good money to go through here .”

We said we went down it by mistake as we  accidently took the wrong turning.

The armed guard said, “Take this as a warning and know you are not meant to go through this lane unless you have a SENTRI pass”, and he reminded us that people pay money and have all had background checks before any pass is issued. The SENTRI pass saves you waiting in very long lines at the border. The guard  directed us to the secondary inspection area with the team’s passports stuck behind the car window screen wiper. So off we went into the inspection area where we met another armed guard looking very official. He told us to wait until the light turned green then slowly drive through. It looked like one very large x-ray machine.

Once through the overhead machine, we were directed into a parking place and were approached by another guard asking the driver for the car registration. With our passports in hand and the car keys which were taken from the ignition and placed upon the car window screen, the guard walked away to another office booth with all documents concerned in hand probably to do checks. We were all waiting patiently for quite some time, so we opened the doors of the van for some fresh air and began singing songs. We looked around at what was happening around us; guards with sniffer dogs, people who wanted to go to the restroom being searched before they went, etc. Then at one point about four guards had one hand on their guns and started to run out of the inspection area towards the border line. We kept on singing and laughing.

A man from the car which was parked next to us asked if we could help him as he really needed to make a phone call regarding his debit card and wanted to speak with someone in customer services. He looked worried. Apparently he couldn’t get his card to work but had money in the account as he had to pay for some kind of permit in order to get across the border. He wanted to borrow our cell phone to sort the card problem out. He tried to call his bank but couldn’t get through. We don’t know how his story ended because he was still there probably long after we were gone.

The armed guard with a serious face later returned to us and said, “You are all going to jail.” We all went silent followed by a sudden gasp of inhaled air. Then  the guard broke into a smile which resembled a cheshire cat. We all had a sigh of relief . The driver had to sign a statement which meant that he had been warned. I guess if it happened again he would be fined. Well, we learned our lesson.

So off we went on our journey to Lakeside Church in San Diego, which turned out to be a great night where several people shared their testimonies followed by music and messages from Pastor Chris and Pastor Gary Tucker. Good fellowship and good food all round.

After the service and fellowship finished, we were on the road again. When we arrived at the border traveling back into Mexico, we got another red light and went back into inspection. This one was a very quick check and within minutes we were back on the road heading home.

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