"The · darkest · thing · about · Africa · has · always · been · our · ignorance · of · it"

From Mom:  God Does Stuff.  Then He Chuckles.  Repeated attempts to make advance arrangements to ship Minty to the States had accomplished nothing.  We were left with the belief that Bethany wouldn't know until she showed up at the shipping terminal in Dakar, Senegal, whether she would be able to ship Minty to Atlanta by Delta, or have to use South African Airways and ship to Dulles Airport in Washington, DC.  Her Dad and I prepared to hit the road Friday night, planning to drive straight through to Atlanta (hopefully not DC) arriving Sat. evening, finding a place to sleep, and picking Minty up at 8:30 Sunday morning-- then hitting the road again, planning to arrive back in Colorado sometime Monday (and expecting to be pretty exhausted.)
Then Bethany gets to Dakar, and learns that Delta has turned over its cargo operations to DHL.  The DHL agent is filling out the paperwork and asks for the address of the people receiving the dog.  She says, "Well they don't live in Atlanta, so can't they just pick him up at the airport?" 
He asks, "Where do they live?" 
"Colorado." 
To which he replies, "Why aren't you just shipping him all the way to Colorado?"
Call Mom and Dad: " How about just driving to DIA rather than Atlanta?"
Bottom line, while Delta's domestic pet shipping service wouldn't "speak" with their international shipping (so we would have had to pay a service to receive him in Atlanta and put him on a plane to Denver--for which we were quoted $1800!) shipping cargo is DHL's business.  Minty still flew on Delta planes, but DHL staff handled the transfer process in Atlanta--all for less than what we expected to pay!
Cut to Sunday--we're planning to pick him up at 3:30--phone rings at 11:30.  Call from Delta Cargo in Denver: "There's a dog coming in here, but you can't pick him up.  U.S. Customs doesn't clear cargo on Sundays--someone should have told you not to ship a dog on the weekend."  (Maybe if someone at Delta had actually tried to be helpful on one of my many calls... rather than just saying, 'you have to deal with the people in Senegal,' who surprisingly enough, don't know that U.S. Customs in Denver is closed on Sunday!)  But I keep talking to this man and he takes pity and tells me we could try showing up at the cargo office, picking up the paperwork that comes in with the dog, then going to the airport terminal and asking a Customs Agent (who's checking in people) to please stamp the paperwork so we can go back to cargo and take the dog.
We do that-- Custom Agent isn't happy however, says Delta knows they aren't supposed to ask for Cargo to be cleared after hours or on weekends, but I'm there--he checks the computer -- Minty was actually cleared through Customs in Atlanta!  He stamps our paperwork to satisfy the Delta cargo staff and we go back to retrieve Minty. 
So after many months of planning and trying to consider everything that could possibly go wrong, the Lord looks down, chuckles, and says, "I had it handled all along."