Expectations - and airport adventures!

I've been thinking for the past few days about these upcoming blog posts.

I've been trying to collect my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings. Trying to imagine how I could possibly convey to you just what we experienced. I still have no clue about how to do that, but I'll try.

One major thing I learned on this trip was to have expectancy - not expectation.

We must be waiting in expectancy for the Lord to show up and lead us, and we must be willing to follow. However, we can not expect certain things from the Lord. His plans are far better and often, far different, from ours.

Swaziland was unbelieveable, to say the least. The best week of my life. Of our lives.

But, before we get into all that, let me share with you our crazy airport adventures!

Day 1.

We arrived at the Charlotte Douglas Airport at the lovely hour of 4:15am. It has been a long time since I've willing gotten up so early! We met up with 3 of our teammates who were on our same flight route.

Our first flight departed at 6:15 am and we safely arrived at the Washington Dulles airport.

We had about an hour and 20 minutes until our next flight, so we headed to our gate, ate breakfast, and goofed around. 

Our second flight was supposed to take off at 8:20 am and at about 8 o'clock we looked at our watches and realized we hadn't boarded yet. In a panic I ran to the departures display board and realized our gate had been moved. Not just moved, but moved 2 terminals over! Meaning, we needed to get on a tram and everything. Nightmare.

It's now 8:05am and the five of us are running through the airport like total maniacs. We can hardly breath, we are sweating like crazy, and we are SURE we are going to miss our flight. Did I already mention, NIGHTMARE?

With the gate in site and our legs hardly willing to take another step, us girls sent Joseph ahead to hold the plane. Joseph asked a man in line, "Where is this plane headed?" The response, "Columbus, Ohio." Nooooo!!! For a brief moment, we thought our Africa dreams were dead.

Fortunately, one kind lady chimed up and said "JFK is boarding here also." Thank you, God!! We kindly shoved our way through the mass of people waiting and made it onto our flight. We all took one collective deep breath thinking that the worst was over. Little did we know..

We made it to JFK and had an hour and 45 minutes until our last departure to South Africa. We double checked our gate this time and started making our way there. I stopped and asked a lady for directions and she sweetly, yet sternly, told us to "hurry!" Here we go again..

Turns out we had to leave the airport and get on a tram that took us half way around the airport. Then we had to go back through check in (since we changed carriers) and back through security. We made it through check in and hurried our way to security, where we found a line that went on forever and ever. We all felt seriously deflated. There was no way we were going to get through this line and nothing we could do about it.

By the grace of God, the line moved quickly and with one final sprint to the gate, we were some of the last people to board the plane.  Hallelujah!! 

We were all smiles knowing that we had made it and we were on our way to Africa!  It was completely surreal. 

We boarded our flight completely drenched in sweat, totally out of breath, and probably not smelling so lovely, but it didnt' matter.  We collapsed into our seats with a sigh of relief and totally underestimating just how long 15 and half hours would be!

The Lord quickly showed us that He is in control.  We literally wouldn't have made it to Africa without His provision.  I believe He was testing us, revealing to us that we need to put more trust in Him.  I knew He had ordained this trip and I should have never doubted that He would get us there.  Maybe things didn't go smoothly, but we made it and all the glory goes to Him!