Blessings in Disguise

A good thing from the snowstorm: sledding!

A big snowstorm led to a new flight time, which meant we wouldn’t make our connections, which meant we had to cancel our old itinerary, which meant waiting on-hold for hours with multiple airlines. Finally we had a new itinerary, arriving a day and a half later than we had hoped.

Bummer, right? But actually it didn’t take us long to realize that the ways things worked out was actually pretty nice and as the last few days have played out, we are just more impressed by God’s hand blessing us. Here are some of the blessings of our new travel plan.

An extra day in the USA meant…

• an extra day for our son to recover from his tummy bug
• a day to play in the snow (and go sledding)
• time to send some needed letters
• time to properly clean and sort through the stuff we were leaving behind (rather than leaving it as a burden for others)

That extra day meant we left the USA feeling much better about how we were leaving everything behind.

Kids exploring guesthouse in Africa

The new travel itinerary meant…

• only one connection rather than two (this is huge with three kids)
• a better airline (we got passed to a bigger partner airline in the rescheduling)
• more sleep (we didn’t have to leave the house at 3am)
• better transition to time zone (we arrived at our final destination at night so we could just go to sleep rather than having to force ourselves to stay awake)
• we were unknowingly on the same flight to Africa as a colleague from the islands!
• our gracious colleague and friend was able to take most our bags with him (we forgot to request a van to pick us up, so there is no way our arranged taxi could have taken all our stuff!)

So here we are sitting in Africa, waiting to leave for a conference, very thankful for the last minute changes that brought us here.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it safely to mainland Africa with all our luggage! Our extra day and new travel itinerary were a blessing! We’ve only been back in Africa for half a day, but we’ve already got to see many old friends (since people across Africa are here for the upcoming conference). Our kids made it through the long hours of travel!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Please pray for our kids (and us) as we transition to the time zone and catch up on sleep. The transition will be long for the kids : we will be in mainland Africa for two weeks before going to the islands (a conference this week, a gathering of island workers on the weekend and conference/testing for homeschooled kids the following week), then we’ll have a few days on the big island before we head home to Clove Island. Pray especially for our youngest who doesn’t remember what all these transitions will be like. Pray that we will be encouraged and challenged by the upcoming conference.