Friday, July 30th, 2010

I got up at 4:00 a.m. FL time, which, for anyone who wonders is 3:00 a.m. back home! Very short night's sleep! As it turns out Logan, Hilary and Hannah got up even earlier because they wanted to go to IHOP for "breakfast". Marty took them, and they did end up buying a homeless guy some breakfast. From there we drove to Hertz to drop off our cars. The Hertz bus took us to the airport. The check-in was pretty long. Everyone had to be signed in and then confirm their information, then the gal behind the counter would print off each person's tags for their luggage. On our way to our terminal those of us who didn't eat at IHOP got stuff from Starbucks. I got to try a smoothie, but there was too much banana in it. (McDonald's has way better smoothies) and I got a cheese danish. We had to wait for a pretty long time before boarding...I almost fell asleep, but couldn't quite because it was really chilly. Logan got excited as we were boarding the plane because they had the little TVs in the back of the headrests, but the flight attendant had to inform him that there was a malfunction so they didn't work right now. We each got a pair of cheap earbuds though. I was tired enough that I slept most of this flight. When not asleep I journaled or watched out the window. Our layover was in Houston, TX this time. That was cool for me since Houston is my home town. We flew into Houston Intercontinental Airport. We then had to take a small train over to our terminal! Upon having reached it, and discovering that it was quite crowded Dorene and Bethany waited there and we went back a ways to the food court area. I just snacked on some of my beef jerky, but since it was about 8:30 (our time) the others decided they were hungry enough to eat again, so they got donuts and milk. We got back over to the terminal just about time to start loading. This plane was really small...well not as small as the DC-3s, but not too much bigger. There was a row of single seats on one side, and just double seats on the other. We were in the very back of the plane, but once again right near the wings. We kinda had this thing the whole trip of getting seats on or right behind the wings. We had a long wait at the runway before take-off. I enjoyed it because from where I was sitting I could see the line of jets in front of us and watch each of them take off. There was another runway to the left of us that I watched too. I never knew that there were that many planes at a time waiting to take off, and they were all different sizes. All of the commercial planes we flew in had a magazine in the seat back called Sky Mall. The young gang got a big kick out of looking through those magazines, exclaiming over the ridiculous items, and deciding which ones we would use to decorate our homes, etc. when we were rich and grown up. I do believe those magazines are designed as 'the things you can get people who already have everything'!!! (if you're interested you can visit skymall.com and see all the stuff :P) We played an A-Z movie titles game, and then one with popular actors. I'm pretty sure I knew less of the names than the others did. Anyway I did get excited on this trip since we were getting so near to home. When we arrived in Kansas City and fetched our luggage we waited until we got a call from Pastor Bowen that he was ready to pick us up. The first thing I noticed when we went outside was how humid it was. Ugh. It had been hot in Haiti, but the humidity coming home was much worse. On the way back we had a discussion about what food everybody wanted to eat first thing coming home. Most of them said ice cream or a hamburger...I wanted a good fresh salad. Yum. We stopped at a Wendy's in a far suburb of KC to eat lunch. I got a salad, and a root beer float. While we were waiting for our food a guy in line behind us commented on Logan's fish necklace. He encouraged him for wearing it and said he was doing a great job. The guy had a reflective vest on and looked like he'd been doing some sort of outdoor work. We thought, oh that's nice, and thought that was the end of it. Anyway after lunch we headed on home. We got to the church at about 2:30 in the afternoon. Greg was at the church working on the movie. (a project of his and Monica's) So I got to wish him a late happy birthday and then hung out talking with him waiting for Mom to come pick us up. Brothers are the coolest! I guess it was a good thing I slept on the way back because we celebrated Greg's birthday when I got home. So that was our trip! An amazing time and a great blessing and eye opener for me.

But, an end note. On Sunday morning Pastor Bowen came to us to share a story. Apparently after our return on Friday the church received a call from a guy in KC. It was the man at Wendy's. The man was a Christian but had been struggling lately, and that morning had gotten into a quarrel with one of the guys at his work. He left for lunch angry, but when he went to lunch he saw a group of three adults w/ several young people. One of the young men was wearing a fish necklace that said 'Jesus' and the guy assumed that it was a church youth group. He proceeded to observe that group while he was eating lunch and was very encouraged but the way the group interacted and enjoyed each other. In fact his was so blessed by the witness of the group that when he returned to work that day he apologized to his co-worker and tried to make amends. He had gotten the information off the side of the church bus and called to let us know the impact we'd had on him and he thanked us. Little did we know, that eating at a fast food restaurant on the way back from Haiti would influence another person that much! We often never know who is watching us...