Our journey begins to Africa
Day 1- The Journey into the Unknown Begins
Jan. 22, 2008
Note: Sorry if this tends to be a little detailed
WE have been without internet but now have it for maybe a few minutes!
Today, Jana, my friend and I headed out on our adventurous trip to Uganda, East Africa to bring home my two newest children, Allen and Andrew. After double checking that I had everything, kissing the kids goodbye, praying over them, and stuffing an egg biscuit down my throat, Duane and I headed off to meet Mark and Jana down by Fred's to drive to Huntsville. It was raining so driving was slower but an hour later we arrived safe and sound. We managed to get all 6 trunks and 2 suitcases inside with out much difficulty thanks to Mark and Duane who risked their cars being towed pulling them in. We had been praying for favor with this excess luggage and was somewhat disappointed when the attendant wouldn't waiver the $600 fee. We paid but were relieved that he never looked once at the weight oor size of luggage after that and put them through. (That was favor number 1) As this went rather quickly, we had some time to spend with our husbands before heading through security. As we were talking, we noticed that 2 unopened jars of JIF peanut butter had been left beside the trash on the ground. Someone couldn't bear to throw them away out of their carryon. We decided Duane should take them home!
Going through security, Jana's jar of peanut butter was taken and my bag was inspected because I forgot to pull out my quart ziplock and pass it through separately. Other than that we did ok.
We headed to our gate and waited to board the plane.
Our flight to Detroit was only 1 1/2 hours so it was not a bad flight. There were 3 college kids in front of us and they were headed to Italy for a 3 month college experience. One of the girls ended up being from Florence and lived only one street over from Jana and Duane had been her pediatrician. Our flight attendant kept us in stitches the entire trip and told us we could call her Drea Baby. She talked to us about adopting and asked us if we knew anything about adopting from Ghana. I didn't but told her that I had spent part of my childhood there. We arrived in Detroit and had about almost a 5 hour layover. We were starving so after finding our gate, we went and ate at Chili's. The time soon arrived to board the plane. This flight was about 8 hours and after several delays and leaving an hour late, we took off. The plane was full so there was no hope of spreading out but the seats weren't too bad and we had our own individual TV's, which kept us occupied with various things. We meet a lady on this flight from Tanzania who lived in AZ and Jana able to minister to her as she was headed home to the funeral of her father. The flight was an all nighter so we arrived at Amsterdam at 9:30 in the morning. Our plane for Uganda left at 10:50am. By the time we got off the plane we had 30 minutes to get to our gate.
We had no boarding passes but figured out that we needed to go to the transfer desk and get them. Upon doing so, we found out that God had granted us another favor. (#2) The woman pulled us up on the computer and her eyes got big and concerned as she confirmed with us that we had 4 extra bags. I had a feeling she was about to NOT share good news with us. At that time, I remembered that I had the receipts to show that we had paid for them to go all the way to Uganda. After showing those, she was satisfied and attached them to our boarding passes and sent us on our way. What could have happened here was, had I not paid for them in Huntsville, they would have taken them off the plane, we would have had luggage floating around in Amsterdam and we would have been late and missed our flight to Uganda. God knew all along. His ways are not our ways!
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