Whew! We Made It.

We have been traveling since Sunday june, 30^th, and tonight is Tuesday July, 2^nd. Lets just say I am exhausted and my entire body aches and I cannot wait to shower and sleep in a bed.

The first flight was easy. But then we had a long wait in LA and departed at 1:40 am on our flight to China. It was a really really long flight, my legs cramped up, you couldn’t get comfortable. But then I remembered…I am going to work in an orphanage where they are more times uncomfortable than not and I have no room to complain. So I attempted to sleep and I watched a few movies and tv.

We get to Beijing and fly through immigration, but that’s where it stopped being easy. We go to security check to find out that our flight is cancelled. We met a guy who lives and goes to school In LA but his parents live in Guangzhou. He helped us out a ton getting our new flights booked, and helping us find the terminal. The terminals are 2 separate buildings about 15 minutes away from each other by bus. So once we finally get another flight scheduled and go ride the bus from terminal 2 to 3. Then we get there get our boarding passes and find out that we have to go back to terminal 2 to find our luggage, which we had all been told would go all the way through to Guangzhou. So 3 stay back with our carry ons and the rest of us (including “Bo” the guy helping us) went back to terminal 2 to find our luggage. We get to the lost and found for Air China and they don’t know if they can help us. Then finally they say it will take an hour to pull up the information. So we wait and wait and a few of us try and go find water bottles, but had no luck and some of us had been going on more than 10 hours without drinking. So finally some luggage starts coming out and we get most of it, but were still missing 7 bags, then 1 more came and then half stayed and have tried to get a head start with all of the luggage in the crazy elevators. Apparently 2 more bags came, but we were still missing 4. We get to the elevator and wait for like 20 minutes. We finally get on with two luggage carts and get shoved to the back. Our stop comes and we cant get off we are trying to tell them to please move but no one budged so we just started shoving, finally people got the hint, but this one man had a huge cart sideways completely blocking the door. But after a good couple of minutes we finally got off and then found the rest of our team and sprinted with our carts to the bus so we could get back in time to check our luggage and go through security and find our gate before our flight that was scheduled to board in 1 hour. Well we finally get through and find out that our gate was changed so we had to go find that and then the plane was delayed which meant we didn’t have much time to get to the train. But somehow we made it with just a few minutes to spare!

Bo and I got separated from the group on one of the bus rides from terminal to terminal so we had a chance to talk. He asked me if I was a Christian too, I of course said yes, and then he asked if I liked being a Christian… I thought this was kind of a funny question and really was unsure of what to say, but I said well yes I love being a Christian. Then we talked about our families, and got onto the subject of adoption. He then started to ask me something else and bluntly said you’re probably not going to like this. He had just asked me what I was studying in school, I told him social work, and he said, so basically this what youre doing now. And I told him I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it yet, that I had not had enough time to figure out and decide, but I might want to work with adoptions, family and children. We were just really glad that he was so willing to help us because we would have been in trouble if he hadn’t.

So far its going really well, we are finally in Chenzhou and I cant wait to go see the kids tomorrow!! I feel like God has a lot of awesome things in store for the next two weeks, so please keep on praying!