Change in Plans

Starting with crazy apartment adventures, to dancing to the street music all around the Seattle and Vancouver areas, we also had to explore all the foreign foods that these areas had to offer. Having been already on the World Race and traveling the world more after their races, my friends know all the best places to get the most authentic american foreign foods so it shouldn’t have been a surpise when we got Vietnamese phooooooooooooo (i was told you have to say it with all the ooooo’s) and Korean Kim Chi, some Indian food, crepes, and fallafel too, all in the Pacific Northwest. An overall amazing time of fellowship and laughing until our abs hurt.

 

As the week came to an end and we had a prayerful, no emo, goodbye, we split ways. Mark back to Canada, Katie to Seattle to spend time with her brother, and I went off to spend a night in the airport to catch my early morning flight to Denver and then back home to Philly.

 

Sleeping on airport floors, as much fun as it is, is never the best kind of rest for the body and with 2 hours down I checked in for my flight and grabbed another 2 on the way to my Denver layover. When we finally landed, I groggily checked my phone to find out that our race route had been changed. They had taken Haiti off our route. 

 

I am writing this because I want to be open with you about how broken I feel that this one country has been removed. We were told to be fluid and have no expectations about where we were going, but it was Haiti that had convinced me to sign up for THIS race THIS route at THIS time. I LOVE that country, I have built relationships with people there and was looking forward to returning, even if to a different unfamiliar part. I was looking forward to learning more and experiencing more of the wonderful changes God is doing there.

 

So there I was in the airport 4 hours of sleep and officially broken becuase of one country and I sat down at my next gate and prayed. Why had God brought me so far into this to take away the country that he had put so strongly on my heart? How is it fair that the people who live there that I call family have to go through the trials there right now but I couldn’t go be with them because it wasn’t safe enough?

 

Well, I don’t get to know, it’s part of God’s plan for me that I should have signed up for this route, I know that to be true. If it was in His plan that this country should be taken off the route then He must have something greater planned. Stretching my love more.  Showing me more than just where I am already comfortable. And it’s not just me that would have been going to Haiti. I am now part of a family of 53 people on V-Squad. Would I want to put my family in the middle of a cholera scare? The answer was No. What more is that He reminded me that He is in control. Yes, my heart and my prayers can be with my Haitian brothers and sisters and He is watching out for them.

 

So it is with a new heart and an open mind that I am accepting this new Route and I would just ask for you reading this to keep praying for the country I love as well as all of the new places we get to go and will love as well. There is no limit to the love God has given us, so there is no limit to the love we can give others.