I am sitting in my home for the next month in Medellin Colombia. It’s just crazy to think that we are finally here. This has been something that I have been working towards for the last 6 ½ months and now, here we are.
We just experienced our first of many lengthy travel days and through it all Jesus was teaching me patience and that this is going to be a year of going with the flow. We woke up Wednesday morning at 2:00 and got ready to head to the airport. I went to bed about midnight, so I had a lovely 2 hour nap that I wouldn’t necessarily count as a nap because I don’t think I actually slept any.
We then headed to the airport where we checked in, napped some more, and loaded our flight to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We were a little nervous to be at the airport where the shooting had happened the week before, but we were thanking the Lord for his timing. We could have easily been there, sitting ducks in the baggage claim had we been there a week earlier, or if he had chosen to fly a week later. My heart breaks for the people who lost their family members, for the staff of the airport, and for the shooter, who thought that was the only choice.
We had the opportunity to talk with different people throughout the day who asked why such a large group was traveling together and what we were doing. One of these couples was Dennis and Pat. They were this really sweet couple who were just tickled by us in our sleeping bag liners on our sleeping pads. They said they will be praying for Q squad. This meant so much to us.
We slept the best we could for a while in the baggage claim area and then got relocated outside for the afternoon/evening. We took turns going as teams to eat dinner and we waited patiently as our logistics team worked the whole 12 hours of our layover to figure out the problems after problems that the enemy was throwing our way. We went as a team to this little deli/café in terminal 4 and had the chance to bless our waitress. She thanked us for making large group tables not the worst, and we asked her what we could be praying about for her. She said that she was still shook up over what had happened the week before. It was so great to be able be a light into her life in such a dark time.
Finally, after three hours of delayed flights, we were able to load our plane to Colombia. We landed in Medellin at 1:30 am and went through customs and then went to load our bags onto the buses that would take us to our ministry site. The whole squad would be staying the night with us and into the next day as they arranged their travels to their ministry sites. We packed as many packs as we could into the trunks of the vans and then we filled any empty space we could with them. They were stacked 5 or 6 high in the aisles and we had to hold them in place for the 45 minute bus ride to our ministry site. It was about 5:00 am when we finally arrived, a full 27 hours after we left the hotel for the airport. We were exhausted to say the least, but we had the blessing of food being given to us at 9:00 am so we took another short nap before getting up once more. We slept some more after breakfast, and I finally feel like a human and not a walking zombie now.
