So Long Southeast Asia, Hello Eastern Europe! Month 6 here we are!
My team and I are happy that we are out of Cambodia for that was a hard month for all of us.
At the end of month 5 in Cambodia we had a mini debrief to bring to a close our time in Cambodia & all squad month 2.0 as well as to have our newly raised up SQLs to run a debrief as well. Overall it really wasn’t that exciting as I spent alot of the time resting in the air conditioned room at the hostel that we stayed at, which was so nice after spending the month serving at the Guesthouse with no AC and the daily temps in the high 90s (which I did not complain about as back home there was a polar vortex last month.) The other 2 of my MDB highlights were going to the War Museum & playing a game that was like musical chairs as a whole squad where we had partners and we walked in opposite directions to music & when the music stopped we had to run and find our partner, and one partner had to jump on the other partners back. I had an awesome partner, and she jumped on my back each time as there was no way that I could have jumped on her without injuring her, and we managed to last for awhile into the game.
With the happy times also came the sad times as we had to say goodbye to our Alumni SQL, Britt as her 5 month tour with P Squad was over, so the last night of MDB was just all about celebrating her time with P Squad. Each team did a tribute presentation of somekind, and we even did a flash mob to “Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing. It was an emotional night for the squad, but we’ll see her at Month 8 & 11 debrief.
Our travel to Eastern Europe was our first travel experience “by ourselves” as P Squad for we no longer had a alumni SQL to be there for us.
Travel Day to Albania
3am Friday Morning- Head to Siem Reap Airport to fly to KL Malasyia. Very uneventful flight
Arrived at KL airport- 12 hour layover which I spent the entire time in the airport, but it had alot of shopping and food options, and we even got kicked out of our spot as a leader of a large group of very old people of some other religion didn’t like us in that area, so we had to move, but we found an even better area to set up our layover camp for the final few hours before we had to report to our gate for our flight to Istanbul.
Redeye Flight from KLM to Istanbul: Other then some strong winds causing turbulance it was a rather uneventful 11 hour flight. I for the majority of the flight watched a total of 7 movies as I have issues with being able to sleep on planes, but I did manage to be able to take a nap during the flight as I fell asleep while watching one of my movies. Otherwise the flight was smooth sailing for us.
Now here’s where the story gets interesting…….
Due to the strong winds, our flight got to Istanbul almost an hour late, which cut into our layover time as we already had a short enough layover in Turkey to begin with. At first I didn’t realize just how late our plane really was until I got to customs/security and I saw that some of my other squadmates were hurrying it up, so I took cue and did the same, and it was a good thing I did as it turned out that I along with others had to sprint to our gate in order to make the flight in time, and I made it right at the last second as they had called last call for boarding, but unfortunely only half of the squad made it on to the flight, and the others were blocked, and had to take a flight later that day to Tirana, Albania, and meet up with us. The flight from Istanbul to Tirana was uneventful after that, and I just sat back and relaxed (while staring at the very hot Turkish flight attendent) and listened to music for the entire flight. Most of my team made it onto the first flight.
All this was literally straight out of a movie, and now I laugh about it for I thought afterwards that something like this would only happen to P squad.
In the end the whole squad made it to Albania, and to their respective cities/ministries for the month.
My team and I made it to Pogradec where we are serving with the Christ For the Nations Bible school here for the month (blog to come later), and I absolutely LOVE it here in Albania!
Til next time your fellow Sister in Christ,
Bonnie
Team SC
P Squad
Psalms 18:2
YOLO
