Well, mission trips are always an adventure. We had one of those days where for the most part we had to be flexible and to trust God with our every step. Because of terrible weather in Philly, we had quite an experience.
I wanted to share with you a few ways we saw God show up and increase our faith in the midst of an uncontrollable situation. I had flown into Philly on a separate flight because I was booked separately (long story). I was waiting for our team at our next gate when we got the news the flight to CVG had been canceled. Apparently with the storms last night many planes couldn't get in, and so they were thinning out the outbound flights to accommodate. The team had just arrived in Philly and began to pray. I called the 1-800 number for US Airways as they were praying. There were 3 seats to Dayton and 2 seats to Louisville open, but I just felt like we shouldn't split our team up. The next thing I know, the woman on the other end sounded startled and said, "wait a minute, I see around 20 seats open on a flight to Indy at 8:55". So I asked her to book as many as possible on that plane and we would deal with the 3 or 4 possibly left behind (much easier than the 23 we had with us). At the end of the call she had gotten every one of us on the plane saying "ok, I just booked the last person in the last seat available"! At that point I began thanking God for having gone before us. In what reality would there be 23 seats open on a flight in 2012 when all the airlines are cutting back their schedules and budgets? In God's reality for sure.
Of course, then we went through the pain of waiting and our flight continuing to get delayed. I asked the gate agent what the issue was and he said it was that we didn't have a crew to fly us. They were looking for a crew but every flight was fighting for the crews available and we hadn't won a battle yet. At that, our group circled up and began to pray for a crew. Not 2 minutes later, I saw the agent pick up the phone and nod. He then announced "we have a crew!" God truly answers prayers. Unfortunately for us, we didn't pray specifically enough because we should have prayed "God, please send us a crew that is already in the airport!!!" :) Instead, we got the crew coming from Portland, Maine and we had to wait for the thunderstorm to pass there before they could take off to come get us. As providence would have it, they had enough hours left to get to Philly and get us to Indy, where most of us got home right around 6am! Long day! But it was an amazing day of building faith in a God that really does care about the details of our lives.
Our kids handled it with amazing grace and patience. Between card games, conversations, and a little bit of "ninja", we were all able to stay busy and enjoy each other's company for a few more hours. Thank you to the parents who came to Indy to get us at 3am. Today has been a day of reflection for me as I have been thinking a ton on how we can and must trust God with our every step and He will be faithful and give us peace in the midst of chaos!
I will write more about the trip as a whole as I've had time to process :) Next Saturday we leave (again at 4:30 in the morning...I need to do a better job scheduling flights lol) with our college students for another week down in Cancun. Stay tuned to the blog for more amazing stories and experiences!!!
Amy
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