Saturday, July 21, 2012
And thus our El Salvador adventure is finally, mercifully over. Don't get me wrong. It was an amazing trip, but the trip home left something to be deeply, deeply desired. LOL. After an interesting night's sleep to say the least, I woke up to my alarm ringing at 4:30 am to get ready to start the day. The most interesting part of the morning had to be me walking to use the public bathroom and brush my teeth since ours was occupied (We actually shared a bathroom with the Nelsons). When I got back, I see Luke Owen and Randy trying to knock on the door and attempting to slide an iPhone under the door with music blaring in order to "wake me up." After letting them in the room, we all packed our bags and headed out to the truck and vans to pack up our luggage. Just to start the morning off right, both Jacob's van and Milton's van required push starts to get moving (I always find that American dude power is better than horsepower any day of the week). Then we loaded up and "hit them mountains" for the trek to the aeropuerto.
After a short nap, we arrived at the airport and said goodbye to Walter, Milton, and Jacob and somberly headed inside to check our bags and check in for flight. When we reached the counter, we discovered that our flight was delayed by an hour and a half! This would mean that we would miss our flight out of Dallas to get back home so therefore we had to change flights accordingly. We were supposed to return to Kansas City at 4:30, but now we were dismayed to find that we wouldn't leave Dallas until around 7:00. :( Epic boo/hiss. After getting inside, we all grabbed some breakfast, and headed to our terminal. Customs check-in was interesting as I was relatively certain that I was going to jail! While stretching to put my backpack on, i accidental whacked a guard in the stomach (hard) with my arm. Luckily for me, he just laughed it off and sent me through. **Big Sigh of relief** I did lose my bottle of sand and ocean water that I had been planning to bring back for Bethany though. Apparently, it's illegal to transport that from a foreign country back to the US. Soon enough our flight took off and we were treated to a nice little croissantwich and the movie, John Carter. While John Carter wasn't great, I preferred it to Journey 2 from our first flight.
After touching down in Dallas, we immediately found ourselves heading through customs with relative ease. And by that, I mean that myself and the Cochrans were in line behind the only two non-English speaking US residents and the only non-Spanish speaking customs agent. This is one of those things where you just stand back and go "Really? Really?". After making it through, we picked up our bags and finished up our customs experience before dropping them off again. With a lot of time to kill now, Team Thomas, Rachel, Sandy and myself headed to T.G.I. Friday's for a great meal. Especially when you think about all of the fast food we had eaten this past week! On our way to meet up with the others, Sandy and I mysteriously saw part of our team heading to another terminal but didn't think anything of it. After eating, we headed towards our gate. Upon our arrival, we were informed that the team members we saw had boarded another flight that would put them back in KC around 6. Not going to lie here; we were all a little ticked at that one. I calmed down with a nice chat with Bethany though and followed it up with a double dip ice cream cone (Possibly the best $6.57 spent on the trip). Finally, 7:00 came and we were heading home! Yays! I will say this, it was really funny to see the early flyers back at baggage claim in KC trying to explain themselves and make sure that no one was still mad. Since over half of them had been in ES two weeks at this point, I don't think anyone blamed them that much. People were just mad that they didn't think of it first (For the record, I did think about it, but didn't want to leave the rest of the team and be that guy).
When I think back about this trip, it was definitely a much different experience than in January. While I didn't have my wife (sad thing), I definitely enjoyed our form of ministry more. Receiving the opportunity to share the Gospel in public school and a foreign military base is the kind of thing that doesn't happen every single day! Also, just seeing and working on the new orphanage knowing that our sweat and blood (yep, we all cut ourselves open at some point) went into the building gives a person a great feeling. While it was really hard to be away from Bethany, the trip was worth it. Looking back at my prayer requests from earlier, I see how God truly answered most of those requests and it's just a testimony to His power and how much He loves us (For those wondering, the high school drama only came into effect on our last night there). I don't know when I'll get to go back to El Salvador, but will definitely take the opportunity when it is presented again. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment