Saturday July 11th, Kara's parents came over to the house to watch the boys, while Kara and I got ready to leave that night at 1:00am. It seemed as though time was gradually speeding up. We had been planning this trip for 9 months, and now it was go time. It seemed a bit surreal.
July 11th, 10:30pm: I called my friend Joe from Simply Missions, who was key to orchestrating this trip, to see if we needed anything at all. Much to my surprise, we had not left enough time to get to the airport for an international flight. We needed 2-3 hours, and I had planned 1- 1 1/2 hours. So already I start getting a bit nervous. So I said, "alright, we will load the bus and leave as soon as we can to save on time." The bus was late. I was planning on loading the bus and leaveing by 2am. The bus did not arrive until 2:10, and we did not leave until 2:20.
July 12th 3:00ish am: I prayed on the bus, "God I need you to send angels before us to prepare the way through the airport, get us there speedily, and safely." I instantly have peace about the whole thing.
July 12th 4:40am We arrive at the airport and start to unload. I get into leader mode and delegate. I walk up to the door and a woman walks out to meet me and says, "are you the large group that we have been expecting?" I am looking at her stunned, and I say, "yes." She answers, "Alright grab your bags and follow me, I will get you all checked in." Let me say that I have never been greeted at the airport door by anyone, let alone have someone guide me personally through the check on process. She was an answer to prayer.
July 12th 5:00am: I am the first person to walk through security for the day, all of our group gets through without any delay, save Spencer whose bag was searched because of a bbq brush we were bringing down to John and Amy.
July 12th 6:30am: we begin boarding, take off, and prepare for the travel ahead of us which includes a layover in Atlanta. All goes well through the flights, customs, and we meet John and Amy in Guatemala city airport by 12:30pm Guatemala time, 2:30 Michigan time.
We load into two vans and head to lunch at McDonald's. I had fried chicken...at Mcdonald's...it was amazing. We arrive and realize that we left 5 people at the airport! I won the "awesomest leader of the year" award, and we went and picked them up. No big deal. Later on during our debriefing time, the people left at the airport described that their greatest fear on the trip was being left somewhere, and now that they got that out of the way, they felt as though they were good to go!
We traveled to our lodging, a Nazarene Seminary, unloaded, sat through orientation on the culture of Guatemala, ate diner, debriefed about our day, and the topic seemed to be consistent in all of our conversations and experiences for the day: "God is fully capable of taking care of us, and fear is an obstacle that we need to overcome." then we crashed. day one complete. total sleep for the day= 20 minutes.
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