The Unknown and Unexpected
Some of you know this already, and to some this might be news, but Seth and I have talked about missions for a long time. The Lord has really gifted Seth with language aquisition, especially Spanish, and he also has a gift for communicating the love and truth of God in a clear and unique way. Growing up as a young believer, I always wanted to either be a missionary or marry a preacher. For the first 5 years of our marriage I have been content with where the Lord had us in education and serving in our church, but in the past year, missions has really been on our hearts more and more. So, July 16th we set out on an adventure with another couple, close friends of ours, to see South America and quite possibly where we'll live in a few years.
We planned on spending most of our 7 days in La Paz, Bolivia. (I say most because you can count day 1 and 7 as airplane/airport days) We prayed over the trip, made an itenerary, booked a nice hotel in the middle of the city, read the books on Bolivia, and felt as ready as we could be.
Day 1
The day began at 2:30 in the morning with a drive to New Orleans. From there, we flew to Miami. The 7 hour layover in Miami was looooooong. We took a cab a little over 2 miles to the Bolivian consulate and got our tourist visas. (The woman there said it was a holiday in La Paz so it was good that we went ahead and got the visas there.) We even went ahead and exchanged some of our American cash to Bolivianos.
Then a storm came through. We FINALLY boarded or plane to just SIT on the plane for about an hour. Knowing we only had an hour and a half at our next destination (Lima, Peru), I did not feel good about this. But, the weather kept us from being on time. We were on a big plane and in our seats in the back we were surrounded by a nice group of friends from Peru. I noticed instruments when they were boarding, so I asked the guy next to me if they were in a band (well, Seth helped me ask. He knew no English.) and he said they were and showed me a video on his camera of their performance in San Fransisco. (They had a HUGE crowd and sounded really good.) Just sitting next to this guy made me wish I knew Spanish. He and his bandmates were really friendly and gave me a good feeling about the people we'd be meeting in the coming days.
Then we got to Lima. Those sitting in the back of the airplane who are already late for their layover should NOT have to wait for the 200+ people ahead of them to get off. But we did. When we got off it was around 10 and when the airport people realized we were on that connecting flight to La Paz, we had to run through the airport. I dropped my passport once and fell trying to pick it up. It was mostly from exhaustion. (And it conveniently happened in front of a glass wall with a crowd of people sitting in airport chairs watching.) We flew through security, customs, etc. til' we reached our gate. Just in time for the lady at the desk to shut the door and say, "Sorry, but this flight is closed."
Seth was pretty upset with them for shutting the door in front of us when we could see the plane just outside, but they insisted that it was closed. We weren't alone in missing that flight, but there was a father and son along with a group from Maryland going on a mission trip to Bolivia. We were then taken downstairs to get our luggage and work out our alternate flight.
Once downstairs, we stood around for another 2-3 hours ( I think it was 1 am or so when we finally left the airport.) while they looked for seats on other flights. The best option availiable was in THREE days! The airline ended up paying for a hotel for us in Lima (a nice 5 star hotel in a very safe, pretty part of the city) along with meal tickets and taxi ride to/from the airport. So much for the itenerary!
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