As of yesterday morning we were getting ready to leave California and head over to Ghana. We had worship in the morning (and the Encore Continental group that is with us prayed over us - which was so amazing to see these prayer warriors at work), we had our "dress rehearsal" where Dean watched and gave his input (there was a 5.4 earthquake during that by the way), we packed up all of our personal belongings and equipment, had our prayer time with Dean and were ready to go. We packed up the van and headed to LAX around 5pm.
There is one slight catch though. We didn't have our visas and passports yet. They were supposed to have arrived yesterday, but they didnt. I dont know the exact details (this is Samantha not Ashley, so im partly clueless to details) but basically our visas and passports had to be air mailed to us THAT DAY and were going to arrive at the airport at 9:40pm and our flight was to leave at 10:50pm. It was completely possible, but we were going to be cutting it close. We arrived at the airport around 7:15 and just waited. Since our flight to JFK was technically an "international" flight they needed our passports so we couldn't check in until we had them.
Well, Patty and Katie were waiting where the plane with the visas/passports were to arrive. They were going to grab our passports/visas and RUN LIKE THE WIND to get them to us. It's around 9:45 and we still haven't heard if they've gotten them. We have to begin our check-in by 10:05pm otherwise we can't get on the plane. It's kind of tense, but we were all doing really well. At about 10 we know the plane with our passports/visas has landed and they're just waiting.
Ashley Scott (the A.D. for this strike team) talks to some of the airport staff and they allow us to check our baggage. They definitely did NOT have to do that so we were extremely grateful. We get all of our baggage checked, we have our tickets and we are waiting are just waiting on our passports/visas. Its about 10:15pm and the airline is basically going to hold our plane to make sure we get to go. They were some amazing people let me tell you. Ashley gets a call or a text and we find out that they are RUNNING with our passports/visas. Katie arrives in just a few minutes completely winded and we are all SOOOO excited. Patty runs in a little behind Katie and is crying tears of joy that we got everything in time. "We're going to GHANA!!!", we yelled.
Then Dan (our director) says "These are NOT our passports!!" It was a moment of complete shock. The embassy had sent us the wrong passports/visas. We couldn't get on the plane without them. A group of us prayed and prayed for our group and the trip then. At that time we could definitely tell that God did not have plans for us to go to Ghana. We got all of our luggage back and just sat while Dan, Ashley, Katie and Patty took care of things at the desk trying to figure out what to do.
Right now we are back in Oxnard, CA. We ask that you pray for Wisdom for us in deciding what to do. There are some alternate plans taking place (not sure of the details), but please pray that this little bobble in the road won't bring us down. We are firm in the belief that God has a reason for all of this and has a much BIGGER and BETTER plan for us.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment