Traveling to Liberia

Wow... was today a day or what? When I awoke, it was snowing outside. Cool. The team arrived at the airport two hours early, everyone's family and friends were there to see them off. We prayed together and said our goodbyes. We were sitting upstairs waiting for our delayed flight when someone asked when our next flight left, i replied 12:10, while other people said no, it leaves at 1:30. Tim and I go downstairs to see what is going on, the lady told us that the flight the rest of the team was on is completely booked, so I had to make the early flight I was on. As it got later and later, and we still had not left Midland I began to freak out. The team could see I was in distress and we all prayed together. We finally boarded the plane and took off. While we were in the air, I kept nervously looking at Michael who was completely relaxed about the whole thing. The flight attendant read off the gates for connecting flights. As soon as we landed I ran off the plane and to my next gate... in a different terminal. I got to my gate only to find out the plane had already left. At this point the tears are flowing. The man at the desk was trying to help me, but I was crying too hard for him to do much good. He finally got my boarding pass and I got enough of the story out for him to help me. He got me on the same flight as the rest of the team, and called that gate to let them know I was coming because they were about to shut the gate. I was running to the next gate to get on that plane and Michael was running towards me. We were both excited I was on their flight. We got on the HUGE plane and everyone from the team was really happy to see me. I think I got the last seat on the entire plane. I fell asleep shortly after getting on the plane, and when I woke up 2 hours later we were still on the ground in Dallas. By this time, it was about time for our plane from chicago to Brussels to leave. I was worried about Dr. Kelly making the flight and us not. When we landed in Chicago, Michael ran to the next gate, also in a different terminal. The screen on the plane said that it was leaving as we were landing. We were all a bit discouraged, because by this time our plane should have left 2 hours ago. We were walking fast, Randy was talking to Emily who found out that if we missed this flight we would not be able to get into Liberia for 3 days. As we were walking, Michael called to tell us that they were holding the plane for us. We started walking faster. When we got on the plane, there were a lot of unhappy people. They had been holding it for us for about an hour. We flew all night and got to Brussels at 5:20am. We were exhausted. We also had our first layover. We got a chance to eat for the first time since we left the day before. It was great. We also got some time to chat with Dr. Kelly and learn more about him. We finally boarded the plane to Monrovia. It was empty. I got a seat to myself and was able to sleep. Michael got the 4 seats in the middle and he was out before we even took off. the lady behind me threw up before we took off, I struggled not to throw up myself. We stopped in Dakar before going to Liberia. I was sure that our luggage, especially mine was not going to get to Liberia. We got off the plane and went through customs, then walked into "baggage claim" and all of our bags were sitting there. It was a miracle. Pastor Wesley was there to meet us. We got stopped going through customs, but after talking to Pastor, they let us through. When we walked outside, the sweat began and it did not stop until we were on our return flight. We were bombarded with people when we walked out of the airport. There was security telling people to get away from us and telling us not to let anyone touch our things. 15 of us were crammed into a van for an hour back to the Pastor's house. We were greeted very warmly when we arrived by the neighborhood and by his family. We met for a bit and went to bed. It was so good to be there finally.