Cody and Evan

I'm asking students to write about the trip and what they are learning or seeing. The bravest of the bunch stepped up to kick it off. Here we go!

Cody:
God is teaching me patience and sacrifice. He is teaching me patience because of the immense amount of waiting/disappointment we have had to endure over the trip.
He is teaching me sacrifice because I was about the only one that had toiletries. So he taught me to give up things that I want to help others be comfortable in the airports.

Evan:
I have seen God and his Holy Spirit working in me and in our group. He has given me the opportunity to try and learn patience and peace. I am trying to be more patient and at peace with the situation. Also, I feel his spirit bringing us closer together through prayer and fellowship. I am glad that I can take an inner city missions trip; I have always wanted to.

Tomorrow is a New Adventure (without airports or baggage claim!)

As we prayed and talked this afternoon it became clear to the team that we should pursue working with YWAM (Youth with a Mission) in inner city Dallas for the next few days. We will be moving into a church and helping with a variety of projects. We are excited! I'll also be asking students to start posting some of their thoughts tomorrow.

Pray for us as we experience a new culture and go into a very unknown place and situation! We have had some cool God moments and times as we are processing the last 5 days and looking forward to what God has us here to do!

Decisions

Hey people!

We are at the hotel and showered and they are letting us use their laundry to wash what few clothes we do have at this time. We are all feeling good.

We are meeting in a few minutes to start the baggage claim process for our 13 bags, talk about the day, and discuss our upcoming options. Please pray for our time together. Updates when we decide something!

Party in the USA

We are back in Houston. We fly to Dallas on American flight 682 at 1130. Once there we will get a hotel room and take some showers! We will spend the night and try to figure out some plans the rest of the day for the next few days.

I'll post here and on Facebook when something more happens.

A Plan!

The current plan (I say current because the last couple days have not been the greatest in terms of plans happening!) is to fly back to Houston tonight on UA 855 and be there early tomorrow morning. From there we will rent a vehicle or two to get back to Dallas or possibly another destination to serve and spend time.

This news, that we are officially not getting to Bolivia, but are headed to the USA was a relief, but also very deflating. I have heard many times in the last hour, "Then, WHAT are we supposed to do!" And I don't have an answer.

We've been talking about being "stuck". Because we have been very stuck. And sometimes our lives mirror this stuckness. And it's hard to figure out how to get unstuck and which direction to go and if it's the right one. We can't answer all those questions. But to get unstuck, we have to DO SOMETHING. And so to Houston we go, trusting and knowing that God has in fact things for us the rest of today and as we head back to the States without ever seeing Bolivia. He is NOT stuck!

Pray for the rest of our day. We have to go through customs and try to find some luggage that might be here and then get our actual tickets and go back through security. And then fly for 7 hours.

But it is exciting to think that we have a plan for leaving this airport tonight after 32 here.

The Lima Airport- A Rent Free Housing Solution

We spent the night here in the Lima, Peru Airport. Cold. Most of the group is still sleeping on and off. I think we range from about 2 hours of sleep up to Taylor who is still sleeping and approaching 8 or 9 hours, I think.

I talked to a Copa Airlines official this morning (a partner with United) and he told me that our situation is "very bad". Because we have no future tickets to leave Lima, Copa cannot help us unless we buy more tickets. I will talk to the United person when they are in. The Copa man thought 9am would be the time to start trying. United is the only airline that can get us out of Lima without spending $20,000 or more. It all seems a bit crazy to me.

We are officially no longer trying to get to Bolivia. Vi Leinbach spent 8 or 9 hours on hold and talking to United last night in Kansas trying to figure something out. I believe we can get 1 seat on July 22 and 2 on July 24. For God reasons that are still unclear to me, this is no longer a Bolivia Trip. We will start working toward some other possible opportunities.

The first goal is to get out of Peru. We are hoping that will happen on an 1145pm flight to Houston tonight. We will know more after we hopefully talk to a United rep. As for today, we will continue to wait. And continue to listen to the things God is speaking to each of us and all of us. He is good!

Please continue to pray. I will hope to update again later this morning.

Lima, Peru

Here's the update. 

#1- Spanish language keyboards= coñfusing

#2- We are in the Lima Airport and have been since 3pm. We were booked from here on a 1015pm flight to Santa Cruz with another carrier. What we weren't told was that the flight was already overbooked before United added our 13 reservations. Needless to say, we won't be on that flight. The next few days are also already overbooked. As are flights to Santa Cruz with the other airline here that flies there. Panama had no openings on flights to Santa Cruz until July 22. Bolivia feels VERY far away to me right now.

#3- Vi Lienbach (Stac's mom and a person with TONS of experience in travel) is working with United to try and get us back to Panama where there is at least a United counter. In Peru there is none, and we feel fairly stranded.

#4- Although they show signs of starting to be pushed pretty far, the students are doing amazing! They invented a new game with a hacky sack. It is unnamed, but lots of fun (at least in the airport).

#5- We think a few bags are down in the baggage claim area here. There are 6 we haven't seen since Dallas.  Those of us without bags miss clean clothes. Except me, this is like Jesse heaven for no one to be able to put on clean clothes. Bring on the dirt.

#6- While we were trying to figure out what happens next, the students initiated and led a prayer time together. I almost cried. It was awesome.

Things to pray for:

#1- That we don't have to start paying rent in the Lima airport. If the door to Bolivia is shut, for whatever reason, then we know that God is still at work wherever we are! Pray that we figure out the next place that we are supposed to go!

#2- Relationships. Everybody is getting along great. That might change if we have to spend the night in the airport.

#3- Me. I am flexible. I thrive in choas and midstream course changes. This is pushing me a lot. It's fairly overwhelming. On the bright side, I am better at Spanish (or God is!) than I thought. Between the English that most people know and the Spanish I know, communication has been hard but not impossible. 

As a last note, Stac is the man. His travel experience and ability to laugh with me when things go wrong have been awesome. I'm SO grateful that he is here.

Hot Lunch

We are in Panama! Our plane to Bolivia, however, is not. We watched it back away from the terminal as we ran to catch it. It all hinged on our flight attendants fighting with people in the airport about getting us food. For 75 minutes. Causing many of us to miss our connections. In the name of good service they lost sight of the goal. Transportation.

So I am waiting in yet another line waiting to see what happens. The floors look pretty soft, so we should be ok!

Delays are ending!

We are all ticketed to panama together in the last 10 minutes! Our flight should leave around 2pm, leaving us an hour to switch in flights in Panama. Keep praying!

Delay!

We got on the plane and were then informed we are waiting for rain to clear in Houston. They said probably 30 minutes. Much more and our connecting flights will get very tricky. Please pray that we take off soon.

Travel Day (or The Art of Waiting)

We arrived at DFW at 3:45am this morning. Which isn't really morning. I like to call it "be nice to your youth pastor cuz he's grumpy" time.

Half of us will be in 4 different countries today. The other half will only be in 3. Lots if hurry up and sit and wait.

Pray for good connections and opportunities to love people in airports with the love of Christ.

Picture is of a little 5am Dutch Blitz. Yes, we're Mennonite!

On Our Way!

Good planning by the trip leader put us in OKC at rush hour! Finally through and on our way to Dallas for a short night and up to make it to the airport around 4am.

48 Hours!

The blog is starting back up with our departure coming on Wednesday! Check back here regularly for updates, pictures, and thoughts from different trip participants. You can read posts from the last trip below if you want to check out what happened two years ago.