We have Arrived!

As of the 26th of February we have arrived in Zambia. After 36 hours of travel, waiting, and praying we are here! Thank you all who have been praying for this. We have experienced this trip 8 months previous, but have learned a lot for this trip to go without much hardship. I wanted to express my absolute gratitude to be in Zambia and share the 3 lessons we have learned in the past year to get to this point.

1. Prayer is one of the lessons in these travel days. We contacted everyone we could think of who would pray: all of our connections all over the world. This paved the way for wonderful travel days. We were not looking for ideal circumstances, but for favor, intervention, and fun as we go. Several parts of our stop overs we were given love by the flight crew, by security, and by the airline staff.                                         At the baggage counter in Detroit all our bags were at or under weight. I worked hard to pack each bag, but 6 bags weighed at exactly 50 lbs. I was so happy. The man who tagged our bags was very kind and blessed us as he gave us our tickets for the flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, and Amsterdam to South Africa. These tickets we were given in Detroit worked perfectly fine for the first flight, but were useless in Amsterdam. They were unreadable and the seats had to be reassigned for our flight to South Africa. After waiting in a long line of ticketers to find out that my tickets do not work, while my children do their best to be still after 15 hours of travel was an interesting instance to practice the peace and love which we preach. Assurance that God was taking care of things came out. The KLM worker smiled at our predicament and reassigned us to wonderful seats, where the whole family was able to spread out for the Amsterdam to Johannesburg leg of the trip. Every step of the way we have seen God’s hand.

2. Going with the flow of the day is the second big lesson. We hit pockets of fatigue or nausea and did not panic. Just seeing it happen without reacting made a huge difference. We had an entire football club from Norway sat in front of us on the first flight. It was amazing to watch the day unfold without getting upset about it. The Club was made up of late teens and early twenties. Talking, singing, laughing on a very long flight. Rather than this being an irritation, it was an opportunity to see life. They were vibrant, and fun, and energetic. Without holding tension for them, our whole family slept through the flight.

3. Being thankful throughout the journey. Rather than waiting for everything to be finished, it has been a wonderful day of noticing all that is going on and being thankful. The kids are hilarious regularly, but I only notice when I am present with them. We had so much fun with these travel days, because we were not waiting for them to be over. Olive making friends with two boys in Detroit, Charlie telling a lady she loved her cat keychain and then explaining how great cats are, Roman being sweet to so many random people as we went, Mallory adapting to so many odd circumstances like a champion: all of these things were obvious in the present moment. I am blown away by how much present thanksgiving made every moment divine.

We will be sending updates regularly on here. Please let me know if you need them sent to you directly. We will make that happen as best we can. Email me if possible. We did find out that we will most likely be loosing our US numbers, but we will let you know what our African numbers are as soon as they exist. Thanks everyone for the love, support, and prayers. So happy to be able to upload this to you today from Zambia!!!

Waiting for the first flight!