Yes folks we have made it back to Kenya and are ever so grateful for your prayers for this portion of our journey in following God’s will! You have been an amazing part of our refreshment and to affirm this in me God pointed me to this reading my first morning back in Kenya:
I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus. I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ. Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people. Philemon 1:4-7
Thank you so much for all you have done and continue to do for our kids here in Kenya…through your financial & prayer support, for your love for us which flows through to the kids here at C4KK!
Ok, enough mushy stuff! Here’s our adventure coming back to Kenya:
The night before leaving we went out to dinner with my mom, Chuck’s parents and his sister and her family (thank you Todd for also stopping by to say ‘see ya later’). It was a delicious meal with lots of chatting (something I know I will certainly miss). Then we went home and packed all 18 cases into the van!
We had been told by United Airlines customer service that our file was “tagged” as humanitarian and we would need to ask the people at check in for a discount on the cost of sending the cases. We arrived at the airport only to be told “we can’t make that decision here.” No more discussion, just pay the money. That was a bummer, but thankfully you all helped by assisting us to be able to take all 18 cases back with us!
We then said our tearful good byes and went to our gate. After about an hour we were told the plane had a mechanical issue and would be delayed 2 hours or longer. That wouldn’t work for us since our connecting flight from Dulles to wherever we were going (sorry can’t remember the connecting flight) would be leaving before that time. So United worked to get us on another flight….which they did and we were off to Delta. United said they had rerouted all our baggage to Delta but when we checked in with Delta they said “what luggage?” Oh boy, here we go. Well they eventually found the luggage but said it looked like one piece couldn’t be located but they would continue on!
I had taken some motion sickness meds before we were delayed and then decided to take another one just before finally taking off (I didn’t do this one time and was terribly sick and did not want to repeat that for this flight!). We settled into our middle seats…since we were squeezed onto the flight we didn’t have any choice and I would not recommend choosing middle seats for long flights! Anyway, we got our meal and had a small glass of wine with dinner, then time to sleep. Later in the flight I got up to use the restroom. Chuck followed behind since we only wanted to bother our seat mate once! As I stood in line I felt very light headed and just wanted to sit down. Chuck said something to me but nothing registered. Then he said I slowly bent forward (hopefully my sister will relay this story to mom….the “elephant fall” is what I did!), he had his arms around my waist and suddenly felt he was holding my entire body weight (poor guy, after being in the States I had gained a few pounds!). I woke up sitting in a seat with people around me putting ice on my neck and wrists, checking my pulse, putting an oxygen mask on me and asking me questions. Then I heard the infamous announcement…”is there a doctor on board?” What? Am I in a movie? What’s going on? But a nurse came first and did some assessments then a doctor arrived. They determined too much motion sickness meds, the glass of wine and unfortunately I had not been drinking much water either. Once coming around I then slept pretty much the entire rest of the flight!
Needless to say I did not take any more motion sickness meds for the next flight and was blessed not having any motion sickness on this flight! The only real glitch on the next flight was as we went through security they said our carry on was too heavy and we’d have to check it in. I told her our personal meds were in there along with camera equipment. She said I could take out what I wanted but it would have to be checked in. So I move stuff around thinking the whole time ‘what difference does it make, the weight will be either in the carry on or under the plane and what I took out of the bag seemed to weigh more than the original carry on’ But who am I to question, I did as I was told and got on board…in the middle seats once more! Sleeping, eating and no fainting on this flight 🙂
Since the Kenya airport had been involved in a fire some time back we had to take a bus to the new location of the arrivals. I ran into a woman who was from Kenya but apparently had been out of country for some time because she mentioned the bathrooms…”why can’t they get auto flush toilets like other places?” “If they are rebuilding then build it right!” Amen sister!
Ok so we get into line for immigration and choose the slowest line ever! A couple of Kenyan guys behind us said “look at that worker, no smile, doesn’t seem to want to be here…typical civil servant.” Sad, but welcome to Kenya. The whole time in line (2 hours) we were praying for an easy entry into Kenya and the Lord blessed us with that! We arrived at the desk, the worker saw we were residents and quickly stamped our entry! We were now in Kenya and onto baggage claim and customs.
Chuck began collecting our luggage with the help from an airport employee (thank you!). Yup all 17 + the carry on we had to check in was found…wait didn’t we have 18 bags? Yup, but United/Delta never got it on board in the US so we would have to wait for that to be delivered later. We then headed to customs….big time prayers going up. We pull our trolley’s up to the counter, the customs agent asks what we have (gifts for our kids at our children’s home and personal items), where is your children’s home (Joska, it’s called Caring for Kenya’s Kids), are you a pastor (yes) he then looks at me and asks my profession (I’m a pastors wife, to which he got a chuckle out of that…not sure why that was so funny but always good to make the customs agent laugh!) He then gave us back our paperwork and asked us to pray for the country of Kenya (we do pray for this country and God bless!) Thank you Lord for that blessing!
Then we were off to C4KK. Here’s a short video of our ride there, sorry you can’t see much but you can tell the bumpy road from my shaky voice! (I hope the video works, it was taking some time editing on youtube but if not check back later!)
We arrived at C4KK around midnight, unloaded all the luggage, made the bed and went to sleep! As of Tuesday morning we have not received the missing bag, but we are praying it will show up today!
Thank you again for everything you have done with us and for us! Stay tuned for more videos and pictures of our first day back in Kenya! Love and prayers for you all, God bless!
Alright, I was up at 4:30 am this morning, got some stuff done (including this blog post), we have a visitor here who will be staying overnight but I’m off to take a short nap. Hopefully jet lag will subside.
Praying you all have a wonderful day!