Finally home

I just wanted to put a quick post up to say that I am home...unfortunately at this time 9 members of my team are not home. I arrived with five other members of the team at Raleigh-Durham Airport at 11:30 PM. We waited an hour and a half for our luggage. I laid down in my bed finally at 4:30 AM. Saturday started at 2:45 AM (Pacific Standard Time). We came home via Toronto and almost had to spend the night there to arrive home at 6:00 PM today. The rest of the team almost had to stay in Vancouver until Tuesday! They caught a flight to San Francisco last night but didn't get on the red-eye into Charlotte. They are currently in the air now (2:30 PM) and should touch down in Charlotte at 5:30 or so. I'm exhausted and I have a "body bag" full of laundry to do. I will try to summarize Canada in a few posts this week once my brain catches up to my body. A few things I learned through this journey home:

1. Don't fly United
2. Don't attempt to fly through Chicago because apparently even in the middle of July they cancel flights because of bad weather (even the 6:00 AM flights)
3. Standing at a airline ticket counter for HOURS will eventually get you home (you don't even have to be nice for the entire time - just a majority of it)
4. Parents sitting at home waiting for their kids to get home are NOT helping when they call every five minutes because they found some other flight on the internet!
5. Sitting/sleeping/standing in the various parts of the airport is permissable and the teens from Mt. View Baptist Church turned it into an art form yesterday. My group did it three different airports and Jason's group did it in two (but for longer periods of time)

One of the biggest things I've learned in the past two weeks is how awesome being in a constant state of prayer is. It's nice to "Pray without ceasing" and to have most of the thoughts in your head directed to the One with all the answers. Even when my head finally hit the pillow my thoughts were going to the Father - thanking Him for my bed and praying for the rest of my "family" to find some rest in San Francisco while they waited for their flight today. I woke up praying for them too. I look forward to telling you more about Canada in the near future.