Friday, October 31, 2008

Day 1!

tonight was Halloween and yes i went out ;) i know im 18 and i may be too old but i didnt go last year so im making up for lost times!! :) this blog is not about tonight...its about the first day of my missions trip...10/16-17...im sorry if its long! ;)



(^cloud layers during descent into Guatemala City^)


i know there are two dates but theyre both pretty much the same day because we met @ LCF (church) late Thursday night(16th) @ 12am so it was pretty much Friday(17th), we met @ the church and got our things together and we were on the road by about 130am - our flight was due to leave from Newark,NJ airport @ 530a...so we arrived by 245am and were plenty early - thats good considering it was for a layover flight and if we missed it we would be in major trouble

our layover was in Houston,TX and i was so excited to finally go to Texas!! we made it to the airport and boarded our plane flawlessly. we were more than 1/2 way to Guatemala City...before the plane ride was complete we had to fill out some papers. these papers were for immigration into another country...we unboarded the plane and headed for immigration - @ the Guatemala City airport there were police dogs and something about that airport made me feel so...uptight

the team made it through security, claimed our baggage (all of it), and proceeded outside to meet John Ramos (missionary)...we waited & waited & waited...we finally called him and found out that he thought our flight was coming in later, our original flight was scheduled to arrive @ about 130pm and it ended up coming in at about 1215pm-ish...he apologized for being late and we all introduced ourselves and said it was cool because it was...we were in no rush.

we loaded our luggage and hopped in the van (PB drove) and Josh rode w. John in the Speed-The-Light truck...we followed him FOREVER!! the drive from Guatemala City to Quetzaltenango (Xela) was about 4-6 hours...on top of the initial travel time it was raining and we ran into construction which totally stopped traffic...i wouldnt really know how long we were stopped for because i slept for most of the ride ;)

when we finally arrived in Xela we were told to leave our belongings in the van because the cooks @ the place we stayed had dinner ready for us! how awesome is that?? of course we were hungry because we hadn't eaten since right after the airport (Burger King). after we ate we had "orientation" about John's expectations and what our week was going to look like...it didnt seem so bad, because it wasnt!!

John explained to us that our week was going to be full of work and fun. He told us that he wasn't going to place a goal on our week because he didn't want us to be bummed if we didn't succeed. he also mentioned that our plans are meant for failure, God's plans are never failing. John wanted us to work hard and not rush so he just said to do our best and what we accomplished is what we could do and to work at the best of our abilities.

we went to bed && awoke the next morning (saturday 19th) prepared to start our work week...that was our week in a nutshell...okay a rather large nutshell! ;) any questions about details you can ask...im totally open to suggestions!! ;)

peace out ppls! ;) :p
~Kali

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