We've Arrived!!!

Four plain flights and seven cities later and we are finally here in Cochabamba Bolivia. It is a great feeling to be in a state of recooperation from the many hours of travel, but to also be extactic of all the exciting adventures to come. I can barely contain my joy when as I share with you how evident God has been in the logistics of this trip already and we have only just arrived. His provision was evident in that the day before we left Eugene, due to the falling American dollar and some unexpected expenses we found ourselves $400 short of what we would need. With a lot of prayer and only one phone call I was blown away to hear that before that day was even done we were once again fully finacially covered.
As we headed out of Portland our flight that was supposed to be leaving at seven am was delayed by two hours. This was great news in the fact that it provided more sleep time, but an issue in the fact that Bethany, who had no knowledge of the change was meeting us at the airport. She didn't have her cell phone with her, so we had know way of finding her or telling her that we would be arriving two hours later. What could have been a problematic situation was easilly solved by paging Bethany and in a matter of minutes finding her walking towards our group. Though she was extremely exhausted and I think a littl emotionally frazzled, God definitely kept our team together from then on out.
After finding Bethany we feared the potential of losing another team member. Out of the eight group members all but Trimmie had acquired the necessary visa, required to enter Bolivia. As the airline attendant took the passports from Adam she checked all of them with a fine toothed comb verifying that all of us had our required visas. All of them that is except for the final passport, Trimmie's passport. If the fact that the one passport that didn't have a visa was the only one that didn't get checked is not enough of a blessing from God, we also were able to check 11 bags for 7 people without paying a single dime. The new rule is that the first bag is free and the second one costs $25. That is $100 that we didn't have to spend.
The best part of all this was we hadn't even left Oregon and already God's merciful hand was already being blatently revealed to us all!
On our flight to Chicago we all adjusted without any problems, all of us that is except for Darcy. Darcy, probably one of the sweetest girls I know was quickly repremanded by the flight attendent. The attendent in the rudest way possibly told Darcy to get off her cell phone and that the whole plane was waiting on her. All of us shocked to hear such a harsh repremand found it even more comical when Darcy was again repremanded by the same flight attendent for having her bag not fully under the seat in front of her, both before the plane had even left the terminal. Our team of course proceeded to give Darcy a hard time informing her that she had "two strikes", three strikes and she was out! The joking lasted the entire flight and Greg actually recieved a strike from the attendant for using the first class bathroom and then getting stuck behind the food cart.
The next transition, which due to the two hour delay was going to involve a very quick sprint across the Chicago airport, was once again saved by a delay in flights. The plane that we were supposed to take to Miami was broken and we were told that they might have to bring in a whole new plane. This would most likely make us miss our connection in Miami, so it was once again time to bring it to the Lord. After some prayer the plane was up and running again and we were off to Miami with little delay.
Due to the "issues" we had with Darcy on the previous flight I thought it only fair to warn the flight attendents on the plane to Miami. After a quick chat with who we would later find to be one of the funniest guys we would meet on our travels, the flight attendent named Franklin, aka Bob, had his sights set on giving Darcy a hard time.
Before taking off "Bob" came up to Darcy and said " I just heard from the flight attendents on your previous flight that you are a trouble maker...just remember my Kung-Fu is better than yours." Our whole team burst into laughter, and from that point on anytime "Bob" would walk by he would say something hilarious to keep Darcy "out of trouble." By the end of the flight when we thought he could get any funnier, he surpassed all of our expectations.
Just after landing as we were approaching the terminal "Bob" came over the loud speaker telling the entire plane that they needed to know of the celebrity we had on our flight. He told the plane the Darcy Gadach had just broken a world record for annoying flight attendent from Oregon to Florida. We could hardly breathe we were laughing so hard. He also wished our team well on our trip and had the plane applaud us for our efforts to come in Bolivia.
God not only blessed us with safe travels, but he also blessed us with great memories and lots of laughter. We met up with Dan and Johnny (one of the pastors at the church compound we are staying in) upon arrival to Santa Cruz and they traveled with from there to Cochabamba. Another praise was that we had absolutely no trouble getting Trimmie his visa upon arrival and the even crazier thing was that we discovered that all our visas are good for five years. We payed $100 for ours and Trimmie had to pay $135, while Dan informed us that his cost about $1000. Who knows if any of us will get a chance to use them again after this trip, but the cool thing is that God continues to provide.
Our Journal verses for this travel day were John 15:1-16. We know we can't do anything without Him and as was clearly revealed to us on this trip as we abide in Him our Joy will become full.