London, England

 

Stranded

London, England - February 14, 2006

The last few days have been an interesting test for us as we have run into several major logistical issues with our tickets. We arrived at the American Airlines desk yesterday afternoon to pick up and purchase our tickets in Heathrow Airport, only to find out that every leg of our trip needed to be handwritten, and that it would take a minimum of 12 hours to complete (thus meaning our scheduled departure for Belize at 9 tomorrow morning will not be happening).

Since we were not informed of this before leaving the States, we now face several challenging new discoveries:

1) We have to depart from Gatwick Airport instead of Heathrow. This is a 1.5 to 2 hour journey to the other side of London.

2) The airport will be our new home for the next 2 days and nights. According to the ticketing counter, our tickets will be ready sometime early tomorrow afternoon. We will need to pick up and pay for these tickets in person and then head immediately to Gatwick.

3) With the new itinerary, we would not be able to arrive in Belize until this Thursday, two days later than anticipated. That posed a new challenge, since we would not be able to get to Guatemala in time for our first project. So we will now be routing through Dallas rather than Miami, and heading straight to Guatemala (skipping Belize altogether, at least for the time being).

Needless to say, we will definitely be starting this trip with a bang!

In the midst of all the unforeseen challenges, we are extremely excited that we will still be able to arrive in Guatemala in time for the start of our well drilling project. That is great news to us.

Although we expect challenges on an expedition (and calling) of this magnitude, it is refreshing to know that everything we do is in the hands of One far greater. And that has given us an incredible source of confidence, peace and faith.

-Lee

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Brilliant!

London, England - January 23, 2006

We're now past the point of no return, as we took flight last night at 6:30 PST for London, England! Although we were both going through a whirlwind of emotions at the airport,
walking up the gate was an unusually calming feeling that this trip was actually going to happen (after nine months of full-time planning and preparation). It's a little hard to put into words what we're both feeling at the moment ... we'll hopefully be able to blog about it more in the coming days after our minds catch up with our bodies.

Our flight was a pleasant 10 hours, considering that both of us were fast asleep just minutes into the air. The enormity of all of the planning and details with a trip of this magnitude seemed to finally take its toll on us this past week, leaving us with little gas left in the tank. Needless to say, we are anxiously looking forward to these next few weeks of final physical, mental and spiritual preparation before we officially begin the RTW trip on Feb. 12th. This buffer time will also give us a great opportunity to solidify the many projects we are planning in the future and reconnect with our partner non-profit organizations and individuals around the globe.

Sidebar of the day...
We are both currently getting a taste of the many adjustments we will be making as we travel. Today's realization was the challenge of not having a cell phone. While on the impressive and impeccably clean Underground subway to meet our friend Nicholas, a pigeon flew into the cabin we were in. Apparently the pigeon caught so much of my attention that I somehow missed Patrick blurting my name that we were at our destination. I ended up hearing his voice too late... just seconds before the train door slammed shut. With a cell phone, this situation would have been a 10-second call to say "I'll come back to your station." Instead, the ordeal took over 20 minutes as we both tried to figure out what the other was thinking and where we would reconnect.

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