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Guatemala 2018: Terrible Flight and God's Mercies



After two years, I was finally returning to one of my favorite places, with golden brown dust, smiling children, and colorful culture.

How I missed you, Guatemala!

21 of us left on Monday, July 23 for a week long mission trip. We got to BWI very early and sat ourselves in line for check in. When we finally got through that process, security went well and we boarded for our 6 AM flight.

And then, for the worst flight experience I've ever had - we were delayed for three hours and forty-five minutes on the tarmac, in our plane. And it was hot. Apparently there was some sort of bad weather somewhere; we were not the only plane having trouble leaving. In fact, by the time we got to leave, there were 20 other planes in a line waiting to take off. I learned later that many planes were canceled due to weather - so praise the Lord that we got to go at all! 

Unfortunately, what had been a four-hour layover in Houston turned into a run for our connecting flight. Thankfully, we managed to catch it just as they were making the last call. 

I ended up sitting between a Guatemalan man and his nephew. This man is from Guatemala but he lives in Texas and hadn't been to Guatemala in 17 years. He and his siblings (some live in Texas, California, and New York) were having a reunion in Guatemala. 

The landing in Guatemala City was one of the roughest I've had, so I landed feeling quite sick, but was still enjoyed our fast cheeseburgers, fries and water at Burger King before heading for the compound. 

Troy drove a handful of us girls to the store for some groceries, which was a fun time. It was especially interesting when we tried to leave the parking garage, since they had majorly upgraded since 2016 and payment is now required....which we didn't know until we tried to leave and couldn't. So as we sat by the ticket machine, stuck behind one of those guard bars (and after pressing the help button several times without results), Miranda went to get help, since she's the only one of us that speaks Spanish. Not too long after she left, Troy inched up a bit more to the bar and a guard across the way came over and said something to us (in Spanish, of course), and Troy just was like, "Uh....I don't understand..." The guard realized we had no idea what was going on and walked away again. Finally Miranda returned and she had found the place to pay so the ticket machine finally opened the guard bar for us to go. We cheered and got out of there quickly - I'm pretty sure the three cars waiting behind us cheered, too. 

We returned just in time for supper, which was the enchilada meal that we had the first year we went (in 2014) and was just as delicious. Lastly, before bed the youth learned their skit for the next day.  
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