KT to VZ

So I really haven't had time to blog the last couple days, and I feel like a lot happened! I'll do my best to sum it up.

Monday evening we had dinner at our van driver's house. His son and daughter cooked a wonderful meal for all of us! After chatting a while and seeing the house and such, we all got in the van to presumably go back to the house. Well, we're driving along and then we stop... but not at the house! He had taken us to the Esperanza Viva church for a surprise goodbye service! It was so incredibly awesome. The people wished us well, and we got to say a few words of encouragement and everything to them. They called our whole team up to the front and prayed over us, and then they started with the gifts... and the gifts just keep coming! The women got Venezuelan scarves, and the guys got hats. The women each got a rose, and mine had a small Happy Birthday balloon with it too. We all got pins like what they give out to those who faithfully serve their church. And we each got other little gifts too. It was completely and totally unexpected, at least from me! And, they sang happy birthday to me again (the traditional Venezuelan song and the normal one), and also to Anderson (one of the church people) who had a birthday last Sunday. Of course there was more cake too! :)

The only downside to that goodbye celebration was that we got back to the house fairly late, and the next morning we had to be up and ready to leave by 5am. Needless to say it was a pretty short night!

Tuesday was a crazy long travel day. We didn't end up leaving San Juan de los Morros til around 5:30am, and then it was a 3-hr drive to the airport in Caracas. We had to check in and go through security and all that, but we were still there in plenty of time before our flight left a little after 11am. I was able to do a little shopping in the airport and spent most of the rest of my Bolivars. (I still have 11 Bolivars left, which is about $1.20 in US.)

The Caracas to Miami flight was uneventful. We got served lunch on the plane, which was pretty good. We got in to Miami around 3pm and had no trouble getting through immigration and customs and all that, only had a wait for a little while at customs. We all had at least 4 hours til our next flights left so we grabbed some dinner at TGI Friday's in the airport. Don, Ben, and I were on a flight to Detroit that was originally scheduled to leave at 7:45pm then got bumped back to 8:20pm. But around 7:15pm, our flight got delayed - wasn't scheduled to leave til 10:15pm!! That would put us in Detroit at 1:05am. Ugh!! Fortunately I had decided to stay with my parents in Dearborn that night, because it's about a 90 minute drive from the Detroit airport back to Findlay. It was a veeeeerrrrryyy long time to wait in the airport, but we made the best of it. I read for a while, browsed the shops, and played a few games of iPad Monopoly with Ben. I was so tired on the flight but really couldn't sleep, so I read a lot. I read about 1-2/3 books on this trip, it was wonderful! :)

We finally got off the plane at 1:15am this morning. Don and Ben headed home to Findlay (arriving at 3:30am I heard) and my parents took me to their house. I got to bed around 2:30am. Woke up 11ish this morning, and I'm still really tired but I needed to get up because I was pretty hungry. Mom took me to lunch at Quizno's, then drove me back to Findlay.

I'm almost done unpacking now and my laundry is in the dryer. Hopefully I'll get pictures uploaded later, but we'll see.

It's definitely strange coming back to the "normal" world after a trip like that. I do have to admit that a nice bed and a hot shower were wonderful this morning! :) But I really enjoyed my time in Venezuela, and I would have been happy to stay longer. I'm so glad God blessed me with this opportunity, and I hope to go on more trips in the future!! :)