We Made It

Thank you all for your prayers during our trip! We made it safely back home on Saturday!

We got the chance to go to Wahoo Bay and spend the day at the beach. We left Gonaives around 5:30 a.m. and made it to the "resort" around 8:00 a.m. They served us a great breakfast. I ate the best french toast I have ever had...it was deep fried but anyways...it was delicious, not healthy. They also served us watermelon juice which was great too.

After breakfast we headed back to the room and changed into our suits and hit the beach. That water was crystal clear and perfect temperature...it wasn't hot but it wasn't cold. You could walk right in and it was so refreshing. We were in the water for a long time. There were a few people who ran over and started setting up shop and were trying to sell us stuff. They waited for us to get out of the water for a long long time.

We all had fun bartering with them. Bob and Justin ended up bartering their sunglasses for 3 items each. Then Bob got up to go to the room and the guy grabbed his towel off of him and told him he wanted it. He got a sweet pen holder for the towel. Michael took some of my things down and traded them for some more items. We had fun. Everything were giving him to barter he started wearing...he had Michael's beanie on...Bob's sunglasses...my hand held fan. It was funny.

It was a very relaxing day and we enjoyed sleeping in air conditioning that night. We woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Friday to finish the trek to the airport. We got to the airport around 6:00 a.m. where said our goodbyes to Lucma and Salonique. The airport was crazy...we went through one line after another. Went through 4 or 5 metal detectors and I'm pretty sure that only the last one worked. They hand checked every single carry on bag which took a long time.

We finally boarded the plane and began the journey back home. We landed in Miami and ended up having to wait for awhile on the tarmac because there was a plane at our gate that hadn't left yet. They were running 30 minutes behind due to bad weather. All of us were worried we wouldn't make it to our connecting flight because we still had to go through customs. We got of the plane and stood in a long line to go through customs. Afterwards we went and picked up our luggage and took that through customs. Then when we went to go check it the luggage back in, a lady told us we missed our flight and that we had to go to another area to re-check our bags. We then waited in line and Tom checked the internet where it showed that our flight had been delayed. We were still in line when we asked a lady at the counter about our flight. She said that it was delayed and hadn't left yet. She told us to go upstairs, take our bags to number 3 baggage drop off and head to our gate.

After found the place the lady told us our flight had already left. Great. We waited in another line for about 20 minutes so that we could arrange new flights to get back to Kansas City. By the time we got to the counter it was 2:28 p.m. Our flight was supposed to originally leave at 1:40 p.m. So we got to the counter and the lady pulled up our flight information and enlightened us that our plane hadn't left yet...it was leaving at 2:30 p.m. Of course we didn't have time by then to check our bags and make it on. We were all kind of frustrated that they kept telling us we missed it, that we didn't miss it, that we missed it, etc.

Justin, Michael, Tom, and Ginger ended up getting a flight to Chicago then to Kansas City. Bob, Amy, Rebekah, and I ended up getting flight to Dallas/Fort Worth then on to Kansas City. Tom's group was supposed to make it to Kansas City about 45 minutes before our group so he took the keys to the person mover so they could have it ready by the time we got there.

Naturally, both of our planes kept getting delayed. They were both supposed to leave around 6:20 p.m I think. We didn't leave until closer to 7:00 p.m. Right before I turned off my phone Tom texted me and said that they had a 15 minute maintenance delay. Wasn't looking to good for their group.

We boarded our plane and as we were getting pushed back onto the tarmac, everything shut off. It was dead silent in the plane as the engines were off and the air turned of. The pulled us back in after 5 minutes and re started the engines which took about 20 minutes. Finally we were on our way...but we weren't sure if we were going to make our connecting flight because of all the delays we had had. Our flight in Dallas had been delayed till 9:40 p.m...we were cutting it close.

We were getting ready to land in Dallas and it was 9:30...no way we could make it by the time we pulled into the gate. When we landed they began giving connecting flight information. It was music to our ears! We found that our flight had been delayed till 10:16 p.m. There was a chance! We ran off the plane and got on the SkyLink which took us to the other side of the airport. As we were doing this I called Tom and found out that they weren't going to make it to Kansas City until the next morning. Then I called my parents to ask them to come get us at the airport since we didn't have a ride. Yes, we made it to our connecting flight in time and ended up landing in Kansas City a little after midnight.

All of our bags made it! Tom's group got hotel and food vouchers from the airlines because of the maintenance delay that made them miss their flight. We were all tired as we drove to Warrensburg. Laid in bed and looked at my phone which read 2:30 a.m. It had just wake me up at 4:30 a.m. the previous day. We traveled for 22 hours to make it home. What a day. The other group landed in Kansas City around 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning and made it back to town around 11:00 a.m.

It was a very successful and safe trip! I have posted several photo albums to my Facebook page and have included some links to those albums. You DO NOT have to have a Facebook profile to view these albums.

Link to Salonique's Update at Living Water
A Glimpse of Haiti
Roof Pouring and Other Pics
Trip to Marmelade
Our Relaxing Day at the Beach

More picture links to come. Check back to this posting as I will continue to add to the list above.