OK, it’s only 14 days if you count today, since it’s already tomorrow!! Basically, we’ve only had 11 chances to sleep. Some of those times were only for a few hours (like our first night, which didn’t happen until 6/28 in Beijing, and then it was only from 1:30am until 5am). Then of course, we lost a night when we crossed the International Date Line twice!!
So, yes, we are now home safe and glad to be here after another day of “You’ve got to be kidding” Airlines!! Out of 8 flights, we figured out that we only had 2 go as planned – from Mongolia to Beijing and from Beijing to Shanghai, both on 7/6, and both on Air China.
Today’s flight started out great. We left Shanghai on time and the pilot said he thought we would be arriving at Chicago 15 minutes early! However, there was apparantly some weather outside of Chicago that caused us to circle, and circle, and circle. We circled until the pilot informed us we were about to run out of gas! (No need to worry the passengers… tell them everything!) So, we landed in Milwaukee to refuel. We were apparantly a sight – a big 747 on a tiny runway. We sat on the plane for another hour before finally getting cleared to go to Chicago. We landed at Chicago at 7pm – only 4 hours late… making that a 17-hour plane trip.
We were so ready to get off and relax, but we had to run to make our next flight to DFW, scheduled to take off at 8:30. We made it through customs in time and ran to our gate only to find it had been delayed until 11 and moved to another gate. So we all got a bite to eat – no small task with an airport full of people just like us – tired and frustrated with delayed or cancelled flights.
Finally, we headed to our gate to find that it had moved to another gate. After 5 gate changes and 2 delays, we finally boarded at midnight and touched down at DFW at 2:30am, making today’s total traveling time 29 hours since Chu (our Shanghai tour guide) picked us up at the hotel at this morning at 10:30am, Shanghai time. Of course, most of us got up around 7, which means we’ve been awake for at least 32 hours!
We are now home thanks to a fabulous friend who didn’t mind all of the gate changes and time delays – thanks Francis!!!! You are our family’s hero!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our minds are reeling with wonderful pictures, stories, memories, foreign languages, music, sounds… we can’t wait to recount them all! We will keep blogging for a little while and soon I’m sure I’ll put together a scrapbook to share. In the meantime, thank you to all of you wonderful friends and family and prayer warriors. Your encouragement is our strength – and believe me, we leaned heavily upon it over the last couple of weeks.
I love you all,
carla
ps-Mark interviewed everyone today about their favorite memory. I have so many… but one I thought I’d share with you tonight. Many of you know the girls and I made jewelry to raise money – well I brought some for all of Jerry’s girls and we were able to give it to them at our last concert. That picture will be the entrance to my dreams tonight. What a sweet memory of each girl proudly wearing beads that were once just a hope to me… With God, all things are TRULY possible! My family went to Mongolia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
psps-Although I did not blog each night, I did write in my journal each night. I will be going through those and sharing those on the blog over the next couple of days. Sorry we couldn’t keep you in real time…
Whew! Just made me tired reading your homecoming itenerary! So glad you are home. Now, REST! It is O.K, Sleep, Sleep. We are looking forward to all you have to share but it can wait until your jet lag has worn off some.
Love you all …
Glad to have you back! Hope that the memories you made will push you on to more service and the footprints you left will help to guide others to the cross.