Sunday, August 3, 2008

I am home!!! 33 hours of travel to get there.

I am so home!!!... Bill and I finished the evening and packed up all of our stuff and said our goodbyes. We headed to bed and slept pretty good. Eric had told me the night before that he would see me off. At 6:30 Eric gently shook me and said "Peeterr it is time." He did not want me to go but it was time. Eric and I hugged and said our goodbyes. We will be keeping in touch. It will be a lasting friendship. Thanks so much for all you did this week. Eric, you are very special. We left the University by van at 7:00 am China time and headed to the airport in Zhengzhou. Our flight was on time and uneventful. This time there were no people screaming at the attendants because the AC was not working, so that was good. We arrived at Beijing and Bill and I had our last Chinese lunch. We made our flight and it went pretty well. It was on time and smooth but long. There were a few families on board with newly adopted Chinese orphans so that was nice to see. I pray for happiness and peace for those families. We made it to Newark New Jersey with plenty of time to make our 7:20PM flight to Tampa. We made it through Immigration and customs very fast and headed to our departure gate. We saw the flight had not arrived yet and was delayed to 7:50 than 8:11 than we finally boarded and as we were waiting for air traffic to clear so we could taxi we were told another hour longer. UGGGH. Finally we started to taxi out and the plane was making a strange noise. Then we stopped. The plane headed back to the gate. The Captain got on the air and said "folks, this is your Captain. We will be slightly delayed as we seem to have had a flat tire. we should be back in the air in under an hour." Well after deboarding the plane and then finally switching planes we did not take off until after midnight. At this point it was comical. We finally landed in Tampa at 2:45am. I was greeted by my lovely Kimmie! She was so beautiful. I was finally home. Bill was met by his Brother and we hugged and parted ways. What a trip it had been! Kim and I headed home and finally made it. It was right around 4am. Exactly 33 hours later. The age of Jesus's death and resurrection. That is pretty signifigant because this trip had a little of both elements for me. I expierenced death of self and joy, happiness and hope resurrected in these children, on this trip. It was such a powerful trip. All I can say to those that are sitting on the edge of the pool and saying" I don't know if I can do this" just know that you can and God wants you to dive in and get wet! I love you all! Thanks to all your prayers and support. The trip is over but the journey will continue. ;)


Here are some pictures from our last evening and morning in China.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Pete-
What an amazing journey. Thanks for sharing it. I enjoyed reading your daily updates (and sharing them with my husband later in the day). You have inspired me...can you tell me how you got in contact with the camp to volunteer? I know we have to go to China to get our Maddy first, but I see our family doing something like this in the future. What a blesing you were to those kids.
Blessings,
The Barkers