Wednesday, May 25, 2011

We're here!

After a wild adventure getting here, we arrived in Glasgow last night around 8 pm Glasgow time. The kids did so well on the trip, and even Abby who has a cold and is running a fever stayed content on all the flights. Praise the Lord!
When we arrived in Newark on Monday evening we discovered that due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland, our flight from Newark to Glasgow had been canceled. After waiting in several lines for several hours we re booked our flight with British Airways, and flew into London on Tuesday. In London we made it through customs...barely! The woman seemed very sceptical at first, and I almost thought she wasn't going to let us in the country! After taking the Express to Paddington Station, we rode the Underground to Euston Station to catch a train to Glasgow. I especially was so excited to have this unplanned detour through London. The Paddington Bear books were some of my favorites as a child, and I felt giddy like a child walking through the station where the Brown family found a bear from Darkest Peru and fed him tea and marmalade :) Although the children didn't realize how special it was that we were able to see more of Great Britain than we expected, they hung on and Caleb especially enjoyed riding all the trains. He even named a few of them: Thomas and Percy. Even Michael was remarkable "go with the flow" for his personality that doesn't usually enjoy detours from the plan. God definitely gave him extra measures of patience and we really enjoyed the whole experience as a family.
I can already see how the Lord is using this journey to grow us in Him and to bond us together as a family. I am so grateful for that.
Please pray for us that we will have physical stamina during our time here in Glasgow especially. We want to serve the church here well, and we pray that God directs us clearly in how to do that. Our interns arrive on Friday, and we want to encourage them to roll up their sleeves right away and jump in.
We've been so grateful to the pastor's family here in Glasgow for the way they've taken care of us since we're arrived. They're wonderful! They've definitely served us in many ways already, and we hope to do the same for them and not become a burden while we're here!
Praise the Lord for his protection and beautiful sovereignty in bringing us here. We feel so incredible blessed to witness how He is working in the city of Glasgow and we are amazed that He has chosen to let us be a part of it for this short time.
We'll hopefully post pictures soon, but we're so happy to be able to keep you up to speed on our journey here.
If you think of it, you can also pray that our bags will be found and brought to Glasgow soon!