I Have Arrived!

I am finally here in Kenya! We arrived last night after LONG flights. I have never had to sit for so long in my life I don’t think (about 18 hours flying).
My African adventure began the moment we arrived on the continent. We had to change planes in Lagos, Nigeria…which was quite an experience. We originally were going to have 80 minutes to change planes, which included going through immigration, picking up our luggage, going to check in and getting to our gate…all in a foreign country. Well when the plane took off 50 minutes late we were obviously concerned. We arrived in Lagos with about 25 minutes to make our next flight. Sounds impossible right? Well we went to immigration and the directed us to leave all of our passports with them and go get our bags. My response was “I don’t think so,” so while the rest of the team went to get our 7 bags I stayed with the passports and watched as more and more passports were being stacked on top of ours. I kept telling the immigration officer we only had about 15 minutes until our flight left. SO finally the team came back (without our bags because they couldn’t find them) and we got through immigration and needed to go check in at the Kenya Air counter. We found a man who worked for Kenya Air and asked him where to go. He said “follow me,” so we followed him outside where we were being watched very closely them back into the airport, up a very sketchy flight of stairs, through some more doors and to the Kenya Air counter. While we were checking in the printer that would print our boarding passes broke. We kept asking “will we make the flight” and they kept saying “oh yeah.” Finally the passes were printed. At this point is was much later than the departure time, but you pretty much just go with the flow. So at the counter they say, “where are your bags, you have to go get your bags and bring them straight back here and we will check them.” So we all RUN back through the doorways, down the sketchy stairs and we run into security who obviously won’t let us back through to get our bags. We said “we are in transit” and they let us all straight through security. We find our 7 bags and lug them back UP the stairs, outside, etc, etc. Then the Kenya Air counter is closed. The signs are down, the people are gone and there we are like an hour after the flight time with our bags. So were are told to go to the Kenya Air office. We go down a long hall and find some guy who tells us to just take our bags to the gate. Well keep in mind that we have bags with just about everything you can’t take through security…liquids, sharp things, etc. They are obviously confused when we get to security, but miraculously some guy comes up and explains our situation and they let us through! We RUN to our gate and find out the plane is still there because it arrived late. Praise God! What a faithful Lord we have. I had a lot of doubt through the whole thing, but the Lord showed me that He was in control the whole time.
We made it to Nairobi, Kenya. Even all of our bags made it. Peggy, Pastor Imbumi, and several other men from the church met us and took us to Subiaco where we are living. It is nice here. Very clean with running water and electricity (Mom, Dad, Michael and Becca- It is similar to Miners Bay- not quite as plush though, seriously.) But it is clean anyways. We went to the church this morning and I will write about that another time because this is a long post. But I will say I LOVE the people here. They are incredible and they sure do know how to pray and worship God. The kids are precious and EVERYONE shakes your hand as you walk through the slum (I have plenty of Purell :)).
Miss you all and will write more soon!