Day One ~ Villa's~ Sunday

We woke to a beautiful morning today. After devotional and an excellent breakfast, we hit the road to visit Villa's. It took us several hours ride some interesting roads. Many of the roads have holes from so much rainfall and there is not always a lot of room to go around them. We also crossed many one lane bridges. From what I can tell, the vehicle that gets there first and "honks" the horn has the right of way. We are blessed with an excellent driver and guide. I wish you could see all of the luggage they had packed on top of the bus the first day. Caleb said we looked like a scene from "The Goofy Movie" and I tend to agree!

We spent the afternoon at Villa's with the children there. Since a group had been there the week before, it made our transition much easier. They recongnized Kim W from that group and were soooo excited to see her! After a wonderful lunch prepared by the tias, we got to know the kids. We had bubbles blowing, bag painting, picture frame making, and stickers going everywhere!!! But it was fun and a great way to break the ice and get to love on the children.

On Thursday, we will take the children to the beach to play in the water and the sand! This is very much a treat for them and the tias and I am so glad that our guides were able to work this out. In just a few hours, with very limited Spanish, I learned something very interesting. Love is the same in any language, laughter is the same, joy is the same, happiness is the same, and many other emotions are the same that we saw today. Isn't God an awesome God? This has been a very humbling experience for many of us. These children are God's children also!!!

Our Journey Begins

Praise the Lord....we have all made it safe and sound to Costa Rica! There are 14 people in our group, including several children. Our ages range from 9 to...let's just say...NOT 9. We got into the airport late last night, drove for about 30 minutes, and arrived at our hotel ready for a good night's rest. Last night we could not see much as we were driving in, but we woke to a beautiful sight outside our rooms. Right now we are in the Cabana area by the pool in a pavilion waiting on our breakfast. We had our devotional and talked about scaffolding and how God wants to change us...on the outside and inside. I can tell you from personal experience and from already talking with the others that God is working on this trip!

We will board the bus after breakfast and make the 3 hour trip to our first orphanage where we will spend a few hours visiting with the children and the tias. After lunch, we will again climb aboard and travel to the second orphanage and spend a little time getting to know them. We will get to our hotel tonight, check in, eat dinner, and get rested for another full day.

This is such an exciting journey already and we have only just begun!

Kim and Caleb

Countdown

We started our day going on a swamp tour. Our guide, a true Cajun, showed us around the swamp on a boat. We saw alligators, big and small. The guide said that if the oil entered the swamp, the microscopic organisms would die within 24 hours. If this happend, the food chain would be messed up and a lot of species would die. Also, if the oil got on the tree truncks and stayed on them for 7 days straight the trees would get a rare "sickness" and die out. The swamp tour was great and we had a lot of fun!

We have our flight information, and we are leaving New Orleans at 1:30 P.M. The plane should land in Atlanta around 4. We should arrive in Costa Rica by 9. We can't wait untill we get there!

Kim and caleb

We have our passports...FINALLY!

We woke up this morning, bright and early, and headed toward the passport agency. When we got there, everything went smoothly. We were told that our passports would be ready at about 2:30 P.M. We were in a huge building, and we thought that the top floor must have a great view! So of course we wanted to check it out! We arrived at the 31st floor and we finally found a window to look out. The view was AWESOME! With time to kill, we headed to the aquarium. The aquarium opens at 9:30...well we thought so. It opened at 10. We just said, "No big deal! We will just walk over to the RiverWalk and kill some time!" After the aquarium we went to the imax. We watched "Hurricane on the Bayou", which was very cool. After that, it wasn't quite time for the passports to be ready, so we headed down to Cafe De Monde to get some beignets! There were great jazz players on the street right by the Cafe (video at bottom). We got done with our beignets, so we headed back to the passport agency where we finally got our passport BOOK! We went back to our hotel to put them up and rest before we eat and go on a haunted history tour! We are getting our business done, but also doing some sightseeing!


Kim and Caleb

New Orleans...

We are in New Orleans and have an 8 A.M. appointment with the U.S. Regional passport agency. We should have our passports by tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully everything will go smoothly. If all goes as planned, Saturday we should be on our way to San Jose and be with the team that night.

Alicia (this week's team leader) emailed and told us there were a lot of girls in the orphanages who would probably enjoy fingernail polish. So, Caleb and I will have a mission tomorrow after we get the passports. Anyone who knows our family is probably giggling right now about us trying to pick out "girly" stuff tomorrow. I have a lot more experience with bats and balls!!

This has already been a wonderful adventure and lesson in faith and trust. Counting down the days until Saturday!!!!

Kim and Caleb

One Step Closer

Praise the Lord, we are one step closer to our trip. We have an appointment Thursday at 8:00 AM in New Orleans with the Regional Passport Agency. I have completed all of the necessary forms and have all of the needed documents ready for our meeting. We should walk out of the agency with our passports in hand!!

The travel agency is checking to see if we can just fly out of New Orleans. Hopefully, we will know today about the new flight schedule.

Our plan is to get up in the morning and go through Mobile to pick up our luggage from the airport. Then, we will head on to New Orleans to be ready to take care of business first thing Thursday morning.

Thanks to everyone for all of the prayers and concern. We are counting down the days....again!!!

What Happened???

This is Kim...

First of all, let me say that Caleb has been such a trooper through all of this ordeal. He was extremely patient and helpful in the airport as I was trying to make decisions about what was best to do. If you are familiar with the Atlanta airport, you know how stressful it can be on a good day. I had to keep going from our gate at A6 to the Delta help counter at A18. Then they would have me go to a Delta "phone" to talk with an agent. Meanwhile, our flight is being called and passengers are loading. I had left Caleb at A6 with all of our carry ons. He is on the cell phone keeping me posted about boarding while I am on the Delta phone with the agent informing me that I had a make a decision before take-off about how to change our tickets. A nice gentleman standing next to me is apparently listening to our delima because he slips me a note about a company in Miami who has helped him several times with expedited passports. With phones on both ears, taking notes, receiving notes, I was quite a sight to behold!!

As they say, meanwhile back at Gate A6.....our group leader for the trip had provided us with photos and bios of our team members. Caleb looks up and there is this lady walking around looking at this paper and looking around at all of the passengers waiting to board. She locates him and introduces herself so by the time I get back he has "bonded" with four members of the group explaining what has happened.

Having never flown internationally, I didn't know there was a difference in a passport card and passport book. We had used our passport CARD for a cruise last summer and sure enough on the back of the card it states for land and sea travel only. Sadly, if someone in Mobile had caught this we could have saved ourselves alot of time and money. But mistakes happen and we will regroup!

As Caleb mentioned we finally found an awesome Delta agent (in person) who helped us book a flight back to Mobile at 9:05 PM. Once again, we are running through the airport because by this point we have been sent to the FRONT of the airport and our flight is boarding at Gate C39 and we have 15 minutes to make it back through security to Concourse C!! We round the corner at 9:00 only to find that it has been delayed 45 minutes and the computer system is down. The night just kept getting better!!!

We have family in Atlanta so in between all of this I am texting them in case we can't get a flight out. Mona and Renee, you guys will never know how much you helped!! Just knowing we had a back-up plan, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. Oh, how I love my family!!

We finally made it make to Mobile with all but two pieces of luggage. My wonderful husband was waiting at the airport to pick up two tired and delirious travelers. In all that has happened I didn't realize that Caleb had not eaten supper and was STARVING! After a quick trip to McDonald's, we headed back to Grove Hill and entertained each other all the way home with our adventures of the day.

The good news is that there is another trip planned for July 10th-17th and our plans are to join that group. We ARE going to make it because God has great things in store!!!

Back to Mobile...

This is Caleb:

We got as far as Atlanta. When we got to Atlanta, they told us that our passports were only good for sea and land. After 5 hours of dealing with Delta, we found the best Delta agent ever! Her name is Gina. She straightened everything out for us and basically fought for us to get us back home. So, we are now headed back home and we are going on the July 10-17 mission trip to Costa Rica.

Costa Rica Bound!

We are on step one of our journey to Costa Rica. Right now we are in the Mobile airport waiting on our flight to Atlanta. In Atlanta, we will connect with several other team members for our flight to San Jose. We should arrive in San Jose around 9 P.M. tonight. Tonight we will stay overnight about 45 minutes from the airport in a lovely hotel nestled in the mountains called Montecampana.

We will eat breakfast together as a team, then get on a bus and travel 4 hours to the port city of Limon to Coco's orphanage. We will have lunch and spend the afternoon with the children. Later in the afternoon we will head to our hotel in Puerto Viejo, The Caribbean Hotel, and have dinner together at a nearby restaurant.

We are ready to get there and meet the children!!! We will update as often as possible.

We're Off!!!

It is hard to believe that we will be leaving in less than 24 hours for Costa Rica. This has been such an awesome experience already for us. The support of our family and friends has been overwhelming!! We cannot thank them enough for everything they have done for us. Caleb cannot wait to get to the orphanages and meet the children. There are around 15 children at each orphanage we will be visiting in Limon. Caleb was surprised at the number of older children. There were serval boys 15-17 at each one. I think the youngest child is 7 months old. Please continue to pray for our team as we meet for the first time tomorrow night. I know God has wonderful things in store for our visit.