One Way Tickets

Thanks for your prayers. My talks at church this past Sunday went swell. God showed up. I felt the Holy Spirit giving me strength and I pray that He was glorified and I pray that He spoke to the hearts that He needed to speak to.

It’s more about God getting glory than me getting funds but I was able to distribute a lot of my contact/prayer cards after the services. One thing that has happened already since Sunday is that one person who was there that I had never met before contacted me and set up my flight from Atlanta to Miami using Delta Skymiles. God is so good. I had already booked my flight from Miami to La Paz but I had not yet booked my flight from Atlanta to Miami.

So now my departure is officially set. Goodbye everything and everyone I have ever known. Hello everything I’ve never been before.

Somehow this whole thing became more real when my flight out of Atlanta was actually on paper. I now know exactly when I will be leaving and that would be 2:52 p.m. on Friday, December 28th. I must admit that my stomach dropped a little when I saw that 2:52 p.m.

The Friday after Christmas is when I will officially leave everything and everyone here and head to my new home. Wow. I will ring in 2008 about 3700 miles from the Giant Peach.

And not to mention that both my ticket to Miami and my ticket to La Paz are ONE WAY TICKETS. I have never ever bought a one way ticket to anywhere before. I mean, I always know when I am coming back from places. It is a very strange feeling to know that I am going somewhere but that I don’t know exactly when I will be coming back. All I know is that God willing I will come back.

I hear that in the “old days” when missionaries left to go to the field they like really left. It was goodbye forever in many cases and they took their caskets with them. Crazy. I can only imagine what those goodbyes were like.

I guess I just better get ready to have all of my bags searched multiple times on the way down there. I have no doubt that me and my fellow one-way ticket buyers out there cause someone to get an IM message when we check in. Well, I should look on the bright side. At least I will get some personalized attention as I make my way through the airports.

“Sir, I really AM a missionary who is going to live in Bolivia, I promise.”