Arrived in Guatemala Safely (06/25/11)

We have arrived in Guatemala safely...but a little late into the night!

For those of you who have ever traveled in a large group, you probably know that more often than not something will happen that throws your plans a little off course. Well, we can definitely say that this was the case for us when trying to leave Washington, DC to fly to Guatemala. Once we all gathered at the airport, tagged our bags, and received 3 crisp dollar bills to pay for our visas, we started to check into our flight, but for some reason no one was able to register a checked bag. We quickly discovered that our flight out of Reagan National to Miami had been delayed, and American Airlines was not allowing anyone to check bags into the flight because our bags would not have enough time to be transferred to our connector flight before our departure to Guatemala. [Insert mild panic.]

While the possibility of us flying to Miami and not even making our connection hung in the air, Jon and KP quickly started the negotiations with American Airlines with the rest of the team praying for help on the sidelines. After about an hour or so, we were informed that American Airlines would hold our plane in Miami--re-assigning 34 passengers was not the ideal situation, and we would have to sprint through the airport with all of our items needed for sleeping and the next day to be placed in our carry-on suitcase since our luggage would be meeting us in Guatemala the next day. Thankfully, our prayers and your prayers were answered once again as we landed into Miami and discovered that our flight to Guatemala had also been delayed and the probability that our luggage would make it as well increased dramatically.

We arrived at the airport in Guatemala around 10pm (midnight ET), and all of our luggage made it safely as well, minus one our plastic cases carrying water bottles for the campers having received some battle scars--quickly mended by duck tape. On our way to the missionary house, we discovered that we had be on the same plane with some celebrities; we passed a huge church that was hosting a 3 day concert, and one of the bands playing at the concert had been sitting in first class! Once we arrived at the missionary house we were served some delicious spaghetti and closed the night out with a welcome meeting and orientation.

We made it into bed around 12:30am/1:00am with the reminder that we were to be awake in about 4 hours and on the bus to get ready for the campers at 5am...