Guam Journey, Part 3

We got to the airport early on Wednesday, Jan. 11. We were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and in good spirits. Quickly after we got settled at our gate with our Starbucks coffee, we began hearing murmurings of delays. Those murmurings turned out to be true. The FAA had grounded all flights because of an issue with the communications system. We were assured that because *all* flights were delayed, we wouldn’t miss our future connecting flights. This is not what happened. We arrived in Houston and just *barely* missed our flight to Honolulu. We were now among a sea of people in the longest customer service line ever trying to rebook our flights.

After 4 hours of waiting in line and eating the best gardettos we’d ever tasted, we finally got to the desk. We weren’t sure how this would pan out. We knew we would not get to Guam in time to put on the youth conference, which was our main purpose for going. Was it still worth going? We were on the phone with the Milners in Guam and talking with the customer service people and it was just a whole crazy mess. The only option we had for getting to Guam was to spend two nights in Houston and head out to Honolulu on Friday. We decided to go ahead and rebook.

At this point, it was sometime around 3-4pm. We hadn’t had lunch and we were really tired from standing. We plopped ourselves down in a circle booth in the Pappadeaux at the Houston airport and, for a good minute or so, just looked at each other. It was as if our faces were saying, “Two. Nights. In. Houston.” What in the world? How did we get from heading to Guam to spending two nights in Houston at the Ramada by the airport? Should we just rent a car and drive back to OKC and go to Guam another time? Was this a ‘stop’ from God? Was it an invitation to press through? We talked about all the options and all the angles. After a lot of perspectives and all the encouragement from our spouses and a lot of laughing, we decided to keep moving forward.

And this is where dreams come in. Dreams were a huge part of this whole trip. Dreams beforehand and dreams while we were on the trip. Back in November of 2021, I had a dream that Joanna, Kailey, and I were stuck in the Dallas airport because of flight delays, but we were trying to get to Houston for a conference. I remember us talking about the dream when I had it. We laughed and thought, “How fun! Maybe the 3 of us will go on a trip sometime!” And here we were, in January of 2023, stuck at the Houston airport, trying to get to Guam for a conference that we were putting on. We had already remembered this dream and connected it before leaving for Guam. We made the joke, “I guess if things are delayed, we won’t be surprised!” :) God goes before us.

As frustrating as the delay was, what we ended up with was extra time to bond as a team. We went to the mall to buy clothes (because we didn’t have our bags), saw Avatar, ate dinner at Chuy’s, and just enjoyed being with each other.

The other amazing result of this delay was that the Saturday conference was rescheduled for the following Monday since the students were out of school for Presidents Day. On the Saturday, there was flooding in the parking lot, which would have made it hard to do all that we had planned. On the Monday, we had beautiful weather and almost double the amount of students showed up than had registered.

We have our ideas of how time should work and how things should pan out. And sometimes, God changes those plans. Sometimes we know why and sometimes we don’t. And all the time, God’s ways are better than ours.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9