the middle of the night

So usually when you wake up in the middle of the night with a baby crying, you just want to roll over and go back to sleep. However, when the baby is your newly adopted boy and you’re unsure if this is one of those “I’m crying b/c I want in your bed” or one of those “hey, I am in major need of some reassurance & love here” cries…well it’s a little bit trickier. Thankfully Mandi has a wonderful sense for what Jeb needs, and she soothes him with her voice, while telling him to lie down and go to sleep. Let me tell you though, the kid just screams so loud…

Anyways I now recognize this particular “wake-up” call as divine. As you have read, we are working through plans to get home. My sister has been tagged on the emails I have sent to the travel agent, with the knowledge that she would text me (we do not have cheap enough phone call access) if he needed to hear from us in an “odd Zambian hour”. Well that is precisely what was going on. As I lay in the bed, listening to Jeb wail, I could hear the beep of a phone. So I waited until he finally was asleep, peeled Addie off of me, and went in the other room to check. Sure enough it was flight information from our agent. Now it gets a little crazy…mind you it was 2:30 AM here when this all kicked off.

When we first got our return flights for the 29th my return got bumped off and so I have been listed separately. Brady (our agent with Golden Rule Travel – he has been incredible for us) had us waitlisted on a few different days trying to get us out early. Our lease at the guest house is up Friday, our initial Zambian tourist visa expires Thursday, and the 1st day of school at East Wake is the 25th…so we have some practical reasons (as well as our own longings) to be home – side note…I believe God has been teaching our family about how much we should long for our heavenly, eternal home with Him…it’s a good lesson. However we do have good reason to believe we could stay a few days extra here at Juls, as well as stay a few days at the House of Moses as volunteers.

So the email from Brady basically says I am good to fly home on the 19th. Just me though. Two of the kids got bumped off the flight on the 29th, and he thinks it’s b/c they might have gotten put on the 19th as well. We don’t know which 2 though, or if they are for sure on this flight. So drop into this decision for a moment. Do I fly home with Jeb (he’s a lap child, so he doesn’t need a ticket), leaving Mandi with 3 kids to get around Lusaka with. If 2 kids are on the flight –which 2 do we take? The kids have been SO AMAZING thus far. They really have dealt with a lot of hard things with good attitudes and patience. But they are ready to go home…so you pick one to stay, while the other 2 leave? Ouch. We have no guarantee that there will be another opening on a flight before the 29th. (I totally believe Mandi is very capable of handling herself (and a kid or two) here. It’s relatively safe, and we have a small support network she could work with.) All of this plus we still have to get Jeb’s US visa – which if we rush, we might have by Thursday. So I quickly typed off an email to our contact at the Embassy, saying I will have to call in the AM to get things rolling a bit faster than we had planned.

So while I am processing all of this, Brady shoots back that he has found us an alternate route with British Airways leaving on the 21st. We would now fly through London into JFK arriving stateside at 10:35 PM. He can get a refund for part of our original Ethiopian Airways tickets– where they clap when they land – but he has to check tomorrow to know how much. So now I am wondering how this travel would work. It’s a short layover in Heathrow (usually it’s overnight), but I can’t have my sister who lives in Leesburg (west of DC) just “swing by” New York’s busiest airport to pick us up. So now I am looking into hotels (cuz we get in at 10:30 PM and have to clear customs not only with our luggage, but also a new child), shuttles, rental cars and busses for a possible overnight near JFK and a trip down to DC. It’s a 4+ hour bus ride to DC, but after our bus trips to Livingstone and back our kids will have no problems (more on the bus rides in tomorrow’s post).
So that’s why I have been up since 2:30, and that’s why we appreciate your prayers. Thanks.