{"id":1423,"date":"2011-01-08T03:10:26","date_gmt":"2011-01-08T07:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2011-01-08T03:18:52","modified_gmt":"2011-01-08T07:18:52","slug":"usa-and-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/2011\/01\/08\/usa-and-back-again\/","title":{"rendered":"USA and back again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MaycieIt’s crazy how fast time flies and how much change just a few weeks can bring. \u00a0Just two weeks ago I would have been sitting on the couch watching tv next to my sisters in the good ol’ USA and today, I’m back across the world, at home with Brian. \u00a0It feels crazy that I was even there! \u00a0But, as crazy as it feels, I WAS there and I had a truly wonderful time. \u00a0It was a bit surreal to be back with my family, most of them I hadn’t seen in 2 1\/2 years<\/strong>. It was hard to see my nephews again because they were so different and I realized just how much I had missed. The three of them are so so precious and sweet and just a complete joy to be around. \u00a0They had fun loving on Maycie and Dylan and Maycie had fun being loved on \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0It was a sad day when I had to take her away from her cousins again but I found excitement in knowing that Lord-willing, we’ll be back again in just 10 short months.<\/p>\n

In addition to seeing my nephews, I was also able to spend a lot of time with my sisters. It was strange to have us all in one place again since we’ve been scattered across the world for the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

Anyway, what I really want to say is THANK YOU to all of you who prayed for our flight!!! \u00a0Many of you know that the flight to the States didn’t quite go so well and I was dreading and stressing about the flight back here. We were going back exhausted and sick and cranky and it was 4 hours longer than the flight to the States PLUS a stop in Honolulu for refueling. \u00a0Needless to say I was not very optimistic about how this flight was going to go and it literally made me sick to my stomach to even think about it.<\/p>\n

BUT…GOD IS GOOD!!! \u00a0I prayed and prayed and prayed and had many other people praying for the trip and I am so grateful I can say that it couldn’t have gone better. \u00a0I could see God’s hand in every detail of the trip-it was just incredible. Here’s how it went:<\/p>\n

Because I had booked tickets so last minute, there were no baby bassinet seats available for us. That meant that Dylan had to be on my lap the WHOLE time and Maycie was left to squeeze into her tiny seat to sleep. \u00a0That did not make her happy on the way to the States! \u00a0Well…when we arrived at the airport at 6 o’clock PM \u00a0we got in line behind the 50+ people \u00a0checking in for my same flight. \u00a0A man who worked at the airport approached us out of ALL the people standing in our same line and asked if we’d be interested in an earlier flight. \u00a0My heart skipped a few beats as I knew, even though this didn’t mean anything good but an earlier flight, that God was going to take care of us and maybe even blow me away as He often does. Before I said yes to the man, I asked if there were any good seat available. The man left and returned with good news that there were “good” seats available. \u00a0I didn’t know what that meant but it was enough for me to say “Yes! We’ll take them!” All we had time for was for my mom to run up to McDonald’s to grab us some dinner while I finished checking in. We gave some quick hugs to my parents and almost had to run to our gate to get there in time. We arrived just as people were starting to board the plane. What a blessing to not have to wait a few hours in the airport!!! \u00a0I boarded the airplane and when I finally found our seats, my heart skipped a beat again as I saw that we had bulkhead seats with a baby bassinet!!! \u00a0We were first in our row to board so as we got situated we waited to see who our neighbors would be (we had the middle two seats of a row of 4.) Eventually one older lady sat down next to me and another next to Maycie. As we said our introductions, I found out that they were BOTH grandmas and were excited to sit next to some babies! One of them held Dylan for the first FOUR hours of the flight even though the bassinet was available for him! \u00a0They held Dylan whenever Maycie needed to go to the bathroom and hung out with Maycie whenever Dylan needed a diaper change. They helped Maycie eat her meals and even played with her when she started to get cranky. \u00a0This is all in the middle of night even!<\/p>\n

Ok, back up a little bit. \u00a0Before the airplane even took off BOTH of the kids were fast asleep and stayed that way until our stop on Honolulu. \u00a0They slept most of the way and when they weren’t sleeping they were happy – I never even used up the battery on our dvd player and that is miracle in itself!<\/p>\n

So we arrived in Manila without a hitch around six in the morning. \u00a0Our flight home wasn’t until 12:30 that afternoon so we had a long time to wait. I went to the check-in counter just to see about the possibility of getting an earlier flight. The man looked at me with a hopeless look and said “It’s possible but it will not be cheap. Do you want me to check anyway?” I said I did because at that point I might have been willing to give him right arm to not have to wait in the airport for 6 hours! \u00a0He came back and said that it would cost p200 (about $4) a person excluding Dylan to change to an earlier flight. \u00a0My heart should have stopped completely by now with all this beat-skipping and excitement! \u00a0I had a few things I still needed to do at the airport so I rushed off to do those and when we finally made it to our gate, we had only 30 min to wait before we boarded. \u00a0Maycie fell asleep while I fed dylan and when we got on that plane, our last leg, I was beyond relieved and incredibly grateful to my God Who made our trip as easy as it could have been and threw in little surprises all along the way.<\/p>\n

So THANK YOU all who prayer for us and our trip home! \u00a0We are so happy to back home with Brian and back in the Philippines. \u00a0We are only mildly jet-lagged and are working at getting back into the swing of things. It was a wonderful trip and a blessing to see those of you who we were able to. \u00a0I apologize to everyone we missed seeing and look forward to catching up when we’re ALL back for furlough.<\/p>\n

Click here for more photos of our trip.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s crazy how fast time flies and how much change just a few weeks can bring. Just two weeks ago I would have been sitting on the couch watching tv next to my sisters in the good ol’ USA and today, I’m back across the world, at home with Brian. It feels crazy that I was even there! But, as crazy as it feels, I WAS there and I had a truly wonderful time. It was a bit surreal to be back with my family, most of them I hadn’t seen in 2 1\/2 years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[719,3,143],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-co-pilots-corner","7":"category-family","8":"category-prayer-request","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/brian-pruett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}