Safely home to Lesotho

We made it home to Lesotho late Friday afternoon! Yeah!!! We had some fun adventures as usual to get here. Our first 2 flights were delayed, but thankfully we were able to catch our connections. In Chicago we were told that our (Bryan and I) carry-ons were too big for Lufthansa so we had to do some serious reshuffling so that none of our electronics or other expensive items were in the 2 we needed to check because they refused to gate check them and had them checked all the way to Jo burg and last time that happened we had things stolen from our luggage. We got that sorted and then got to Germany for our 7 hour layover. We did some sleeping and walked around the airport as we waited and then 1 hour before our flight, Bryan took our tickets to the counter to make sure everything was in order and we were told that we would not be allowed to get on our flight to Jo-burg because we did not have a Visa. We have always flown into Maseru before and since we had no proof that we would be driving to Lesotho (despite our Lesotho Visa's) we were not trusted to fly to Jo-burg.
We did not know what to do and so Bryan and I circled up our kids and I prayed about our situation. We did not want to have to purchase tickets to Maseru because it is way to costly for our family of 5, but we did not want to be stuck in Germany either, so we prayed for God to make a way. Immediately after our prayer, Elijah said, "Don't worry we will be on our flight because God says that whatever you ask for in prayer, believe you have received it, and it will be yours (Mark 11:240." I had to agree with his reasoning and 10 minutes later, Bryan went back to the desk and they worked out a way for us to buy refundable tickets out of Jo-burg in February so we could get into Jo-burg and then all we had to do was cancel the tickets at the Lufthansa counter at the Jo-burg counter (we did all the steps involved so we are praying for no problems in the cancelling and refund of our tickets). Now we know a lot more information in case we ever desire to fly through Jo-burg again and it only applies if you have no flights out within the next 90 days so it does not effect short term teams, volunteers or adoptive families, so now we know :)

Now we are getting settled into our home again and we have had the chance to listen to some of our staff trilling and shouting in happiness of our return as well as hugging all the staff, hugging and kissing all the children and playing in playgroup yesterday. I missed it so much and it feels so good to be a part of the Beautiful Gate team again. A massive thanks goes out to Benno and Wendy who helped in the day to day running of Beautiful Gate along with Kristen. The 3 of them did so many good things for the staff and kids while we were away and we have come home to find everything in good order. I thank God for volunteers like them who made it possible for us to have a furlough.