Wow. Just....Wow.

Today was a whirlwind if I ever saw a whirlwind. We found out about 12:30 that our consulate appointments had been scheduled for December 31, which is what we needed to know in order to book plane tickets. Remember when we wanted to leave on Thanksgiving? Tickets around that date were about $1,000 per ticket. For the day we plan on leaving now, $3,000 or more, no joke. We felt sick to our stomachs, that is SO MUCH MONEY. But we had to just bite the bullet and go for it because our other option was to wait until January to leave and that just was not going to happen.

So we contacted 2 different travel agents hoping they could find us something we weren't finding. The first one got back to us with the absolute worst possible flight itinerary that ever did exist. It had us leaving Hong Kong to come back to the U.S. at 1:00 in the morning and dropping us in Chicago where we'd have to find our own way home, amongst other terrible things. And the price for those tickets was outrageous. I was in tears, I just kept telling Mark, "I can't do that flight, I just can't." But other, better flights were either full or so expensive it just didn't make sense to buy them. So we contacted Adoption Airfare, a travel agency that does flights for adoptive parents and other humanitarian trips. They started looking for tickets for us and came up with the same thing, terrible itineraries at horrible prices. Two people were looking for us and they just couldn't find anything acceptable. So what do you do when you're in that situation? You pray, you just stop and pray. And they did. Those 2 agents got off their computers, bowed their heads, and asked God to help them find better flights for us. They opened their eyes, got online, and boom, there it was. An amazing flight, leaving our city, arriving back in our city, a direct flight home, and no 1:00 a.m. departure times. AND they were cheaper than any of the other flights we could find AND they included an in-country flight that we would have had to pay extra for in other itineraries. Mark and I read and re-read and re-read the itinerary they sent because we simply could not believe it, we thought we were missing some horrible detail that would make us cry again. When we realized this was an amazing provision from God, we told them as soon as possible to BOOK THOSE FLIGHTS. At 5:45pm they called and said that we must have a hold on our bank accounts because they couldn't get the payment authorized and they had 15 minutes left to get the tickets. We called the bank, UP THAT WITHDRAWL ALLOWANCE! They did, the agents called back, ITS STILL NOT WORKING, IT WON'T LET US MAKE A FOREIGN WITHDRAWAL AND TIME IS RUNNING OUT! Called the bank back, tick tock tick tock....we prayed out loud and twiddled our thumbs and watched our bank account on the computer, refreshing it minute after minute and finally.....we've never been so happy in all of our lives to see such a large amount of money disappear from our account!!! PRAISE THE LORD. There is no other explanation for this than God's hand in it. HE is faithful. He called us to this journey and HALLELUJAH HE IS FAITHFUL TO COMPLETE IT!!!!! Can I get an Amen?!?!