After months of training and preparation, today was finally the day to begin our journey. We began the morning with more meetings to get to know each other and practice telling our stories. We finished meetings and headed out for a brief break. While on this break we learned that our flight from Chicago to London had been cancelled. Caroline decided the best course of action was to leave as soon as possible to get to Chicago to hopefully find another flight. We cut our break an hour and a half short to get going. For those of us who hadn’t packed yet this was quite a shock. We took a bus from Hope to Chicago. We waited in line at the British Airline station for what felt like forever until it was officially confirmed that we had no other options and must wait until tomorrow to fly out. It was definitely a twist in plans but patience is a virtue and today we were tested.
After several hours of waiting and snacking and waiting, we took a shuttle bus to our hotel for the evening. Sixteen hungry souls were very eager to eat and relax. We spent the evening at the hotel playing pick-up basketball and volleyball, just preparing for our week spent playing games with kids. Although God threw a wrench in our plans we had a lot of quality time spent with each other and learned a few interesting things. First, James Ellis does not like water or the texture of blackberries. Jacinda really really likes cheesecake. Joey not only is a track star but also broke Coach Mitch’s ankles in basketball. Anna Bremmer took the lead in getting us back to the hotel. While the rest of us ate dinner, poor Emily and Abbey only got their food in time for a late-night snack. OHHH and we cannot forget the two pet parrots we have been hanging out with at the hotel. Excited to spend the day learning more and more things before heading to the airport to finally catch our flights to London. Ghana we are ready to meet you!!
Love, Drew and Megan