Our journey started at 9:45 AM Thursday the 12. M Squad or the expedition route team loaded up in 3 vans to head to the Atlanta International Airport.
We spent about 3 hours driving to the airport and our flight was scheduled to leave at 4:45 PM.
The first flight was on time and was headed to Paris, France. It was scheduled to take 8 hours from take off to landing and it did exactly that.
We arrived in Paris at around 7:30 AM their time zone and had to go through a TSA security check to get to our next gate.
The security check took our Squad about an hour to get through. We had a couple of people get stopped, because France has different rules about liquids and how they are to be stored in your bags. After TSA we all made our way to our gate in the Paris-Degual airport. We made it with about 2 hours before the next flight was scheduled to take off. So some of the team got snacks and coffee, while others took the time to sleep. I went around trying to take in some of the scenery and views around the airport.
Our next flight was scheduled to take off at 930 AM and we did just that. This flight was going to take us about 3 hours from take-off from Paris-Degual to landing in Bucharest, Romania. And that’s exactly what happened we landed in Bucharest at 12:45 with the time change. In Romania we had to go through customs and we were instructed to go without signing a certain paper basically saying that we needed to quarantine for 14 days on entry.
So we were going through lines, everyone is speaking Romanian so this makes it pretty difficult to understand what they are asking you to do and be prepared for when you get up to the front.
I get up to the front of my line and the guy makes me go to a separate table to fill out the paper we weren’t supposed to fill out. So it starts getting a little panicky, because this is the paper we were told not to fill out. As I was filling it out someone from my Squad tells me to get in another line and when I get to the front of this line the guy looks at my passport and doesn’t require the Quarantine paper.
It felt like God was working right there. Everyone from our squad made it through customs without having to sign the Quarantine papers!!!
In Bucharest we met up with our ministry host and started packing up in a couple different vehicles. Our host informed us that we made it literally 1 day before the USA went red. If we would have been delayed on any of the flights or arrived a little later we would have automatically had to have Quarantined when we arrived to Romania. God again showing some of His plan.
From the Bucharest airport we had a 3 hour drive to our final destination.
With a cumulative 30 minutes to an hour of rest I was looking forward to resting in the car ride, but our driver asked me to sit in front to keep him awake!
It ended up being a great thing because I had more leg room and I got to chat with a native from Romania. I got the low downs and information on cities and people. I also got to practice some of the Romanian that I had been trying to learn. It really was a great drive filled with stories and information.
25 hours later we arrived at our final destination at around 9 PM Romanian time. But that is not the end of this travel day.
We still had to go to the store and get water for our squad and wait for all of our bags to get in.
Once everyone was in and settled and we had a debriefing of what we needed to be ready for the next day it was about 11:50 PM.
I had been awake for over 35 hours and had been traveling for about 28 of those.
The first travel day for the World Race was in the bag and also my first time ever being out of the country. It was long and tiring, but it was also full of sights and scenes. The people were great and God was in every bit of it.
Proverbs 16:9!
