Thailand...Not quite yet. haha.

This morning we got up at 3 a.m. to get all of our stuff together to leave the base at 4 a.m. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:10 a.m. from Kahului, Maui. During the previous night and the early morning hours the wind was so strong and loud that it kept me from getting the sleep that I needed. Everything was going pretty smoothly and all of our groups arrived at our gate and we were waiting for the call to board and suddenly the sky got super dark and it started raining harder than I have ever seen before in my life and the wind was out of control! The flight before us had to turn around and come back because the Honolulu Airport was shutting down due to the extreme weather. It was already past our boarding time when a man came over the loud speaker and informed us that at that point they were still waiting to hear back from someone at the Honolulu Airport to inform us what our flight status was or if we could find another flight over. He also told us that there was a very intense and large storm between Honolulu and the island of Molokai and it was heading toward Maui. To make a long story short, all of us ended up camping out in the Maui Airport for over 6 hours, watching the hurricane-like conditions outside. We were told that our connecting flight in Honolulu on China Airlines had to leave without us and there would not be another one flying out that day. We had to get ahold of people back at the base to come pick us up and we had to go claim our baggage which somehow ended up getting soaked!!! It was such a long trip home, it usually only takes 1/2 hour to get back to the base, but it took over an hour! The vans we are transported around in aren't luxurious by any means.. the ceilings leak when it rains too hard -- and somehow I ended up picking the "lucky seat" in the van where there was a constant trickle and sometimes a flow of water streaming onto me!! It was raining so hard that we could hardly see in front of us, the roads were flooded out and the whole towns were shut down because the weather was so horrible and there was no power. However, we got home safe and sound AND soaked.--(atleast me) haha. We didn't have electric at the base for a while so since we were all exhausted from the early morning, most of us decided to go into our sad and empty room to nap in our beds one last time. I was so strange because when we left that morning I thought that I would never be back in that room again!
Sooo.. all that being sad -- what is going on now you might be thinking?
Well, we are tentatively planning on leaving tomorrow morning at 9:45 a.m. to head BACK to the airport to catch our flight at 12:45 to Honolulu. We will have a 16 hour layover there, so I have been told that we will be staying at the YWAM base for a bit so we can attempt to get some rest before we head off to Tokyo, Japan. After that we will fly to Taipei, Taiwan where we will have a 4-6 hour layover before heading to Bangkok, Thailand which is the final destination for the first stage of our outreach. *** Like I said, this is only tentative because the brunt of the storm has not even reached Maui yet, so we are expecting it to arrive here early in the morning or sometime tomorrow. I was told that it is a big tropical depression that could possibly turn into something more as time goes out... I'm not sure how things are going to pan out, but one thing that I'm sure of is that we are in God's hands and He is taking care of us! However, I'm not opposed to any extra prayers you may have for our safe travels!!!
Sorry for the long, rambling story - but I just wanted to share with all of you the first interesting experience i've had as a missionary. I'm sure there will be many, MANY more to come! Our group handled it great, very maturely and responsibly! :) So as of now, we are going to attempt this all again tomorrow morning! Thank you for your prayers!

I love you all!!! Have a wonderful day!