Fasten Your Seatbelts

Today was the day! At 6:00 a.m., our Alaska team met at the church to take off on this anticipated journey. We loaded up the luggage, prayed, took a quick group picture, and hit the road to Hartsfield-Jackson!

We arrived at the airport, took a bathroom break, checked our bags, took another bathroom break, then headed to the dreaded security line. Luckily, the line moved smoothly and no one had any trouble whatsoever- out of all 32 of us! We found our gate, grabbed a snack, then at 11:05, we jumped right on our five hour flight to Seattle!

Once we all got on the plane, we could all sit back and relax. Oh, and enjoy the AMAZING view!

Everyone was relaxed and rested, and a few of our team members even played an in-flight game of trivia... where Shane and Krista were the winners. The flight was especially awesome for our folks who have never flown (or don't remember flying), because we all got to share the excitement! Justin Cason also was kind enough to purchase a book for us all to read, called, "Serving Evangelism." It was wonderful, it definitely made me giddy about this upcoming week!

We landed in Seattle and had about 45 minutes until our flight to Anchorage departed, so everyone took that opportunity to eat real food! A group of our team actually sat down at a table with two strangers, and after a little discussion we found out that BOTH people were from Georgia! God always finds a way to open little doors to meet more people and build relationships- even in Seattle!

Our three hour flight to Alaska was still relaxing, but after traveling all day... we were getting a little restless. But luckily, the even more beautiful Alaskan scenery welcomed us to our week-long home!

We landed around 9:15 Georgia time (5:15 Alaskan time). We met our GraceWorks leaders, who are SUPER kind, and we were greeted with a delicious meal! After a long 11 hours of traveling, it was safe to say that most of us were ready to go to sleep after we got situated. We are actually staying in an old church that has been converted into bunk rooms for churches to come and stay with GraceWorks. Most of the team decided to go to sleep, but since Alaska is daylight for 20 hours of the day, some of us couldn't quite get into that "sleep mode." So, we explored around where we are staying!

We checked out a trail, a lot of houses and yards, some mountains, a harbor, an interesting little restaurant called "Pho Vietnam 4," and we also found a park! There was trash on the playground, so we cleaned up a little bit!

We were chilling out in the park, when we saw a man that lived next door cutting some fish up. We walked over, and talked to him for about 30 minutes.

Somehow, the conversation moved to everyone daring Jared to eat one of the fish's eyes. Tammy (Jared's mom) said she would pay him $20, so of course he took the offer. The man's son cut him out a fish eye, rinsed it off, and handed it over to Jared... 

We have a video but the wifi isn't too strong, so check my Facebook for it!

Nonetheless, it's been a LONG day. I'm currently in our bunk room at 11:15 (3:15 a.m. Georgia time), and here is a picture of how light it is outside:

The light is definitely going to be an adjustment, but for the most part we are having NO trouble sleeping! Please continue to pray for us, especially as we head into the parks to spread the Love!