This last week we left Colombia and began our four day journey to Vietnam. Our first layover was in Houston for almost 8 hours, then we flew to LA for a 12 hour layover. By the time we went to check into our LA flight, we had already been traveling and sleeping in airports for two days. At 3 AM me and two others on my team realized that our Vietnam visa’s had not yet processed. We had eight hours until our plane left, and 8 hours to pray for them to come through. At 5 AM our squad had to go through security, but the 3 of us with no visa and our squad leader had to stay behind. This was really hard because it meant that we had to say our goodbyes to our squad much sooner than we thought we would. For the remaining six months of our trip, our squad will be split up. The 40 people that I have spent the last three months living with, who became my family, I will no longer see except on travel days. I was looking forward to a 20 hour flight with some of my best friends, when all the sudden I had to say goodbye to them right there. I still have amazing people on my team, but had become best friends with some people on other teams. We spent the next six hours sitting in the corner of the airport lobby by the bag drop, praying for visa’s to somehow come on time. During this time, several news stations were in and out of the airport every 30 minutes, filming for holiday travel content. Sitting in the corner of an airport with giant hiking packs and a guitar draws some attention. I was on the news five times that day, 4 of those times being interviews, and 2 of those interviews being me singing a Thanksgiving jingle with my guitar that they asked me to come up with. You could say it was the most interesting day I’ve probably ever had.

By 11 am, we realized our visas weren’t coming in and moved on to Plan B while the rest of our team and squad boarded a plane to Vietnam. We rebooked our flights for Thursday (Thanksgiving), hoping the visas would come in before then. And grabbed an Uber to the house of someone who has connections to the World Race. They graciously allowed us to stay in their home while they were away for the holidays.

This travel disaster couldn’t have turned into a better blessing. I had free access to laundry, warm showers, and the comfiest bed I’ve ever been in (I slept for 15 hours that night). In the next 4 days, we got to go to Hollywood Boulevard, see the Hollywood sign, eat In-N-Out, and go to the beach twice! A different girl on our squad was from LA, and her mom showed us around and took us to do all the things!

We woke up Wednesday morning with our visa’s fully processed and flew out to Vietnam the next day! We’ve been in Vietnam for a couple days now and it is truly amazing! Most days it’s 90° but that’s ok, it’s better than the 20° and snowing that’s currently happening in MI. The food here has real flavor and is even spicy, something that Colombia severely lacked.

Our ministry of teaching English classes starts soon, but for now we have been lesson planning. I will share more about that in the next blog!

My tshirt fundraiser has ended, and it was a success! I was able to raise a couple hundred dollars. Thank you to everyone who bought a shirt!

God bless,

Shelby