We wanted to share a short version of how God has blessed us during this Coronavirus pandemic. A couple weeks ago, as we began hearing more news about the growing pandemic, we started keeping up more regularly with the news, knowing that we had flights scheduled for the end of March to return to the States for furlough.
On Sunday March 15, Josh’s birthday, we learned suddenly that Morocco shut its borders and air space. We made the decision that day to book another set of tickets through Ethiopia and Frankfurt, Germany, knowing that getting through Europe and into the States would likely be a challenge.
The following day, Monday, we made flight arrangements with MAF to fly us on Tuesday morning from Abeche to N’Djamena, arriving in the capital only a couple hours before we would fly out of the country. Getting a flight with MAF was a blessing, because otherwise we would have had to take an evening bus on Monday to the capital, arriving at about 2am.
Monday evening, we learned that on Wednesday, Chad would also be closing its borders and air space. This means that if we had not made the decision on Sunday to leave on Tuesday, we would still be in Chad today with no way out! MAF personnel greeted us with sandwiches in hand at the N’Djamena airport, another blessing because Josh wouldn’t have been able to easily get our family lunch in time to make our next flight.
The rest of our 30+ hours of travel went exceptionally smooth. The kids slept on the flights, everyone did great not touching things in the airports, the lines were short, and we were always moved to the front because of having small children. We arrived in D.C. exhausted but thankful on Wednesday. Thursday we walked around the National Mall, practicing social distancing. Friday, still exhausted from jet lag, we decided to drive from D.C. to Madison, AL, a 12 hour drive. It was tiring, but now we have been here a week and we are so grateful to have a place to call home. We were welcomed by Josh’s parents to a fully furnished home and overstuffed pantry of food (and cleaning supplies!) thanks to Grace Community Church.
In many ways, the transition to America has been a sweet one for our family. After such a busy season of ministry and language learning, we are enjoying time together free of outside distractions and visitors. We are still able to enjoy lots of good American food while easing into the social aspects of life here. We’ve decided to wait 2 weeks before having contact with others, so by next weekend we will probably be looking forward to seeing a few church friends while still practicing social distancing.
We are so thankful for all the ways God has provided in perfect timing for us in the past couple of weeks. We know that all of you have had changes to your plans and uncertainty about what the future holds. I pray that you can see even in small ways how God is with you in these times and that He never changes no matter what our outside circumstances may be.
