Praise God! We all arrived safely in Leskovic last night, but it wasn't easy. First of all, Valerie's paternal grandmother passed away and she felt she needed to stay back in LA so she didn't come with us, so the team consists of 21 singers, Pastor Darwin, Nena, Meiring and myself. We have 7 sopranos, 6 altos, 4 tenors and 4 basses. Then after the main team left, I got a phone call from Eugene saying Valerie would like to join us later, so we are going to try to get her to travel with the second Cerritos short term team coming next week, so her coming depends on her ability to get an airline ticket on the same flight as the Cerritos team. Pray that God's perfect plan will be done in this matter.
For some reason, the main team of 21 travelers did not all get boarding passes at LAX for their connecting flights through Dulles and Munich. So when the team got to Washington DC, about half the team were told the airplane was overbooked and they are unlikely to make the flight. On top of that, Lufthansa booked Echo Lau and Esther Lau in the same seat, and worse, Ellison Cheng and Jessica Cheng in the same seat also. There was also another group loudly demanding an additional 16 seats. We just quietly left it to God, and Victoria just made the plane as the last of our team while the other group which was making all the loud complaints just disappeared. When we got to Munich, Pastor Darwin hurried to catch his flight and made it, but we found out that 8 of our team members were on standby since Lufthansa had also overbooked this flight (all this stemming from all of us not getting boarding passes at LAX). The ticket agent said it was very unlikely we could all catch this plane, the last flight for the day from Munich to Belgrade. He said our only chance was for connecting flight passengers to be late so we could take their seats. Gloria led the group to pray for this matter since we had a bus waiting in Belgrade to take us to Leskovic. We even made contingency plans for Nena to lead the remaining members to catch a public bus to Leskovic in case they had to come in the next day. Esther and Czrilla were then given two business class seats, and then Amanda was given one seat leaving 5 of us waiting at the boarding area. The rest of us boarded the airport bus to the airplane and as we waited for the remaining passengers. The airport bus pulled up a second time, and to our delight, the remaining 5 team members including Nena came off the bus onto the airplane. God had answered our prayers (and yours) again! When we arrived in Belgrade, all that was missing was one of Nena's suitcase, and the airline said they would track it down and deliver it to her in Leskovic. We drove without incident arriving about 11 PM local time (3 PM LA time) and were warmly greeted at the church by Pastor Stefan, some of his church members, and our Cerritos team headed by Pastor Joseph Lao.
Since the Cerritos team is already here and taking up some of the rooms, our living arrangement here for the next week is quite crowded. All the girls are staying in the basement in two small connecting rooms. The guys including Pastor Darwin are in one big room, and Meiring and Marshall are staying in a room with 8 bunk beds. There is one shower for the guys and one for the girls (and one for the Cerritos team upstairs). In addition, there are two extra toilet rooms for the team, so living will be quite Spartan so pray for God's grace for us to live together in these circumstances.
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