Traveling Across the World, Part 1

We got all 6 suitcases packed up, and all three carry-ons stuffed full, and we headed to the airport bright an early on the morning of November 3.

The trip from Virginia to Manila was a LOOONG one! Our flight path took us from Washington DC to Atlanta, then from Atlanta to Tokyo. The flight from Atlanta to Tokyo was 14.5 hours, so it was pretty brutal.

That's a big airplane!

We discovered on this flight that it seems Elias gets airsick. That was not pretty. We were only about halfway through that long flight when he started throwing up. However, we had with us everything we needed for him to change clothes and brush his teeth, and Justin and I both stood up so that he could lay across all three of our seats, and he managed to get about 2.5 hours of sleep. Justin and I, however, didn't sleep at all. It was long, but we survived. And we knew that we just had to survive this leg, because we had booked a hotel room in Tokyo and were planning on taking an overnight rest stop there before continuing the journey on to Manila.

To massively compound the drama, however, we were about 4 hours away from Tokyo when we discovered that I had not carried on the correct documents, and so there was a chance we wouldn't be allowed to enter Japan. This would have been absolutely disastrous. With Elias sick, and Justin and I completely sleepless, we did not have the mental and emotional resources to figure out what to do if that was the case. Our flight to Manila wasn't until the following evening, so there was a chance we would either be stuck in the Tokyo airport for 24 hours, or that we could get onto an earlier flight to Manila, but then our luggage would be stuck in Tokyo... It was really terrifying, and we felt completely helpless. Justin had paid for a 24-hour wifi pass on the plane, so he reached out to everyone he could think of that might be able to help smooth the way for us, and he also reached out to our friends and families and had them praying for us. We decided that we would just try getting into Tokyo when we landed and see if they let us through, and it was an absolute miracle that they let us through without question. We are so grateful for those who prayed, and to God for smoothing the way even though we had been told there was no way it would happen.

After we got through the airport, everything else went according to plan. All our luggage arrived, we caught the shuttle to our hotel, which was only a couple minutes away, and we collapsed into bed.

Click here for Part 2.

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