Travelling Mercies
"The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning." (Lam. 3:22-23)
Hello friends,
I has officially been just past a week and a half since I arrived in Oxford. Written out like that, it sounds like much too little time for all that has happened. I am doing well, and I have been so blessed by the notes, prayers, and “checking-ins” that many of you have sent me. Thank you.
Hopefully by this weekend I can send out another email chronicling what the time here has looked like so far, but I wanted to start out with the trip across the pond, because it ended up being much more eventful than I had expected!
My flight out of Columbia left Thursday evening (the 4th of January), and there was the usual flurry of last packing, saying goodbye to the pets, and hustling all 6 of us into the car. We made it to the airport in good time, I said a last goodbye (and many waves) to my precious family, and went through security with no problem.
As I waited by the gate to board, I checked through my text messages one last time. A professor - a friend of a friend - knew that I was flying that day and had sent me a quick text: “Travelling mercies!” I know that this is a common phrase, but for some reason it stuck out particularly to me amid the myriad of “goodbye,” “safe travels,” “we’re praying” texts that day.
“Yes Lord,” I thought. “I desperately need your traveling mercies here, as I embark on a completely new and just a bit terrifying adventure.” It turns out I would need them even more than I imagined, and he supplied enough and more than enough.
The first flight was smooth, a short connecting flight from Columbia to Chicago.
When I arrived in Chicago, I found out that another student heading to SCIO (the program I’m here with) was going to be on the same flight to England with me. We met up and enjoyed talking for a bit before the flight boarded. We flew out of Chicago around 9pm, and as I stepped off of the boarding bridge onto the plane I fully expected it to be the last step on American “soil” for 4 months.
However, about 3 hours into the flight, when we were out over the eastern half of Canada, the announcement speaker came on:
“This is the pilot speaking. There seems to be a problem with our fuel gauge, and I do not feel comfortable flying across the Atlantic at night with a gauge we can’t read. So, out of an abundance of caution, we’re going to turn back to Chicago and get everything checked.”
My heart sank a bit as I began to do the mental math: even if the flight got back in the air that night (it would be 1am by the time we got back to Chicago), it would be quite unlikely that we’d make it to Oxford by the program arrival time.
We did turn back, the flight was cancelled for the night, and we were given vouchers and a rescheduled flight for the next day. God’s travelling mercies were so near as the other student and I figured out luggage pickup, new timetables, booking a hotel, and finding (safe) transport to said hotel in the middle of the night in Chicago.
The rescheduled flight went smoothly, and Friday around 11pm local time we at last made it into Heathrow (12 hours after the original flight would have landed).
More travelling mercies arrived, this time in the form of a church friend and his son who picked us up from the airport and drove us the hour-and-a-half from London to Oxford. It was strange to see all the cars driving on the opposite side of the road, made even more so by late hour. It was a peaceful drive, though.
We arrived at our destination and the two of us disembarked. As we walked down Pullens Lane in the middle of the night, I was again aware of God’s travelling mercies in providing me someone else to be traveling with. Walking alone down that lane - safe as I now know it is - would have been quite concerning to me had I been alone.
At last, we made it to The Vines (the house all SCIO students are staying at this semester) and to bed. I had had about 3 hours of sleep during the roughly 24 hours of travelling, and I rested well. In the morning, I woke up to England and new mercies yet again.
And that, my friends, is the chronicle of how I made it (at last) to Oxford, England.
- Karah :)
So glad to hear you made it safely despite the delays, Karah! I’m looking forward to reading about your adventures. Just this past week I found that a Habit friend of mine was in the SCIO program in 2010. She was thrilled to hear of another adventurer.