Once I was packed and ready to leave for the airport, I went around and made sure all of the kids on our floor were awake. To my surprise, they were all awake and ready to go to breakfast. I went back to the room to see if David was ready yet, which he almost was, and then went to breakfast while he finished packing.
A few of the youth were still in the restaurant eating when I arrived. The long buffet tables had large dishes of pancakes, plantains, rice & beans, and fresh fruit. A chef was standing behind part of the table and would make omelets to order. After a week of limited food options, being able to choose what we ate was great. Knowing today would be a long day in airports, I decided to leave my granola bars in the room and have a bigger breakfast of pancakes and fruit.
As 9am, the time we had to meet Ali and our drivers in the lobby to leave for the airport, grew closer, we all went back to our rooms to gather our luggage. I double-checked with all the youth to make sure they were packed and had them start making the trip down the elevator to the lobby.
When we all arrived in the lobby, the same bell hop that had taken our bags the evening before grabbed our bags and set them in a corner. We weren't sure he knew where we were all going, but Ali told us we could trust him to make sure they were put in the proper van. After we turned in our room keys, we said goodbye to the group from Georgia who was staying another day to see more of the city.
We piled into the vans for one last drive together. The drive from the hotel to the airport was fine, with traffic thinner than it had been the morning before and the streets wider than they were in the downtown area. The morning air was cool, but we could still feel the thick pollution that covered the city.
We drove by a Chili's, a Burger King, a Wendy's, a Dunkin' Donuts, a Church's Chicken, and a Domino's Pizza on our way to the airport. As we approached the airport, I felt a sense of sadness that I would have to leave this country that I had just grown to love. I was still broken hearted after not being able to say goodbye to the village two days earlier.
We got to the airport, unloaded all of our luggage, avoided the men who tried to help us with our luggage who were in search of American dollars, and started to head into the airport. I shook Ubaldo's hand and thanked him several times for all of his help throughout the week. He smiled at me and thanked me back. This was the first time I had seen him smile all week.
We got in line to check-in with our airline and had to say goodbye to Ali. As one of the airline employees checked our passports, we would enter the check-in line. Ali stood by the back of the line and gave us each a big hug as we left her care.
I can't not say enough about how big Ali's heart is and how much she cares about her job. Her passion is infectious. Her joy overflows. God pours through her.
I was last in line to make sure that all of our youth got through the line safely. After all of the youth had told Ali goodbye, it was my turn to do the same. Standing more than a foot taller than her, I bent down and hugged her for several seconds. I thanked her for everything she had done through the week, for helping us in the village and especially helping us when Emily was sick, and told her how awesome she was. She smiled at me and said goodbye. She walked away, ready to welcome the next group she would host that would land in a couple hours.
We went through the line fairly quickly and David made sure that he and I secured exit row seats on our first flight. This meant we would be separated from the rest of our group, but we would have more leg room, so I was fine with the change.
We gathered in a small group while David went through the line to pay our exit fees. In order to leave Honduras, you have to pay about $38 per person. I had never heard of an exit fee before this trip, but I thought it was a small price to pay to get back to my home. While David was in line, we let the kids have 20 minutes to go get breakfast and do some last-minute souvenir shopping.
I stayed with their backpacks and talked with the two or three youth that had decided to stay as well. We watched the people come and go, some of them Honduran and many of them American. Within 20 minutes, everyone was back and we went upstairs to go through security.
The security check in Tegucigalpa was much more thorough than anything we experienced in Nashville. Nashville had run us through the full-body scanners, but this morning they checked our bags by hand twice before we boarded the planes. They took my aloe vera gel that I had forgotten to put in my checked luggage.
Once we had all made it through security, some of us taking longer than others, we made our way to our gate. In order to get to the gate, you had to walk through a large store that sold perfumes, wine, top-shelf liquor, and many other expensive items that I hadn't seen anywhere in this country until now. Thankfully, we made it through the store without any of the youth stopping to look at the expensive goods around us.
We found the gate and sat down to wait for boarding to begin. A little girl who was maybe six years old was brought to our gate by an airline employee and seated next to some of our female youth. She had dark skin so our group started to speak to her in Spanish, hoping to comfort her since she would be flying alone. She sat silently for a minute looking at them and then said, "I speak English." This brought a huge round of laughter to our group and helped ease any nerves for the flight that waited for us.
We soon boarded, with our 12 youth and Tara in the back of the plane and David and I in the middle exit rows. I was seated between a college-aged girl that looked just like a girl I used to date and a former Methodist minister named Scott. The girl had been in Honduras doing mission work for the last month and was ready to go home. Scott had been on a pastor's retreat for his new church, some kind of monk-like organization I was unfamiliar with.
We all talked for the first thirty minutes we were on the plane. I talked with the girl, whose name I never got, about the work she had been doing and the work I had been doing. I talked to Scott about the work both of our groups had been doing and about the Methodist church, since we both have ties to the church.
One we took off, our row grew silent and we all threw put in earbuds to drown out the noise of the plane. I was in a a very somber mood this morning, not wanting to leave this great country and still heavy-hearted over not having been able to say goodbye to Carlos and Alex.
As our flight continued, I got out my journal which had gone untouched for five days now. I started to write whatever came to mind. I wrote a quote from a John Mayer song. I wrote a quote from a Tony Campolo sermon. I wrote about my anger. I wrote about how selfish I was for being so angry and sad. I wrote.
I realized how crazy I must have seemed if either of my seatmates had been reading what I was writing and quickly turned the page of my journal. I had been listening to the saddest music I had on my iPod. I was torturing myself.
And then I realized how selfish I was being. I had wrote about possibly being selfish five minutes earlier, but they were nothing more than ramblings. Finally, my words had hit me. I was focusing so much on what I had missed that I ignored all of the things I had done.
I spent three days in El Rodeo. I met Carlos, Alex, and their families. I worked alongside them for two days. I threw my frisbee with their children. I laughed and prayed with them. How could I forget all of this and focus on my own sadness?
In this moment of realization, I was filled with joy. In this moment, I became a better person. I realized that the sacrifice I had made in staying at the ranch on Thursday was my responsibility, not my downfall. I realized that the things I had done that day made me a better man. I was caring, compassionate, loving, and forgiving on that day. I had never had to take care of someone like I did with Emily that day; I'm better for having not gone to the village that day.
If David had not suggested to me to ask for an exit row on this flight, these thoughts might have never crossed my mind. I might have never pulled out my journal and started writing the random things that were in my head. It's funny how life works sometimes.
Once we landed, David and I exited the plane and waited for the youth. We were back in America. With the time changes from Honduras to Miami, it was just past 5:00 in the evening. Once everyone had deboarded from the plane, we stopped at the bathroom, and began the long walk to customs.
The Miami airport goes on forever. We walked for 10 minutes, took a two minute ride on a train, and walked another 10 minutes before we finally reached the customs desks. We filled out the appropriate forms and took our places in line. Once we got through the lines, we had to collect our luggage, wait in another line, and then hand our baggage to the airline employees to be scanned through the customs scanners. This process seemed to be more confusing than functional. All we did was pull our bags from the baggage claims and drag them about 75 feet to be placed in a large pile of luggage that would be heading to Nashville.
We headed towards security for the last time. We had to wait about 15 minutes in line, but it was no big deal. None of us were stopped for a random check and all our carry-on luggage made it through the scanners with no problems. One of our girls aunt and uncle lived in Miami, so David went with her to meet them so they could take her out to dinner during our four hour layover. The rest of us headed to our gate to meet David when he caught up with us.
The walk from security to our gate was almost as long as our walk from our plane to customs had just been. We walked for ten minutes, took another ride on the raised, electric train, and then walked for five minutes before finding our gate. Some of the youth started complaining about having to walk to our gate before we let them go to have dinner, but I knew it was better that they know where they needed to be before we let them go. It's good to be in charge sometimes.
Once we had found our gate, the very last one in our terminal, I started to tell the youth their instructions for our stay in Miami. We had a little over three hours left before we our plane would start boarding, so I told them they had two and a half hours to do whatever they wanted in the airport. As I spoke, everyone within two of three rows of where I stood got quiet and was watching me. I didn't think I was yelling, but there must have been some sense of authority in my voice as I spoke. These moments crack me up.
The youth left the gate quickly in two groups and Tara and I sat to wait on David. He found us two minutes later and we started to look for a place to eat dinner. Having watched the cooking show the night before, David was in search of a hamburger for dinner. Tara and I just wanted somewhere that we could sit down and relax for a few minutes.
We decided on a restaurant that had a cheeseburger on the menu and featured an island theme, appropriate for Miami. It felt odd, once again, to not have any youth around us, but it also felt great. We ordered our food and talked about the week that had been. We talked about how proud we were of the group. We talked about what they did that made us laugh. And we talked about life.
I had a chicken sandwich and fries for dinner this night. It was overpriced and on any other occasion would have been average at best, but tonight it was one of the best meals I have ever eaten. After dinner, I ordered a piece of key-lime pie to-go that I would eat at the gate later. It wasn't great pie, but it was good and I ate it quickly a couple hours later.
Once we had finished dinner and enjoyed a few more minutes without our twelve teenagers, we headed back to the gate to charge our phones and relax for the last hour before our flight would board. About a third of the group was already back at the gate, huddled in a tight group reading a magazine that one of the girls had bought. The rest of the group wandered back within a few minutes and we all waited for our flight to board.
Knowing we only had two more hours in the air before we would be back home, we were all anxious to board our flight and head home. We all used the restroom one last time and started to gather our things as our boarding time grew closer. They finally called for our flight to board and we headed to the door of our gate.
This was a regional flight, so we would be boarding the flight via stairs after walking onto the tarmac. The walk from the gate to our plane took about three minutes and it was a fairly warm night in Miami. Everyone who was going to Nashville stood in a long line while we waited to board our flight. All of the youth were fairly wound-up at this point, so they were singing songs and making everyone laugh.
After we stood on the tarmac for about 10 minutes, we started to wonder what was going on. An airline employee was standing with us, but he didn't know what was going on either. After ten more minutes, they told us to go back inside. We made the long walk back to our gate and were all seated close to the counter so we could hear what was going on.
It turns out that the captain for the flight had gotten sick and was not able to fly. We all let out a good humored boo as we heard this news and settled in for what we hoped was a short delay. As every flight came in or left from our gate, we asked anyone who resembled a pilot if they could captain our flight. They must have known what was going on because they all apologized and said no with big smiles on their faces.
After about an hour of waiting, our captain had arrived. Re-energized by this news, we anxiously boarded our plane and were more than ready to take off. Almost all of us were seated together on the small plane, so we talked as we prepared for our departure. I had a window seat for the first time in our travels.
As we took off, I watched the lights of Miami engulf my view. You could see the beach and ocean in the distance and everything else was covered in lights. Everyone who could see out of a window watched the bright lights in awe as we rose higher into the sky.
Once we were outside of Miami, the flight grew very quiet and almost all of us fell asleep one by one. I had not been tired when I boarded the flight, but the dark night sky out my window and the dim lights in the cabin lulled me to sleep.
I woke up about 90 minutes later as we were flying over the southern suburbs of Nashville. My eyes were tired and dry, so dry that the view through my contacts was blurry. I tried to take them out and put some water on them, but my eyes were so tired that it didn't matter. We were close enough to home and my brother, Jeff, would be at the airport to drive us so I didn't need to see the worldly clearly at the point.
We finally landed and made a long trek across the runways at the airport to find our gate. We got our things and got off the plane. I waited for one of the employees to get my guitar from underneath the plane while the rest of the youth headed towards the gate. Once I had emerged from the doorway, the youth took off quickly towards the baggage claim area to meet their parents.
As we walked up past security, we could see the parents of our twelve youth standing and anxiously waiting for us. One of them was taking pictures of us as we walked and another held his arms out with gifts for David, Tara, and I. The gifts were very much appreciated, but certainly not needed.
Within five minutes, all of the youth had found their parents, collected their bags, and left the airport. It was well passed 1am by this point, so we were all too tired for proper goodbyes and thank yous.
Jeff led Tara and I to the parking garage to load our bags into the car and make one last journey home. We dropped Tara off, made sure she was safely inside, and started out for home. I got home, took my contacts out, and was in bed within two minutes. It had been a long day, but a good one. I was glad to be home, but I missed Honduras so much.
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