Thursday, September 8, 2011

Do Not Be Anxious About Anything!

Well, we've all heard that one before...but today, I was stubborn!  I went to bed at 3am again after blogging once all the kids were in bed.  I have this issue that my twins like to write too so while I start writing, they start talking and before you know it we've gone an hour and a half and it's crazy! 

Anyway, I was awake at 8am freaking out about to make myself ill worried about flights.  Would we be able to find a flight for the 15th, how much would it cost, can we get J and our friend's child on the same flight with us.  I got up and starting surfing the web trying to find phone numbers.  We had a travel agent do all of the arrangements for us and with the Hurricane changing everything he did the first leg of changing with no fees.  Then he had surgery...and I have felt terrible in having to bother him while he's healing!

But our challenge is that we had no way of knowing if our departure would have to be changed til we got here.  So at 8am I'm trying to figure out what to do on my own....I've always been an Expedia kind of girl so this is daunting.  I email our agent, I email a friend and I facebook a friend who I think might have a clue as to what to do...and then realize it's the middle of the night in my real world and there's nothing I can do.

So, I pray about it...and go back to bed and try to sleep a little more.  Finally at 10am I get up and decide to give it a try on my own.  I grab my trusty Latvian phone and call the Latvian number for FinnAir.  Mercifully, the wonderful woman Eva speaks English.  I tell her our situation and she finds our records and says she'll need to work on it...can she call me back.  I thank her and wait for her call. 

Shortly after she does call me back and give me good news and bad news.  Good news is she found flights that all 8 of us can fit on...the bad news is it will be $250 to fix the six tickets (PER PERSON!) AND 150 lats per ticket on J and our friend's child.  Deep breaths...we'll figure it out.  My biggest concern is having our behinds on a plane on the 15th.  So I tell her fine, we'll take them and figure out any reductions later.  I'm kind of in a tight spot boys (That's a movie reference for my parents.)

Not that easy...she can't take my card over the phone...can we come to the airport?  Well, sure, that's not a problem...ugh...just not the way I had planned to spend my day.  Showers done we head to the airport to work it all out.  Before I go in their offices, I check my email once again to see if there's anything from our agent...no word.  But an encouraging email from my FB friend saying she'd be praying and to kindly but firmly keep asking for a supervisor.

FinnAir was wonderful...they called their supervisor but unfortunately because the ticket was issued by American Airlines, there's nothing they can do.  And they don't have a number I can call.  Grateful for free wifi in the airport, I start searching for American's help desk line while sitting at Lido.  Finally I find a number and using my $2 a minute phone, call.  I get this wonderful woman named Sandy who checks it all out and sympathetically listens to my story...she checks and says the best she can do is if we can leave two days after our scheduled departure since that is the amount of time we were behind in arriving.  I explain to her it isn't that easy...I'm working with the courts here in Latvia...we're adopting!  She says I should speak to a supervisor (wink wink...thanks Sandy!) She puts me in touch with Ann and I explain it all again...Ann thinks about it, explains her side.  I recap to her that we have court Monday, Visa interviews Tuesday, pick up Visas Wednesday, leave Thursday.  I assure her we aren't just hanging out to sightsee some more.

She puts me on hold...and then comes back to say she's going to confirm the seats and I'll need to get back to FinnAir to take care of the other two seats.  She finishes and says "is there anything else I can help with?"  I said, well, how much is it going to cost me?  Her reply, Oh nothing...I just exchanged them for you.  I cried, called her an angel, told her she was an answer to prayer and ran to the FinnAir office! 

We did have to pay for those to be changed but Ann saved us $1500!!!  And it's so cool...because we found out later we needed to pay a little more to stay longer in our apartment too.  But here's a cool story too...when we thought we needed to pay for the ticket exchange, we were trying to remain calm and figure out how we would finagle the money to make it work.  It's cool y'all...it's all His but we've got to be responsible with it.  So math lesson...we had a certain amount we were encouraged to bring in cash by our agency.  We thought it was way too high but complied.  We knew how much we needed for court costs and we knew how much the apartment would cost and we knew from our trip in March we could use our cards and ATM's all over.  But grumble, grumble, fine we'll take it.  Well, checking out our accounts back home, thinking of which cards to use...it dawned on us, how much cash do we have left?  We deducted the amount we needed to pay for legal stuff and the amount left over was EXACTLY what it would have cost us if we'd had to pay for the change.  It just encouraged me soooooo much!

We returned to the apartment and decided to take our usual walk of the area.  We needed to get passport pictures/visa pics made of the boys so we went in search of that so we could handle it for the next day.  We found ourselves again by the Dome Cathedral, then looking around St. John's Church and this cool little walkway that used to be the monastery entry.  We walked through a neat courtyard that had many restaurants and the food smelled sooooo good.  But we were on a mission.  Out the other side of this ancient courtyard and there was a brand new mall (the malls here go up instead of out and have really great modern architecture).  Inside is where the passport pics were so we went down and she was still open! 

Mark that off the list!  While we waited for them to be printed there was a tiny pet shop across the way so we looked around.  We saw our first ever chinchilla for sale.  He was so cute!!  Photos done, E bouncing off the walls, frustrations with parenting stuff starting to bubble and I was hungry!  We walked out and Gary asked me what I wanted to do.  I spouted off "I want to find a lovely restaurant with a beautiful courtyard where we can have an amazing meal and relax outdoors and just appreciate we're in Latvia!  But it's late and I seriously doubt that's going to happen!"  Then my sweet Marleigh said, Hey mom...why don't we go back to that place that smelled so good.

So we did...the Black Pigeon was our dinner spot with this beautiful courtyard in the middle of a 17th century old monastery...and as we read about it, isn't it fitting it's actually a hotel restaurant?  And it was soo good!  They had a family style dinner that was supposed to feed 4...she looked at us and said "it will be enough."  Sausages, pickles, french fries, pork ribs, two different sauces (Latvians like their sauces), onion rings, chicken "shishkals" shishkabobs and of course our obligatory coke and coke light.  It was so refined they brought us cloth placemats when we were seated and little wine glasses to drink our cokes and apple juice from.  And the whole meal for all seven of us was about 35 lats.  A little over our daily budget but we took home enough meat to make another meal out of it!

It really was relaxing and fun and a wonderful experience eating a true Latvian meal.  Check one more experience off the list please!  We walked back through Old Riga and it was fun to see it at night.  The cobblestone streets, the night life (both good and questionable)...there was a three or four piece 50s style music band playing right on the square...if it weren't chilly I would have enjoyed sitting and listening for a while.  But our little one was really really tired. 

I hung back and watched them walk...girls goofing off taking turns walking funny, boys dancing like sillies as we walked past the band, Daddy holding the hand of little E as we walked and him dancing along. 

Closing down for the night with Circle Time and funnies about the day...I love this part of our family time.  It's when I was reminded, so gently by my sweet daughter..."do not be anxious about anything" cause it's in the Bible!  Please continue to pray for us.  We are trying to have fun (and we are) but we feel distractions and pulls trying to steal our joy.  There are many who realize this is it for J, he's really going...and some, not all, are trying to make that departure emotionally difficult for him.  Mae even said as her prayer request tonight for "evil to just stay away from us."  So please be praying.

And me?  I'll remember that in all things to give thanks...but to not be anxious for any of it.  Cause He's already figured it out...He just hasn't shown me how yet.

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