The Copeland Ramblings/

Safe and Sound

 On Thursday night around 11pm we began our journey home to Canada. Our good friends the Rabes drove us to the airport for our 3am flight. The checkin went smoothly and before long we were waiting at our gate. Our visions of how the trip would go vanished when an airport employee found us and let us know that our flight had been cancelled. No, not delayed, cancelled. If our trip home had been bought with just one airline, it would have been their responsibility to make sure we arrived, but we had split the trip into two itineraries because of some great tickets that Deb had found. Thankfully we had left a 19hr window in Madrid, which as it turned out, was a life saver. We were then shuttled off to a hotel in Dakar for the remainder of the night. The hotel wasn’t the greatest place in the world, but it sure had a good view!

Around 10:30 am we went back to the airport to try and figure out what would happen next. No one seemed to know. We were eventually given new boarding passes and around 4pm we took off for Lisbon. In Lisbon, we arrived about 20 mins after our connecting flight was supposed to have taken off! We hurriedly went through customs and security and went to the gate noted on our boarding pass, only to find it empty. It looked a little too empty and after consulting an information screen we realized that our gate had been reassigned. Well, somehow we made it. We were the last ones on the shuttle to the plane. The boys slept all the way to Madrid, we really were not sure what was going to happen next. 

In Madrid we found that none of our luggage hade made it onto our last plane. It took a couple of hours to file a claim before trying to find a place to rest for a while. We had purchased a hotel room for the night but we arrived too late to go to it. Another problem was that we had planned on changing into warmer clothes in Madrid, but, it was all missing! It looked like we’d be flying to Canada with shorts and flip-flops and Debra in a skirt. 

We made our way to checkin and then tried to get some sleep while waiting for checkin agents to arrive at 4:30 am. The poor boys were freezing! The checkin area was not well heated and the boys’ shorts were not cutting it. We were very thankful when agents showed up and we were able to get to our gate which felt a little warmer. Our flight from Madrid to Brussels was short and before long we were running through another airport to make another connection. We were very late getting to our boarding gate but luckily so were many other people. It sure felt good to sit down on our last flight! It was the longest at 8 hours, but it went well. The boys did a great job! They were exhausted but were always ready to board another plane. 

Since our bags were missing, getting out of the Toronto airport was a breeze. Our family brought some clothes for Deb and the boys to change into and before long we were driving to my parent’s home. Before moving up to our temporary apartment at NTMC, we are going to wait for our bags at my parent’s. Supposedly the bags have been located and flown to Toronto, now we are just waiting for the home delivery. We thought that they would have arrived yesterday but nothing yet. 

It is still strange to be here! We are excited to see what God will do in our future here in Canada but we need your prayers and encouragement as we adapt and wrestle with the inevitable culture shock that we are already beginning to feel. 

Feel free to write us if you have any questions! We will update soon once we have more details on what is next. 

On this day..

• Canaan & Emmaus' Room - 2009
• Canaan's Newest Ride - 2007
• Call to the Midwives - 2006
• Valentines <3 - 2005