IOWAY: Individual Outreach with Adults and Youth

PASADENA UPDATE #1

Welcome readers.  It’s good to have you along on this IOWAY Pasadena mission trip.  I have volunteered to be the blog writer and hope to bring you daily updates of our adventures so you will be able to share in part of the mission trip too.

This group of Iowans is a bunch of eager beavers!  Ellie and I arrived in Kansas City Sunday afternoon ahead of schedule to check into our hotel for our overnight stay.  We planned to be there an hour early to welcome everyone as they converged on our hotel meeting place.  We were surprised to find all of the members of our team already there, waiting for Ellie to check them in.  What a group this must be to arrive so far ahead of time, eager for the adventure.  We are flying out of Kansas City on Monday because of lower airfares and the free luggage policy of Southwest Airlines. 

The drive to Kansas City was great with smooth roads and no snow.  Have you heard the saying about there being a gorilla in the room and nobody wants to talk about it?  Well, there is a Goliath in the room for that is the name of a gigantic winter storm that is to be raging when we are scheduled to fly a little after noon on Monday.  And, we are talking about it for we might be stuck there should the storm do what they are forecasting.  We are praying that God will step in and assume the role of David and deal with this Goliath standing in our way!  Time will tell.

After room assignments in the hotel, the group met in the lobby and drove a short distance to begin our adventure with a meal.  The destination was The Golden Corral, only about three miles away so off we went with our car in the lead and Ellie’s trusty GPS on her i-phone telling us where to turn.  Have I ever mentioned that I hate cities?  Okay, enough said about that.  At any rate, when the GPS said we were there, we had arrived on the edge of a big shopping center.  The restaurant was on the other end close to half a mile away and not even visible from where we were.  So much for the wisdom of Hilda, the name Ellie gives to the i-phone voice.

As we left the restaurant and headed back to our hotel for a night’s sleep, we had to navigate the crazy Kansas City suburb roads.  Many years ago the ‘round-a-bouts’ escaped from England and entered the eastern seaboard.  Can you believe one has illegally entered Missouri?  We had to navigate around it in the dark on slippery roads for it started to spit ice and snow by then.  We eventually did get back to our hotel and joined together for a meeting.  The hotel is undergoing renovation and things were a little messed up but we were told we could meet in the breakfast room.  It was locked so they sent a guy to unlock it and had given him a ring of more than a dozen keys and he tried every single one of them only to discover the key ring was for the kitchen area instead.

Eventually we were able to get into the room and Ellie explained the schedule for the next day and introduced a couple of exercises to help us get to know each other.  The drivers and copilots met afterwards and looked over maps, etc. to be a little familiar with what to expect when we got to the rental car location in Los Angeles.  Then it was off to bed with visions of the snowstorm brewing in our heads.

                                                                         

 UPDATE #2

The morning (Monday) was rather leisurely for we were not scheduled to fly out until 12:20 p.m.  The first challenge came when the shuttle to the airport only held half of our group.  Everyone had two suitcases, one for their personal items and one filled with items pre-packed for our mission to Skid Row after the Rose Parade part of our trip.  The shuttle had to make two trips to get us all to the airport and even then we were packed into the vehicle with all the extra luggage.  When we arrived at the terminal, we were greeted by a very long line at the Southwest Airlines check-in desk.

We all arrived at the gate in time and had our monstrous load of luggage checked in.  The weather seemed to be holding, at least up to this point.  The second challenge came when they announced our plane was delayed because of weather issues in Dallas.  Long story made short, we left over two hours later when we finally did get a pilot and a plane.  Many flights to the east had been cancelled due to the storm called Goliath.   Once we were on board, our plane was de-iced twice and we sat for another half an hour before we even began to move.  Eventually though, we were free of the earth and were in the air.  The weather had turned bad as we were boarding the plane and snow began to fall greatly cutting visibility.  But we made it and were on our way.  GOD WON!!  GOLIATH LOST!!

It’s amazing how a few minutes after take off, you find yourself floating above the clouds and the sun is shining, a far cry from what we had left a few minutes before.  We heard the captain turn off the seatbelt sign and we were free to move about the cabin.  There we were, hanging in the sky for over three hours, six miles above the earth, passing over plains, mountain ranges and deserts before descending into California air.  We moved more than halfway across our country in that short time.

Once at baggage claim we pulled all the suitcases from the conveyer and boarded the Enterprise shuttle to the rental car place where we were outfitted with five vehicles.  That went pretty smoothly and we headed out in a caravan for our week’s home at the Residence Inn in El Segundo, California.  The other half of our group met us there.  They arrived from Indiana earlier in the day and were anxiously awaiting our arrival so we could go to eat as a group and begin to bond.  Now our group of Petal Pushers, all in matching purple sweatshirts, was thirty-four persons strong.

We now became a caravan of eight vehicles, loose on the dark California streets, trying to find the Hometown Buffet a few miles from our hotel.  The food was excellent, partly because we were all starving and partly because it was simply very good.  They opened a special party room for us to enjoy our meal together and we soon filled it with purple shirts and laughter.

We all found our way back to the hotel where Ellie called a short meeting to get everyone on the same page for our first day of work at the Rose Palace tomorrow.  Now it’s time to sleep after an exhausting day sitting in airports, climbing in and out of shuttles, airplanes and rental vehicles and driving on unfamiliar streets.  But, thankfully we are all here and anxious to do God’s bidding as we begin tomorrow to decorate floats for the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day, and in particular, the Lutheran Hour Float, the only Christian float that has ever been in the parade!

Lynn Menz