We're Not in Kansas Any More

We flew into the KCMO airport, but went to the Kansas side of the river for the week-end. Our friend was our pastor's wife for 9 years and has been gone from us for 9 years. We had a great, delightful, relaxing week-end full of conversation and food - what could be better??

I was planning to take some pictures, but that didn't happen too much, so I will paint some word pictures.

I don't like sitting in the middle seat, but did both ways. I will say that Frontier's seats are not as tightly together as United's. So that was good. The flight there was less than half full, so we could have spread out, but for some reason we stayed put. My sis and I live 4 miles apart, but seldom have quality time to visit, so we did a lot of that on the flight. I hope the lady by the window didn't mind.

Carol has 4 daughters and 12 grandchildren. We had the fun of seeing all of these "girls," who had been a part of our lives. Seeing the grands was grand.

Sitting around various tables while we ate and chatted, sitting in the living room and chatting, driving down the street and chatting, visiting with the girls and chatting - getting the picture? The photos would have been quite boring!

We went to their very large church and really enjoyed Sunday school and worship. Monday we went to visit our denomination's new headquarters building - named Global Ministry Center. They recently moved the operation of our very international church from three crowded old buildings in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, to this wonderful facility in the plains of Kansas. I was impressed with the way they are using every inch effectively, nothing is ornate but very tastefully done, and the technology is fantastic - they are able to do video-conferencing with missionaries and national leaders anywhere in the world.

We saw several people who were part of the mission team on my trip to Brazil a few years ago, another former pastor's wife, and an attorney that used to go to our church and now works for the denomination. It was great fun.

It's funny. As I was thinking about leaving on this trip, I recalled that most of my prior trips to the Kansas City area have been quite traumatic.

1. My first flight ever was to KC from my college in Oklahoma. I flew there for the quadrennial general convention. Leaving KC for Omaha for the rest of the summer, I was stuck on the runway for a long wait, totally fogged in. I remember it clearly, though it was 40 years ago - YIKES!
   
   
2. When I was in college, my sister, brother, and I would get home by any means possible, since we didn't have a car until the last year. One Christmas we were traveling with an acquaintance who was headed our way. As happened more than I like to remember, it snowed heavily that day. We had to take a detour into KC that year to visit his uncle. Not a good idea, and I wasn't happy about it, but when you're begging a ride home, you go where the driver takes you. We got stuck there overnight because of snow. We all ended up sleeping on the floors of his uncle's house (because we always packed the car as full of people as possible to save gas expenses and to get everyone home). We didn't get home until the middle of the afternoon of Christmas Eve day. But at least we were safely there - eventually.
   
   
3. I went to KC a few years later to visit a couple of friends - I was single and headed down there by myself in my little green Mustang. I was not intimidated by traveling alone in those days. Maybe I should have been. I must have taken a wrong turn off the Interstate, because suddenly I had no idea where I was. It was dark, late, and in a not-so-nice part of town. I saw a phone booth, so pulled over into this deserted parking lot to make a call to my friend for directions - with the phone booth out in plain sight, with no booth. YIKES! I quickly discovered that the receiver had been jerked from the box, rendering the phone totally useless. DOUBLE YIKES!! By this time I was, indeed, nervous and frightened. I sent up one of those quick prayers and headed down the road. Soon I saw what appeared to be a convenience store, so I pulled off, very relieved. When I got inside looking for a phone, I discovered, to my amazement, that it was a converted convenience store - now a police station! Amazing, and miraculous. The nice officers directed me to where I needed to go and it was very close by. Soon I was safely with my friends for the night.
   
   
4. Fast forward quite a few years. We went to visit Kristen while she was in college. I forgot some of my clothes hanging on the door at home. I had to head to Wal-Mart for a couple of things to wear.
   
   
5. Then there was the time that Kristen and I had to fly to KC at the end of January to pick up her car and her things and drive back to Colorado. It was a late evening flight and we sat in the waiting area wondering why we weren't boarding. Turns out that there were so many sick attendants that month that there wasn't a crew for our flight. They literally were meeting crews at planes as they came in and asked if anyone had any available hours left to work. Finally around 11:00 we took off, arriving in KC around 1:00 a.m. We went into a "game room" and tried to sleep, using our backpacks as pillows. The games gurgled and burbled all night. The automated announcement about watching out for your baggage kept on all night. It was horrible. Finally 6:00 came and we were able to get on the shuttle to go get her car, a tiny Geo Metro, load it with all her stuff, and head back to Colorado around 11:00 a.m. I made the remark that we'd better not have a flat, or we were in trouble getting the spare "donut" out of the back.
   
   The worst happened - we both dozed off as Kristen was driving and we ended up bouncing through the ditch through the dried weeds. When we finally stopped, one of the tires was totally shredded. I headed up to the roadside to try to flag down some help. Eventually, a car stopped and a truck with a trailer came across the median from the other side. The truck pulled us out with a winch, and the car led us to the next town to get a new tire, after helping us unload and reload that tiny car. The man in the car offered to buy the tire. What a blessing as we realized that both vehicles had "Jesus" bumper stickers on the back. We felt without a doubt that we had been ministered to by angels.
   

So - Kansas City and I have quite the history. This week-end was the best.

Kristen finally had a chance to do a catch-up post at Smoke-Free Mama - check it out, if you have a minute!