Get Ready

I flew to LA on Thursday night for a Relay for Life conference and I have so many different topics to write about.  I'm going to start with my flight on Thursday, but I'll probably be touching on the weekend most of this week.  Maybe a full week of blogging is back in the palm of my hands - time (and tax clients) will only tell.

Thursday after work I went home and Austin and William drove me to the airport in San Jose to fly down to LA.  The flight was similar to the annual flights to Dallas I took as a kid: quick ascent, time for a beverage and peanuts, trash pickup immediately following our first sip of our drinks, descent.  Short and sweet.  I was thrilled to find out that for a clear waste of $5 I could purchase in-flight wifi and watch last week's season premier of Private Practice on my iPad.  Only problem: once I had paid the $5 the internet wouldn't work.  It kept saying I was connected but it wouldn't actually connect.  I was going to just give up and read my new book when the person next to me asked, "So you watch tv shows on your iPad? how does that work?"  I joked "well, right now it doesn't..." then explained how it SHOULD work.  This casual conversation on tv shows took the general airplane transition to discuss where we're flying from, where we're each headed, etc.

I explained our involvement in Relay for Life and the upcoming conference.  I told him how we'd just fallen into it shortly after moving to Seaside in May and realized I was telling an awful lot of information to a stranger.  But he seemed like one of those people who just pulls information out of you by nature and is genuinely and sincerely interested. (in a non-creepy, non-threatening way)  It was only a few minutes until I realized why he seemed that way.

After I explained Relay he mentioned he was headed to a conference too so I asked about his.  He said he'd be meeting with dignitaries and leaders from Brazil in New York for the weekend before heading to Brazil next month.  I said "you mentioned you're a teacher - why Brazil?"  He said, "I was a teacher.  MY wife and I quit our jobs to be full time missionaries and are called to a mission in Brazil.  We're moving there later this month".  Whoa.  He had also shared he has a son William's age and just found out his wife is pregnant again, and they're moving to BRAZIL.  I thought I had taken a leap of faith with this Relay thing, but hearing him talk about his fear and excitement for his mission was inspiring.

We talked about church, church families, liturgy styles, and our personal journeys in our faiths.  I have NEVER divulged personal information like this to a stranger on a plane, but it felt so normal-  it was odd.  And moving.  It wasn't like I was sitting by a stranger on a plane; it truly felt like we were strategically and very intentionally placed on the same plane to meet and share our stories. 

And as we left and he prayed for both of our conferences, I told him that the disabled wifi was the best $5 I'd ever thrown away.