We were up at 5:00 this morning and at the airport by 6.  Flight took off at 7:00am and we went from KC to Atlanta.  I was feeling quite tired this morning and just as I was about to fall asleep on the plane, the very nice girl sitting in the window seat next to us decided that she needed to use the restroom (mind you we were only 20 minutes into the flight…) 😒😒 I guess this is just the first markings of the pilgrimage.  On the topic of the word “pilgrimage” – you will probably hear me say that word a lot so just a note on the significance of this.

According to the ever reliable Wikipedia (sorry to all of my English teachers who told me to never site Wikipedia in a paper…):

A Christian pilgrimage was first made to sites connected with the birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

A pilgrimage is more than just a vacation, it is more than just a trip.  A pilgrimage is a journey of prayer, it is a time to sacrifice and to offer the sufferings for a greater cause, in this case I will be offering up this pilgrimage for all of those intentions that you have sent me and for all of my family and friends.

Needless to say I didn’t get any sleep on the first flight, so I found some liquid encouragement once we got to our next gate:

  
Nom nom nom nom!!

We had about a two hour layover so we found some open seats and just relaxed before the next flight.

We took off from Atlanta at 12:05 to head towards New York.  (No interruptions on this flight so I slept the entire way! 😁😁) I’ve never been to NY so I was hoping to catch a sight of the city on our way in, but it was on the other side of the plane.  However, the clouds outside our window were pretty cool, it’s crazy to think that we were actually so high up that we were above THREE layers of clouds – sorry, science nerd moment!

   
 
Still feeling the effects of the lack of sleep, Celina and I thought it would be fun to see if we could upgrade our seats to First Class and get one of the fancy seats that lay all the way down. So once we touched down in New York we went straight to the ticket counter to inquire about how much that would cost and if seats were even still available (yes I do realize I just told you this trip would be a pilgrimage and we would be sacrificing – but I am still human! 😉).  

The very nice gentleman at the counter told us that there were seats available and that he could upgrade us for the low, low price of $4,000…to which we responded with laughter!  He went on to say that there were also seats still available in Comfort Plus and that those had more leg room, reclined just a bit further than Business Class and came with complimentary drinks (and I am not talking about Coke products here people ).  These were available for $109…Celina and I looked at each other and were debating if we wanted to spend the money or just suck it up, the man could tell that we were debating it and said “if I could get you the upgrade for free would you want to do it?”  My response – is the Pope Catholic!?!? Yes, we will take it!!  So it just goes to show that if you don’t ask you never know what you will miss out on!  That man did not have to comp the ticket for us, he could have just said nothing and Celina and I would have paid for the seat, but instead and was kind and generous and gave us an upgrade at no cost to us and expecting nothing in return!  I am a big fan of paying it forward and you can bet I will be looking for that opportunity to pay the kindness and generosity forward to someone else!

I wish I had gotten the name of the man that helped us or snapped a picture, but he was SUPER friendly and helpful!  He went on to tell us that the only seats that were still open were part of the four-plex in the middle of the plane (our previous business class seats were part of a two-set and we would have the window to recline against). We were waivering a bit as to whether we wanted to give up the wall when the man told us that if we got to the gate early we could ask the desk if there were any seats that no one had checked in yet for, and that it might be possible for us to switch over to a two-set still within Confort Plus!  So you can bet we got to the gate early!  In fact we went straight there and sat at the gate for 3+ hours so that we could be the first in line to check about switching our seats!!

After some not so yummy not nutritious Panda Express the desk finally opened, but our luck wasn’t as good this time around, but we did find out that there would likely be an empty seat in our row!

We finally boarded the plane and we are headed to Milan, Italy to start our pilgrimage!!

Please continue to pray for Celina and I as we travel and if you have any prayer intentions please send them my way, I’d love to be able to pray for you along the way!

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