Taking kids to the US

Bonswa, good afternoon!

Looks like either Nick or I will be taking between 5-7 kids to the US today. We will be on an agape flight (missionary flight) from Cap to Sarasota Florida. We are not positive which one of us will be going today. One of the children leaving has cebral palsyi and is much to big for me to carry. If one of the pilots is willing to carry the child through immigration then I will go with the children today. If that is not a possibility then Nick will be the one to go! Hopefully who ever is left will be able to get on a flight out tomorrow with more kids. We won't know for sure who is going until we actually board the plane.

We have already seperated our passports so that one of us doesn't leave with them both! The problem is that our clothes are packed into one bag, so we aren't sure how we are going to handle that.

Pray for us as this is going to be a lot of work. We are going to have 5-7 kids who are terrified on a plane, possibly having motion sickness, and upset because they have no idea what is going on. We will have to carry our bag as well as 5-7 diaper bags, each kids individual files for getting through customs, a set of files to leave with custums, etc. On top of this, two kids have cebral palsy and can't walk, a third is is still an infant and needs carried, three are just barely walking, and the last one loves to run! These kids know some english, but I will definately have trouble communicating with them. We will also be in charge of handing out all meds to each kid. Each one is on a different type of formula and we will have to make sure that they get the right stuff. Each one wears different sizes of diapers. One is just barely potty trained, but still has accidents. Hopefully all of our paperwork at immigration will be in order and we can get right through without any problem, other wise we might be held up for a while.

We have a contact in Florida that will be picking us up with a bus and letting us stay at their house until adoptive parents arrive! Who ever leaves today will try to post a blog once in Florida to update you on whats going on. That is if they get a chance with all the chaos of the kids!! Agape is willing to make as many trips as possible over the next few days to get all of our kids out of Haiti. If this is the case then we might be able to come back to Haiti and leave when we were normally booked. If not, we might come home early!

Jenny just got an email and a helicopter is flying from injured children to us from Port today. We aren't sure when they will come, how many there will be, what types of injuries, etc. We just heard a helicopter fly over and hope that it's not them because we are not at the airport to pick them up. We also aren't sure if they are coming to the airport or landing in our field! So much is up in the air right now.

Nikki