Totally Awesome, Truly Amazing...Travel Approval!

We are going to China!  I got home from picking Josiah up after speech to an email that told me to "START PACKING."  Ha!  Like I haven't already done most of that! 

Not only did we already have our TA, our wonderful agency had already gotten us our Consulate Appointment, so I could start booking our travel. We need to be in Changsha by November 6. So, I spent the rest of the day trying to wrangle a good airfare deal.  Not terribly encouraging...the three travel agents I spoke with all found airfare to be around $1400-$1600 per ticket, for the privilege of changing planes twice and taking more than 24 hours to get where we needed to be. I think we paid about $900 last time, flew direct from Dulles to Beijing, and got moved to business class for free since our seats were needed by the flight crew.  I am thinking that was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.  Darn.

Fortunately, Janell at Lifeline did some sleuthing around for me as well and found some good deals out of JFK, but we couldn't seem to get a flight from DC going that way.  So, I called one of the agents with this idea and he found me tickets for $1089 round trip, DC to JFK to Shanghai to Changsha!  We do have to fly on an awful airline if the online reviews are to be believed, but that's OK.  The return trip is more direct and that is more important since we will have Nathan with us. 

I can't believe we are leaving in 2 weeks and 2 days.  Wow.  I wonder what Nathan will think when he finds out we are finally coming for him?  He looked rather somber in the most recent photo we got of him and his foster family.  He had just received the first package we had sent him.  I pray that God is preparing him for us, and us for him.