Thoughts On a Plane to Manila

Initial apologies for the length of this post. I had 12 hours on a plane to kill...feel free to scan but there's some good stuff in here. I promise. :)

Contrary to some travel websites, it is not necessary to arrive at the airport three hours before your international flight. In fact the two and a half hours I left turned into three hours when my first plane was delayed an additional half hour. So after lots of sitting in PHL I was finally on my way by 1:20pm. The Philadelphia skyline was so beautiful as we took off, just slightly blurred by the thin cloud cover between me and the city.
Once arriving in Detroit, I spent all of two minutes in the airport, the amount of time it took to walk down five gates over to my connecting flight that would take me to Nagoya Japan and then to Manila. It was a miracle that the plane was parked so close as the delay had cut my layover time down to less than forty minutes (which is not very long at all in terms of catching a flight). When the lady scanned my ticket it beeped and she had to go into the system to cancel the seat they had reserved for me on the next flight in the expectation that I was going to miss the flight because of my other flight's delay. Let's just say that it is quite the miracle that everything worked out the way it did. It's nice to know someone's looking out for me up there.
When I walked on the plane for the first time I was still recovering from the panic I had experienced thinking I wouldn't make my flight. As someone who has flown a fair bit, I have flown on many different planes. Little tiny ones, medium sized ones, and what I used to consider large planes. But I had never before walked onto a 400 passenger Boeing 747. It is basically the cruise ship of airplanes. I mean there are two floors! Unfortunately, the extra space is for all the extra people and I am just as squished as on a regular flight.
Maybe it's because I am a non-Asian person heading to Asia or maybe it's my Gospel bracelet that I am wearing, or maybe it's both, but when I sat down the person sitting next to me asked if I was a missionary. My response, "Yeah I guess I kind of am." I mean I knew I was going on a mission trip, but I never really associated it with being a missionary. I mean when I went to Roanoke last summer with REACH I didn't think of myself as a missionary. I was just a church kid going to rebuild some houses. And still, until he asked me that question I guess I thought I was still that church kid going to volunteer just this time in another country. But the question made me think a bit deeper about what I'm doing.  I've made a conscious decision to spend almost all my time away from school sharing what I believe in order to help others. And I'm okay with that.
I've met two people who are also GJV so far. Because I was one of the last people on the flight, one was a fleeting hello as I walked past their seat in my trudge to the back of this huge plane. The other is sitting in the row in front of me. It's nice to know there are others here with me. I look forward to getting to know the other volunteers as well throughout the training the next couple weeks.
I don't know when I will have the connection to post this, but I currently have 6 hours and 39 minutes left in my flight to Japan. And I believe another 3 hour flight from there to Manila. I want to leave you with a thought that I got from my blonde brownie wrapper from my in meal flight. At the end of the ingredient list it said, "Made with love." And if they can make their brownies with love I think we can all do the little things (and even the big things) with the love of Christ in our hearts.
Written with love,
Brielle

Movie list:
Monuments men
Forrest Gump
The little mermaid
Frozen!!!!

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