28 hours after leaving the house in Oregon we arrived safely at our new home in Norikura, Japan. It was one of the longest days of travel we have had so far but went well. We actually got our seats upgraded to business class for free on our flight from Seattle to Tokyo. And let me tell you, there is a world of difference between economy and business class. Let’s think of business class as “the golden rule”, they treat you how you want to be treated and talk to you like you are a real person. And let’s think of economy class like the back 40 of an old farm that is no longer being taken care of.
I want to thank all those who were praying for our travel back to Japan. The morning we left I was talking to my dad and I said “I hope we get some grace today when we travel”. Well, we did and I think we got an extra dose. When we arrived at PDX with our 5 overweight check-in bags and 3 carry-ons we were immediately escorted to the front of the line where we got checked in and paid a little for the extra weight and bag then sent on to security. When we got to security we were just standing there saying goodbye to my parents and then an agent came over and said “hey, there is an empty hand cart here. Would you like to use it?” so we loaded our carry on bags on the cart and said goodbye to mom and dad then another agent said please come to the “family” line which was the shortest line they had. We got through security in only a few min and we had extra bags and a baby to carry. Once on the other side we started to laugh and thought “this is too easy”.
Let’s skip ahead to Seattle where we got on the big 777 to fly to Tokyo. We were checked in and sitting in our seats which were not all that bad as far as economy seats go. As we sat there ready to leave we remembered that we had requested a baby bassinet for the flight (it’s a free service for people traveling with babies). Then we started to wonder what good it would be because there would not be any room for it anyway but Hannah went to talk to a flight attendant about it. Because we had called ahead and requested it and they had the paperwork saying that we did that Yuko the very nice United Air flight attendant got us upgraded to Business class where we were served real food on real plates and had enough room for the bassinet and to stretch out and sleep. We got to Tokyo feeling like the flight was much shorter than 9.5 hrs and then continued to have more great travel mercy as we literally walked through immigration and then picked up our bags that were all waiting for us and then walked out to ship our bags to our home so we would not have to take them on the train.
WOW, what a day that was. We were totally exhausted when we finally got home but at the same time so thankful to God for watching over us. Thanks again for all your prayers and thank you Yuko for hooking us up.
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