His Mercies are New Every Morning!

If wishes were horses...we would be in our motorhome and on our way back to Minneapolis. But they are not.

Funny story...
We were sitting in the home of my dear friend, JoAnn, who had offered to drive us to the airport. We had arrived at her house a little bit early and were enjoying a nice visit when Mark gets a phone call. It's the finance manager at PPL telling us that the parts for the RV were NOT in house yet, and the RV was NOT ready to close on Friday after all, and we should probably not come down quite yet.

We looked at each other and exclaimed, we're getting on a plane in a couple hours! It's a mite late to be getting notified that we probably shouldn't come just yet! Anxiety ensued. Should we cancel the tickets? What would THAT cost us? Then we'd be looking at another week of hotels and restaurant dinners. And of course we threw around some blame for our predicament, which was much more comfortable than admitting we'd jumped the gun and booked our flight too soon.

In the end, we decided to go as planned and figure out our next move on the fly...literally.

So off to the airport we went. Our airline was Spirit, which we KNEW must be at Terminal 2, and we arrived three hours early...at the wrong terminal. Spirit Airlines flies out of Terminal 1. Who would have guessed that?! "We can take the light rail train to Terminal 1," Mark says. So we purchased our tickets ($0.75 each), went down to the platform, and noticed the sign informing passengers that the light rail ride between terminals was free. Too bad that sign wasn't next to the machine we bought our tickets from. Another dollar and a half of our money down the drain!

Fortunately we arrived three hours early, which gave us plenty of time to recover from all of our mistakes. Then (of course), the flight was delayed an hour. We finally arrived in Houston at about 12:45 a.m., and by the time we rented a car and made it to the hotel, it was nearly 2:30 in the morning.

What a day!

But, as the Good Book says, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning: great is your faithfulness." (Lamentations 3:22-23) And in the morning, after a rest and breakfast, we were discussing what to do next when the phone rang. It was the service department at PPL letting us know that the parts were in and they would be fixing the air conditioning unit today. Once that was done, they would complete the checks on all the systems and notify us one way or another as to whether the coach would be ready to go.

 Now, all we had to do was wait...again. And where better to wait in 90 degree humid weather than at an indoor mall. The Uptown Galleria in Houston is huge and reminded us of the Mall of American. Only instead of a theme park in the center, they have a roller blade rink on the bottom level and a French pastry cafe. Well, there's other stores, too, but what mall doesn't have stores?

At about 3:00, we headed over to PPL for an update. Yes they were working on it still. No it wasn't done yet and probably wouldn't be done before the end of the day. They promised to contact us and let us know one way or the other-- ready or not ready. We got a hotel room at the Crowne Plaza and walked over to a nice nearby steakhouse for dinner. The room is beautiful, by the way-- a very spacious suite. For about the same price as the Plymouth Red Roof Inn. I guess location is everything.

So here we sit for the evening. We never did get our promised call. But we will be darkening their door in the morning with every hope that God's mercies will be new yet again and our home will be ready to take ownership of. In the meantime, we're in a very comfortable and lovely hotel room, smiling over another package of misadventures, trying to capture the lessons God wants us to learn, and practicing patience.

Will tomorrow be the big day? Stay tuned...