“special” memories

A friend of mine that has accompanied me on two different trips to Japan has a code-phrase that he uses in reference to international trips to refer to extra challenging and therefore memorable experiences.  He refers to them as “special memories.”  For example, during the first mission trip that I led to East Asia, we found out approx. three days before our departure that one of the girls on our team had lost her plane ticket.  (in the days where you only had paper copies)  At that point in the trip, we were in the capital city (which is HUGE) and we had no translator.  On top of that, the airline said we needed to go to their headquarters in order to get a new ticket and we had no idea how to get there.  Anyway, I won’t go into all the details, but that was a “special” memory.

Yesterday I had one of these special memories – prior to even leaving the country!

Danielle called me in the middle of the day yesterday (in which I’m already struggling with trying to get everything done between now and the trip and feeling really stressed), and she says, “Your passport expired in March.”

Gulp.  Um…what do we do about THAT?  Do I no longer get to even GO to Japan next week?

Long story short, it all worked out.  I dropped what I was doing and drove to the federal building in Dallas and they took care of me.  PRAISE THE LORD.  It was a good reminder that He takes care of us even in the most “special” of circumstances.