unexpected lessons through missed flights & fire alarms

Everyone! hey!

I'm back from Peru!

and gosh.

What an incredible week.

Full of SO much learning. So much gratitude. A lot of really hard challenges. But also oh so much
refreshment for my soul.

I am so thankful for the experiences and all of the memories made throughout each day. it was
one of those weeks that seemed like both 3 days and 3 months long. It was so beautiful to be
reunited with sweet friends from this past spring, as well as to create new relationships with
new friends. 

I want to be able to fully share everything that I learned from my week in Peru,
and this stretches and applies to many different areas. Surprisingly, a lot of the big lessons I
walked away with were things, during the travels there and back, which all tied into our time
of physically being in Peru.

Thus, I'm planning doing multiple blog posts (probably 2-3!) recapping my time; sharing events that took place during my travels, and then our time of physically being in Peru. I want to be able to share all of this because man, God showed UP this week!! I learned SO much about the power of prayer. I feel like I walked away from this trip with such a deeper understanding of who God is and how He REALLY works and provides for His children.

So, I'm gonna go ahead and dive into this post with my travels saga (haha that sounds way more dramatic than it should, but we're gonna go with it). Warning this is gonna be a long one, but I want to fully convey (in as much raw honesty as possible) what took place and how God moved in it all. (I've been told I can be an overly-detailed storyteller, but oh well. and anyways, the choice is yours to read or not :))

-----

To start out, I want to give some background of what types of things God has been teaching me,

leading up to this trip, and how I saw Him work things together during this week.

>> About 3 weeks back, I started reading through the gospel of Mark. Much of my quiet time

highlighted the time that the disciples spent with Jesus, and the ways in which they saw Him

work; but new parts were sticking out to me. 

So often during Jesus ministry with His disciples, we find him rebuking the disciples for their

weak faith, and calling them HIGHER — to belief more firmly, to embrace WHO GOD SAYS

HE IS, and to not allow doubts to creep into their minds, of “is Jesus actually capable of doing

this?” 

As I read through, I kept thinking, “How is it that the disciples spend this much time with Jesus

and had so much doubt? They saw Him perform all of these miracles, and yet they still didn’t

believe that He would be able to provide in the next circumstance?” —( this mindset right here

proved to be applied big time in my own life as I began my travels to Peru) — throughout these

passages though, I continued noticing the continuous pattern of Jesus commanding His disciples

to have increased faith. To be prayer warriors. To trust that the Lord is sovereign in what He is

doing, even when it makes no sense to our human perspective. 

So I began the week leading up to my trip with this renewed point of view — that the Lord would

teach me to have greater faith in who He is, as He called His disciples to do. And I learned that

oftentimes, things are going to get overwhelming and push us to our limits before peace comes

about… the disciples endured a raging storm before Jesus called the waters to peace. Sometimes

He allows His children to endure situations that are beyond our own physical control, before

working to “resolve,” in order to show us the sovereignty that He carries in all circumstances.

So now into the actual story of how this all ^ applied:

>> I woke up on Thursday morning, Dec. 12th, ready to catch my first flight that afternoon to
Florida, and from there, take my connecting flight that night to Lima (my teammate Chloe was
on this same Lima flight as well). We were planning to arrive in Trujillo the next morning, on
Friday, the 13th (op. first red flag YIKES haha jk). However, my first flight to Florida was delayed
, causing me to possibly miss the connecting flight to Lima. 

When I landed in Florida, the pilot made an announcement that they were allowing all of the
passengers who were connecting to Lima to get off of the plane first, and that we had a few
minutes to run to our gate, where the plane was waiting for us. 

I ran through to the next terminal as fast as I could, reaching the gate just in time, so I thought.
They scanned my passport, and upon reading my name, apologized, saying they didn't think my
flight would make it in time, and my flight had thus been rebooked.

"What????? Is this some kind of a sick joke??? I'm here and I booked this ticket months ago, so
let me on the flight!" I thought. 

I talked to them for several minutes trying to see if there was any possible way that I could still
board this flight, as I had a following flight to Trujillo in the morning, but they said the next
flight I could board wasn't for 24 more hours, meaning I would have to stay in Fort Lauderdale
overnight.

After staying at the airport for 3 more hours, which also involved a little crying meltdown of
"what on earth is happening i hate this feeling so much and want things resolved and to be on
my flight to Peru instead of stuck in Florida for another day", waiting in lines to talk to the
airline agency, receiving hotel/meal vouchers, etc. from the airline, I made my way to the hotel
they provided for me (grateful f0r this and that I didn't have to spend the night in an airport!).

I stayed up for another couple of hours, trying to rebook my flight to Trujillo, and eventually
passed out and went to bed. Ya girl was TIREEED lol.

Fast-forward to 6am, as I'm in a deeeeeep sleep, and I hear an obnoxiously loud sound blaring
in my room. Yeah... the hotel's fire alarm was going off. (The cherry on top of a wonderful travel
day :')))

Thankfully, it only lasted a few minutes, and the hotel staff informed me that they had just burnt
some toast. So then I fell asleep until literally 10 minutes before I had to check out of my hotel
room haha. Had to get that all of that precious sleep time in and prep for the next 25 hours of
traveling that lied ahead!

>> But seriously, Satan was trying to throw everything he had that first travel day!!!!! And I did
NOT expect all of that! 

Honestly, it was humbling. When I woke up and got ready to leave Atlanta, in my mind I was
just thinking "hey this travel will be a breeze, I've traveled so much internationally this year
anyways, it's no big deal anymore." hah WRONG. The Lord quickly humbled that state of mind.
He showed me at any given time, the sense of control that brings me such comfort can so easily be
taken out of my hands... leading to moments in which I am forced to be in reliance and surrender
upon Him. 

Satan was definitely trying to sneak into my thoughts and dump in as many fears as possible,
and I'm not gonna lie, he made me question if this trip was even what God had for me, if I was
just supposed to go home, and then stretched it to fears of "what if rebooking will cost me lots
of money that I don't have, or what if the same thing happens to me coming home???" (hah, just
stay tuned for the returning home travels..)

>> After realizing these thoughts that were soaking in my mind were NOT from God, I texted
some close friends and requested fervent prayer over the safety of my mind and thoughts,
because Satan was attacking. I asked for prayer over smooth travels for the next day, rest upon
arrival (ministry events were planned for as soon as I would land in Trujillo, and especially since
I only had a week there, I wanted to be well-rested and energized to embrace all of the events as
much as possible). 

View from the roof of the compound

I spent the morning in the hotel lobby, reading my bible, writing, and praying for a good 2 hours,
preparing my heart for the trip that lied ahead. Honestly, as I write this and look back in hindsight,
I'm realizing that the Lord used this unexpected delay as a blessing in disguise for more time with
Him -- it was a good, much-needed recharge time for my soul to spiritually prepare and refocus
on him for the coming days on the field. It was valuable time with the Lord that wouldn't have been
as rich if I had been in such a rush to catch all of my original flights. 

(Also, as I look back in hindsight, despite all of the delays and what seemed like just terrible,
awful circumstances, the Lord knit in some unforeseen blessings and opportunities, allowing
me to open up about my trip with strangers, with whom I was traveling. There were about 10
other passengers who had the same situation as me, who didn't make it onto the Lima flight,
and were delayed until my same flight. One girl was an international student from Peru, who
studies at GA Tech, and she had all of the same flights as me, all the way until to Trujillo! It was
sweet to be able to share with her and another girl about why I was going to Peru to serve with
Inca Link, and to hear a bit about their lives in Peru.)

I have a (longgg) list from the week of answered prayer requests; things I specifically asked God for, and ways that He provided, and this was one of them. I asked my friends and prayer partners the night before to pray for peace and calmness amidst what felt like stressful chaos, and He gave it to me. I still felt a little bit anxious about the remaining leg of the trip, feeling paranoid that one of my next flights would get cancelled too, but overall, I had a renewed sense of peace reigning over me. And I know it was because of the faithfulness of so many of you all who prayed over me, so thank you!

View from the roof of the compound

Eventually, I boarded my plane, tried to sleep as much as I could during the flight, and woke up in Lima, Peru around midnight. I looked out the window, seeing the night lights of the city, and it finally hit me: I was BACK. Back in the beautiful country that grew to mean so much to me. That I hadn't been to in nearly 7 months. I had made it !!!! I got all giddy and excited inside. 

But then, I'm not sure how to explain it other than I just felt a wave of fears take over me, reminding me "you're only halfway there, you still have a flight to take in the morning and what if that gets cancelled? What if your rebooking didn't work? AND you're about to have to spend the night in the Lima airport alone. Or what if there's an issue with your tourist visa and they don't let you back in?" 

These thoughts sank. into. my. mind as I walked to immigrations. I started panicking inside of "what I would do, what was my backup plan?" if any of these things happened? But simultaneously, I KNEW inside that these words weren't from God. That wasn't His voice. It was that of the enemy. I started praying like crazy while waiting in line that He would remove each and every fear that just saturated my mind, and that I would be moving forward in full CONFIDENCE that the Lord goes before me. He had brought me this far, and I needed to have confident faith that He was going to see me through it all. (@ my bible reading time of learning to have greater faith, like Jesus told the disciples). 

I made it through immigrations smoothly, and as soon as they said "Bienvenido a Peru." My mind started to clear, feeling a wave of excitement starting to arise for the week that lied ahead, replacing the fears that were in my mind before. (Another instance of immediate answered prayer.)

By around 1:30am, I made it through all of immigrations, and  parked all of my luggage against a wall in the airport. I decided that I needed to refuel on truth, based on how much I felt like the enemy was feeding me lies in the last few hours. I had a couple hours of quiet time, continuing to pray over the coming week, watched an episode of "Friends" lol, managed to take a 1 hour nap (did this while I was pretty much physically entangled in all of my luggage so none of it would get taken haha), and eventually around 5:30am, I was able to check my bags, head through security, and get to my gate.

At this point, it was finally hitting me that in just a few short hours, I would soon be reunited with my sweet second family -- all of the Inca Link staff, directors, kids, my teammate Chloe, and then Esther the next day, ahh!!! 

In no time, I landed, grabbed my luggage, and stepped outside, feeling the Peruvian desert sun hitting me and it felt so right. I was BACK BABY. 

Photos above & below // our first ministry event: a Christmas celebration at Elim (The Garbage Dump ministry)

I scanned the arrivals crowd, and spotted Andres and Chole, waving excitedly!! We loaded up in Andres' car, and headed straight to our first ministry event! 

During the Christmas party at Elim!

>> I'm not kidding when I say that I felt like God gave me divine energy that day. I usually do
NOT function well when I'm sleep deprived, so the thought of having a busy day ahead after a
crazy night in the airport was a little concerning to me, but I prayed for energy, and the Lord
provided. (Answered prayer #3 that day) As soon as we got there, spending time with the kids,
catching up with Andres and Chloe, having to shift my brain to speak totally in SPANISH again
(woohoo and ah!!!!), I felt so pumped and excited and I honestly couldn't have asked for a better
first day back. 

After the christmas party, Andres took Chloe and I to beautiful downtown Trujillo for lunch
(which I literally inhaled. Didn't really hit me until then that I all I had eaten in the last 30 hours
was airport crackers and minimal water haha), and then we drove across the city, heading back
to the Inca Link compound. 

Downtown Trujillo with my teammate Chloe! ("El Centro")

The drive back to the camp felt like coming back home -- passing the market where we would go
just about every other day to get fresh fruit and vegetables, and driving by the church that we
attended for 3 months straight, seeing all of the buses and van taxis that we would take each
week to go into the city, passing Inca Thakhi's soccer court that we played soccer on every single
day. It was like I stepped into my second life, that had been on pause for 7 months, and I was
finally able to come back and press play. 

Driving through Trujillo, heading back to the compound

After Andres dropped Chloe and I off at the compound, we spend a good 4 hours catching up on the last 11 months of life, over some hot tea, and some laundry (which we accidentally used bleach to wash our clothes instead of detergent. Didn't realize that until we started hanging our clothes on the line, which were splotched and stained all over, but it made for a solid 5 minutes of laughing hahahaha)

The first day of being in Trujillo was already full of such good S I M P L E moments that brought so much joy to my soul. The little things that I had missed so much. It felt so right. It made me think back to 2 days before of when I was stuck in the Florida airport, where my mind was feeling overwhelmed by so many doubts and unknowns; but now, every fear that filled my mind was proved 100% wrong. The Lord had created a plan, and as much as Satan may have attempted to stop it from happening, God's sovereignty prevailed, as it always does. The enemy was NOT happy about what was about to take place, which made me realize that God was about to move. It made me so excited and EXPECTANT for the great things that were bound to take place in the coming days.

my favorite tea date in the whole world!!!!!! love you chole!

I fell asleep that night feeling very very tired, but very very content -- as His peace completely immersed my soul --- feeling absolutely ready for what the rest of the week held.

----

If you made it this far, wow congrats, you're a real one & you get a gold star. :)

I wasn't expecting to write a post like this a few weeks ago, but here we are -- God moved and I needed to talk about it!

But stay tuned if you'd like for the next blog post, coming SOON on what our time IN PERU looked like!

If you'd like to get an EMAIL UPDATE for when I publish my next blog post, go ahead and hit the "subscribe" button on the top bar, and it will automatically send you an email when I share my next post! (Or I'll also be linking my blog posts on my Facebook!)

Again, I want to continually express how thankful I am to each and every supporter through this journey this past year, from both Link Year, and last week. I could NOT be here without your spiritual and financial support. So thank you for every prayer, dollar, and minute of time/energy you've given on my behalf. 

My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude whenever I think of all of the ways that you all have come alongside me during this last year!

Sincerely!

-Allison Clark