Okay, so Ben and I had made plans to meet up with Nathan and Lisa at UCLA to visit Aaron, and hopefully drag Natalie away for some much needed distraction. Then Ben calls me and says that two of his summer staff girls are flying in to LAX from Australia, and need to be picked up. So, I'm thinking...UCLA is pretty close to LAX...No problem!! We'll work it in.
Now, Ben is crazy busy. So talking to him about anything is sort of a rare privilege at this point. But, the person coordinating pick up finds me the night before we are to pick them up and says that she got disconnected while talking to the girls, but found out that at 8:30 am they will call us before boarding a shuttle to Ontario Airport, where we are to pick them up. This makes for a tricky situation, and they only have our home number because they got disconnected. And the only information I have is a phone number to the hotel where they were staying near LAX.
So, at 9am, Ben goes to pick up his fire crew gear, and I am awaiting the phone call from the girls, trying to figure out how in the world I will get to LAX and be at Ontario Airport at the same time. Well, about 11 am, Ben comes home and I still have had no word from anyone regarding the Australian girls. Ben calls the hotel and the man in charge of the whole Australian girls coming to work at our camp situation informs us that he has no idea where the girls are. Hmmm....interesting.
So, at about noon, we leave the house headed for UCLA or Ontario...we're not really sure. We decided to stop at Ontario Airport just in case, but we see no one matching the description of two college age girls wearing CCUSA shirts (Camp Counselors USA). So we eat and head to UCLA. We are updated on Aaron, and Lisa and I stand with Natalie outside the ICU doors trying to pry information out of anyone who will talk to us. After we finally sneak Natalie in to see Aaron, pray with her, and even watch her eat dinner (yeah!!), Ben and I decide we should probably get going because it is 6pm and we still have not found the Australian girls...(Ben has been making phone calls to various people and locations.) Just as we're walking out of the hospital, someone calls to say that they just checked the camp voicemail, and that the Australian girls left a message at 3pm saying they were at Ontario Airport waiting for someone...and we're still an hour and a half away.
We make it to Ontario just before 8pm, and I am running around looking for them, but I can't find them anywhere! Finally, on our fourth trip around the airport, we get a call from the camp answering service, who connects us with the girls, whom we finally find. I am feeling so terrible, and yet I do recognize that there was a lot lacking in the whole organization of this endeavor.
These girls...Evelyn and Olivia are the coolest girls ever. They are not upset in the slightest bit, have great attitudes, and are in general the most pleasant people ever. So, we took them to B.J.'s for a nice dinner (late, but nice) and they have their first Pazookie!!! (a dessert of warm cookie with ice cream on top). All is forgiven...they still love us, we are so absolutely impressed and excited to have them on our staff...and we all came home with tummies full of yummy food. And the kids even made it without any major meltdowns. And everyone involved in this great search was saying, "Praise the Lord, we found the Australian girls!!!"
2 comments:
How cool. Hanging out alone in an airport kind of sounds like fun right now. How were Aaron and Natalie doing?
Well, Natalie is tired...she stays at the hospital until midnight and is back again at 8:30 am to hear "rounds" and hopefully find out some information. Especially with all the coughing Aaron's been doing, it wears on her to see Aaron suffering. Please pray obviously for their continued strength, but for competent doctors and nurses, since she seems to be hearing a lot of "We don't know..."
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