February 10-11, 2014 - Traveling to Philippines

On Monday Elder Dunford left the MTC to begin his adventure to the Philippines.  His first leg was from Salt Lake City, Utah to San Francisco. At home, we were planning on tracking his progress on various apps and online. The plan was for him to call us from San Francisco, but we were getting nervous about hearing from him when we realized his flight left about an hour late!  But, we got a call from him just a few minutes before he was to board. It was so great!  He told us how excited he was to go and spoke Cebuano to us. It was a blessing to be able to hear the positive excitement in his voice about what he was about to set off to do.

The next leg of his journey was a flight from San Francisco to Manila.  He had told us on the phone that there was rumor they would be stopping in Guam and, sure enough, when we checked the app it confirmed this. After we hung up with him, we kept watching for the app to tell us he had departed, it was never happening. This flight left 2 hours late!!

An interesting thing we noticed  about Adam's flight was that because of the direction he would be traveling, he would be in the dark for 20 hours!  That combined with the long flight and all the delays must have made for a pretty exhausting flight.  His flight landed in Guam and one of Gene's co-workers used an app where they could listen to the pilot talk to the tower in real time as they landed!  Isn't technology a blessing?!!

The flight from Guam to Manila was next, but because of all the delays he missed his last short connecting flight to Cebu!!  Looks like another delay. 

WOW!  What a journey!  He left Salt Lake on February 10 and arrived in Cebu on February 12.  A total of 25 hours from SLC to CEBU!  

In the middle of our night we received the following email from Elder Dunford:

Kamusta!

So, we flew in today! The flight to Manila was delayed forever, but we got on a quick plane to Cebu, and we're here! We're staying at a hotel tonight, at the mission home all day today, then tomorrow we get assignments and head out! I can tell you, as we were flying in, it just looks so amazing here. The drive through the city was incredible, and I can say there is nothing I have ever felt more sure about than this. The Schmutz's (mission president) are great, and this is going to be so great! 

So that's all I can do! It was great to talk to you yesterday! I love you!

Elder Dunford 

(post by Trina)