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I am so grateful for the life I have that allows me to be the recipient of such generosity. Rich and Julia are continuing their Aussie adventure for one more week, and the six nights I spent with them in Melbourne and Sydney are going down in my book as one of the greatest treats of my life. Flying is complicated, as usual, but the worst I had was JetStar bending my wheelchair brake so that it’s subtly unsafe in dire circumstances (I think I actually managed to bend it back once I got home and feel safer now but am hoping to get the mechanic to look at it and confirm).

The best news was that JetStar CHC check in team is not nearly as awful as JetStar OOL from seven years ago. I’m anecdotally convinced that I’m more knowledgeable about airport policy and flying with a disability than 70% of airport and airline staff, but we’ll get to that 30% highlight at the end of this post. For now, enjoy a few pictures of the amazing adventure I had this past week with some of the most generous Jesus loving people on the planet. (Just please don’t tell the Crossway team I went all the way to Melbourne and visited a Hillsong church instead.)

After an incredible week, I hugged this beautiful couple goodbye in the Sydney airport and went to the international terminal while they caught their next domestic flight. The kind newbie at the check-in counter for Qantas unfortunately didn’t understand my, “Hello, I need disability assist to the gate and onto the plane but don’t need an aisle chair if I’m in the first five rows.” He interpreted it as, “I can walk and manage this whole deal on my own, thanks.” He did end up accidentally helping me through security and then realising his mistake, but I didn’t actually trust him to assign someone to help me to the plane once I got to the gate by myself, so I asked the kind gate crew who were over the top kind and knowledgable and good natured and let me hang out with them in the disability waiting area behind the desk with the flight crew for the twenty extra minutes we had to wait for our delayed plane.

Making casual conversation, the flight crew asked if I was coming or going home, and I said I’d just been gifted this awesome trip which absolutely blew their minds. This Jesus lifestyle really is mind blowing. Rich and Julia are just ordinary people who’ve said yes to Jesus at so many junctures in life, and we happened to overlap because I said yes so many years ago, and they’ve joined my prayer team and supported me and shared my story as people who love seeing Jesus work being done around the world. How beautiful to be in person with them for a week and hear some of their stories and share meals and pray with them and also get to be blessed with some wild cool experiences.