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“You’re the only teacher I believe who says they don’t have favourite students,” Julia once told me when she was in high school. I tried very hard as a teacher not to show favouritism. I also just flew from New Zealand to California for Julia’s wedding. What an absolute treat that this lined up and worked out for me to meet up with a bunch of my TCKs this week and to celebrate Julia and Roman on Thursday.

I can’t explain to you all the details that had to line up for this trip to be possible, but I’m so grateful for the generosity of others and the support and prep work that went on to make it happen.

What a crazy journey this started out as at 3:30am my time when I got an email from NZ Air that my flight to Sydney was cancelled just before Este pulled up to take me to the airport. Not knowing what else to do, we went to the airport, and the nice lady at the check in counter said she’d already started the process of rebooking me on the Qantas flight that left fifteen minutes early. Because I had a different airline connection, they had some trouble rebooking, and I somehow ended up on a Delta flight to LA that left around the same time as my original United one. I was a bit panicked when I got to the door in Sydney and my wheelchair was missing. The airtag said it made it to the city, but was not where it was supposed to be to take me to the next plane.

Airline employees kept assuring me it’d be in the next place, but I kept my eye on the airtag that looked like it’d been brought to the baggage claim while my luggage and I boarded the next flight. I finally found a flight attendant who would listen to me and look at my FindMe app and then sent a message to confirm the location of my chair. Just as we were locking the doors, he walked down the aisle and assured me it was getting moved onto the plane. I saw the airtag move just as I was instructed to switch my phone into flight mode and pray it made it the final 300metres to the plane. I immediately opened my phone on landing and panicked yet again as my airtag said the last reading was 13 hours and 12,050km away. Fortunately it was just because no Apple devices were close enough to register it, and my precious wheelchair made it to the door of the plane in LA. I was disoriented and jet lagged, and a wee bit confused how I’d landed in LAX an hour and a half before I told Julia to be there. I messaged her to let her know my flight had landed 45 minutes early, and was surprised to discover there were actually three flights SYD to LAX that left within an hour of each other. My original flight was delayed and my actual flight was early, so I sat near a coffee stand and downed an overpriced drip coffee to wait for Julia and Roman to pick me up.

What a unique joy to have this precious girl give me a big hug and then make sure her new husband who never had me as a teacher greets me as “Ms. Hewett.” I laughed at each introduction to another friend or family member as Julia has long felt uncomfortable referring to me as Laura and would only introduce me to people as “my mentor, Ms. Hewett.”

I got to spend extra time with Julia as I recovered from jet lag the next day and she took me to meet more of her extended family. This girl has an incredible family story, and I’d met her dad and a few grandparents and siblings before, but I got to meet a whole bunch of aunties and uncles and all the rest of her siblings and her mom at a family dinner. I also met the mother of the groom who had a significantly longer travel journey than either Julia’s parents or I did. Hers included a 19 hour bus from Kiev to an airport in Poland before she made it to the States. I loved being surrounded by the international flair though, and I was seated at a table of several TCKs and others who lived or worked internationally.

Julia had arranged for another one of my former students to give me a ride to the ceremony, and I was so excited for the chance to catch up with Lydia and meet her husband. Another Storchie sat at our table at the reception, and it was so much fun to laugh about language and food differences with these TCKs from Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Qatar as the other people joined in with stories scattered across Latin America and the Middle East. I love listening to the full rich lives of these young people and the way they’ve journeyed to maturity. Some of these kids have had really hard chapters, and it was especially encouraging to watch a couple of my former students finding hope and healing in their current contexts.

There were some bonus connections Thursday and Friday as I found out a few students still lived in the area. I wasn’t able to get to my kiddo across LA (that city is massive), but I had a really encouraging catch up with one of my precious kids from Julia’s class. Bethany hung out with me for a few hours and caught me up on the last six years of her life as I shared a couple pieces that didn’t make it onto the blog of what I’ve been doing since she graduated. She’s such an amazing young woman, and it was a real treat to see how God has grown her and matured her as she keeps seeking him. I also got to crash the post office at CBU to get a hug from another one of my past Palmies after lunch with two sisters I taught a few years back.

I don’t take it lightly that I get to keep up with these TCKs. The joy that there is in hearing the ways these young people are forging their paths and figuring out what it means to follow Jesus for themselves is really beautiful. For the few I’ve connected with here, they’re not just blindly following a parents’ faith nor have they rejected the Gospel like some of their peers. Through hard and painful experiences, they are seeking truth, and I trust they will find a way to hold onto Jesus.

One of the gifts of this trip was that Julia found me a place to stay with family friends of hers for my last night before getting on the train to Portland. I had a chance to hear a bit of the wild story of this couple who have followed Jesus all over the world even spending time in prison because they wanted to have conversations about Jesus in closed countries. They have a beautiful heart for sharing the Gospel, and I’m equally impressed with the way they recognise everyone who has a call to share the Gospel should never do that at the expense of their children. They love on a lot of TCKs in this area, and it’s encouraging to see how there are veterans in ministry advocating for the care of MKs.