Phone calls from the airports!

Yesterday was an exciting day for us! We waited (im)patiently for the phone to ring! Tyler told us he would call from one of the airports, just not sure which one, so to be on the look out all day. Luckily it was a holiday so the kids and Tom were all home.
We finally heard from him at about 3:00. It was so nice to hear his voice! I do wish we could have a few more phone calls throughout a mission, but I'll take this one for now!

They started out their morning by meeting at the travel office at 3:00. That was after about one hour of sleep. They were up late packing and then couldn't sleep much when they did lay down. They got their passports and visas and got in a shuttle which dropped them off at the curb and said...bye bye!

The first flight was to Denver. They had a short layover planned there. They boarded the plane for Washington DC and then found out there were computer problems that needed to be fixed. So they sat on the plane for THREE hours before takeoff!

In Washington DC they were suppose to have a 4 hour layover. That is where they had planned to make calls home. He called us and we were able to talk for about 45 minutes. We told him that he better go or he was going to miss his flight. Sad to say goodbye, but he said he would try to call again from Vienna, Austria.

So we were happy at 2:00 am when the phone rang. Usually a call at that time of night does not make one happy. He said that they had barely made it on the plane at the last airport. I guess they had been calling their names over the loud speakers. I think they were feeling a bit grateful that they made it!

He said it was pretty tricky to make the call from Ausria. The phone cards they had with them wouldn't work internationally. So they traded a bit of American dollars for some euros. They had no idea what the exchange rate was and they couldn't speak or understand German. They finally got the cards but the instructions on the cards and on the phone were all in German. Plus they didn't know they had to add a country code to call America. It's really quite amazing he was able to call us then!

We talked with him for about 40 minutes then he hung up to call Camron. After talking to Cam he called us back for about 10 more minutes. It would have been nice to keep talking but he sounded so tired. He hadn't been able to sleep at all on any of the planes. He has never been able to sleep in cars or planes.

His last flight was from Austia to Denmark. It was nice to know he was almost there. We now look forward to hearing from the mission home to let us know the details.