Cross Country Goodness

"Therefore I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among the heathen, and I will sing praises unto thy name." 2 Samuel 22:50

"O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever." 1 Chronicles 16:34

Today was an absolutely wonderful day as Stephenie and I traveled to Grand Junction, CO to visit our daughter, Mollie, and son in law, Nathan, and to see - in person - our granddaughter, Charlotte, for the first time!

Stephenie and I arrived at the Charlotte Douglas International airport in plenty of time (A big thank you to Mr. Rideout!) and thanks to several airport workers, we were able to drop our luggage off, breeze through security, get coffee, and get to our gate an hour before our flight was to begin boarding.

• An airport worker pointed us to the United airlines baggage drop off counter. That was huge because it was "hidden," and not easily seen, amongst all the other airline counters.

• Our suitcase weighed in at 51 pounds. The United agent said, "The weight limit is 50 lbs.; your's is 51 lbs. but I'm going to let it go anyway without charging you extra."

• Due to Stephenie's limp, an airport worker pointed us to the handicap line of the security check point. Even though the security live was not extremely long, that still allowed us to get through security quickly.

• After we arrived at our gate and had been waiting for a while, a middle age man sat down next to me and he struck up a conversation. He was from Utah and had been in Charlotte attending a conference. Using F.O.R.M., I found out that he was "in the church;" he was Mormon. Our flight began to board and so I was simply able to give him one of our church tracts and invited him to, if he was ever in Charlotte again, to look us up.

Our first flight took us to Denver. Our row was full but there was no one sitting in the row in front of us. The young lady seated next to me was able to move up a row (which she than had to herself) which allowed Stephenie and I to spread out just a little bit which is always nice when your flight is almost 4 hours long.

Throughout the morning, United kept changing our connecting gate in Denver. However, each change simply kept moving our connecting gate closer to our arrival gate. When we started the day, we were going to have about a 30 minute walk (and a concourse switch) to get to our connecting gate in Denver. When we finally arrived in Denver, we had only a brief walk to get to our connecting gate which was a huge blessing to Stephenie and allowed us plenty of time use the restroom, etc.

Our flight from Denver to Grand Junction was only about an hour in length; barely enough time for the attendants to be able to serve us a small cup of water which was a blessing. For some reason, when I got on the flight, I began to feel a little dehydrated. I didn't have any water with me and I was afraid that, because the flight was so short, that I wouldn't be able to get anything to drink on the flight. Thankfully, again, the attendants served small cups of water to the passengers.

We arrived in Grand Junction (which has a very small airport) and were greeted by Mollie, Nathan, and Charlotte. It was so exciting to see Charlotte for the very first time.

Grammy holding Charlotte for the first time!

The rest of the day went very smoothly as we were able to eat lunch together and get settled into our AirBnB.

I certainly understand that God would still be just as good even if our day had been "lousy" but our day was, to me, just a simple demonstration of just how good God truly is. We must constantly remind ourselves of the truth that God is good not just that He does good!

A little postscript to our day...

Our son, Titus, as we were traveling to Colorado, was able to run in his very first marathon, the 2025 Charlotte marathon. We were so proud of him for that accomplishment and hate that we were unable to be there to cheer him on. He will be traveling out to Colorado to spend Thanksgiving with us (and Charlotte) and will be running in the Grand Junction Turkey Trot so we'll be able to cheer him on then!