Ahh, Venice.
I have visited Venice before - in 2006, Venice single handedly determined my "backpack luggage only" rule for traveling internationally - and again in 2008 with my sister when we did a rather whirl-wind trip of Italy after I finished my school year at JCU, and I've always wants to come back. Gabe and I even talked about doing an Italy/Greece trip for our honeymoon, because I wants to show Gabe this land of my college years and see the picturesque beauty of Greece. Obviously, we didn't - too expensive, bad time of year, and we had too little time before my school schedule started again to warrant flying 10 time zones. We shelved the idea.
When we started to see the publicity about the Syrian refugees and began to understand what was going on in Greece last summer, Gabe and I both felt like we wanted to do something about it - it seemed such a massive tragedy, but also such a unique point in the history of our lives and our times to stand up and seek to serve and love the homeless, the hopeless, the children and mothers and fathers and the "least of these." Especially as Christians, we wanted to reach out to people that could potentially be considered our "enemies" perhaps, because that's what Jesus told us to do! We wanted so badly to go DO something - because we could, because someone needed to, because so many people were, and we didn't want to have to say to our children or grandchildren someday, "We knew what was happening, but we decided to ignore it."
But Europe wasn't in our plans. We had budgeted and planned for being in Asia during this whole vision season. An airplane ticket alone to get to Europe, we figured, would put us way off track, not to mention the cost of surviving in Europe for any time. We set aside our desire to go.
Then things got kind of crazy in Thailand - we were discouraged by some of the choices that were being made around us. We took a stand for what we felt was right, at the potential price of our teaching job. We felt like we were in limbo. We began to pray, "Lord, we want to go where you want us, and this situation seems so crazy. Are you leading us away from here soon?" Then my sister and brother-in-law came to visit during our October break and it was so hard to see them leave, because the situation in Thailand and the atmosphere around us was so heavy, and I just wanted to go HOME, or at least someplace that felt more like home!
Before we returned to school, I had a couple hard days - I remember crying and telling Gabe, "I feel like if I knew there was a clear end point to being in this atmosphere and this place, and something to look forward to, I could handle this situation!" I started to look at visiting home over Christmas, just to see what prices were like and if we could swing it. I stumbled across the skyscanner website. It has a feature where you can search by using a map and see the cheapest locations to fly to from a specific departure city during specific months. I checked all over the Pacific Northwest and the west coast for tickets around Christmas - LA, Los Vegas, San Francisco, Vancouver BC, Portland, Seattle - and nothing was cheap enough for us. I started searching other places in the world, just to see what was available. I thought even if we couldn't go home for Christmas, maybe we could go visit other people some place less expensive and have that fellowship time to look forward to!
God has done some funny things for me in the money department over the years, and one of the ways I interpret confirmation from him about something is whether something fits in my ideal money range. After looking at our budget and our savings, I set what seemed like a ridiculously low mental number of $300 for a plane ticket and asked God to provide something for cheaper than that number as a possibility of leaving SE Asia after the school year ended.
Somehow, my search expanded to looking all over Europe, but most of the tickets were $500-$1000 each. But then I zoomed in around Greece and Italy, and a few seconds later, I was staring at one-way tickets from Bangkok to Venice for $247 each. I closed the laptop and walked away - what was I thinking?! This was crazy talk - that was a crazy price!
I held out for about 15 minutes and then told Gabe about the ticket I'd found. He was incredulous, so I showed him. The price was still there. I looked up reviews on the airlines - it was real, the reviews weren't bad. We talked about it some more, prayed about it, and decided to see if the price held for a day.
When we checked the next day, the price was still there. Gabe and I looked at each other in the glow of the laptop screen and I said, "Well? What do you think? Is this confirmation?" Gabe just looked at me and grinned.
Then he said, "Dani, you asked for a ticket for less than $300, just to see if something was possible. Not only is it possible to get to Europe, but this is ITALY - right next door to Greece, the very place that has been receiving refugees fleeing from Syria. And beyond that, it's not just anywhere in Italy, this is VENICE - the very city you've told me time and time again that you want to take me to see. I don't think this is just confirmation - I think this is God's message of love and caring and seeing the challenges here and giving you something wonderful that speaks to your heart to look forward to. He really loves you, Babe. Buy the darn tickets!"
So I did.
And what a joy it has been to anticipate this time in beautiful, elegant Venice.
- Dani
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