The Nelson Family Indonesia

Short Update:

It took all day, but we have confirmed reservations to leave San Francisco Tuesday about 12:30pm to change planes in Tokyo and then arrive in Jakarta, Indonesia about midnight Wednesday.

Longer, Mostly Unnecessary Excurses and Anecdotal Observations:

First off, it’s interesting some of the unexpected freedoms that come with cutting loose your ties to a particular place. For instance, once upon a time I would never have published my travel schedule online since that might alert very crafty and clever and diligent folks that our abode was going to be empty. But, now we don’t have an abode! That was one of the curious things about our current situation – we have no place to go back to. We have a place that has family and others who know us there. We have several different cities we could go back to where we have friends who know us. But we don’t have a specific, personal place of our own, a home – though in this process of relocation I’ve grown to have different ideas about what home means, and very few of them are architectural in nature.

After a great deal of waiting for negotiations between the agency that booked our tickets to Indonesia and the airline I was finally told to go back to San Francisco International Airport (which is huge and gorgeous!) and talk to an in-person agent who would make new flights for us. Otherwise, we would have risked paying a change fee of nearly 1/3 of the original ticket prices – and we don’t want to do that!

Working as a ticketing agent for an airline hopefully has some amazing perks to it because the difficult folks they deal with and the heartbreaking situations they hear about and can’t do anything about are truly dreadful. My goal is not to be one of those people who take out their frustrations or irritations on these folks who aren’t to blame and often have very limited scope in what they can do about it.

It took a little over an hour but the airline agent was able to rebook our flights to Tokyo and Jakarta at no additional cost to us. We incur the additional cost of food and hotel and a rental car here in San Francisco in the meantime but those costs are very small comparatively.

We’re all relieved to know as best as possible what’s going to happen and when. The only remaining foreseeable obstacle would be if one or more of us tests Covid-positive when we retest on Monday. But, we’re trusting that won’t be the case and we would rather not worry about uncertainties and whatifs. Today has enough worry for itself. Thanks to all of you for your prayers and continued partnership. And thanks be to God who continues to guide each of our lives!