A Homecoming!

This weekend contained a homecoming for me.  For the past 4 months a very special someone has been serving our country in Afghanistan.  We had initially met in high-school about 6 years ago as a set up prom date but nothing every came from it at the time and we lost touch.

My Junior Prom, about 6 years ago.

However, last December the mutual friend who had set us up in high school suggested that we might enjoy talking again so we looked each other up on Facebook (since he was already deployed to Afghanistan) and spent the next 3 1/2 months Skyping, messaging, and the occasional phone call getting to know each other from half a world away.

The beginning of April was his R&R where he was able to come home for 15 days or so during the middle of his deployment. So after 3.5 months we finally connected in person and had  fun getting to know each other better.  It was also at that time after praying about it that we decided we could make a relationship out of what we had going :)

Then Sgt. J went away for 4.5 more months to finish out his deployment, we Skyped when we could and he wrote me letters almost every day :) even though sometimes you don't get them until 3 weeks later and then 4-5 letters would come at once because the mail doesn't send every thing out each day.

About three weeks ago I finally got the notice that he was out of Afghanistan and had gone to Kyrgyzstan which is the first step in the process of coming home.  From there he would fly to the east coast for out-processing and then finally home.  All in all I though this whole process would take about 2 weeks at the most.  However they kept him in Kyrgyzstan for almost a week which is a bit unusual that it would take that long for them to send the guys back.  Then when he did return to the states out-processing is normally only 3 days.  This time he was told that their group was the lucky people who would go through the first round of 5 day out-processing.  Needless to say we were quite frustrated.  Then the five days stretched into 7 which turned into 9.  Meanwhile he was not given a real clear explanation as to why they were stretching out the process.  Throughout all this I guess God was really trying to teach us patience!  After I heard of the last delay I decided that was it and I couldn't handle the disappointment anymore of hoping he would get home one day and then having it delayed so I gave ti up to God and asked him to just bring Sgt. J home safe.

The next day I got a text message from Sgt. J that asked if I was busy the following day at 11:30am! I was blown over! God had really answered my prayers in a time frame I hadn't expected!  In less than 24 hours Sgt. J would be home :)

Even his journey home was uncertain as the hurricane bore down on the east coast he was one of the last 2 people to get a spot on a plane that was headed for Minneapolis.  If he had not been able to get a seat on the plane (some don't know this but our military men and women yes do fly home for free but they are not guaranteed seats, if there is not room they have to wait for a later flight) he most likely would have had to wait out the hurricane on the east coast.

So, at aproxx. 12:30pm on Saturday 8-27-11 I got to welcome my Sgt. J home :)