Spirit, Hope, Sanibel

Last Wednesday morning Mama and I flew to Tampa, FL. We had made vacation preparations to go to Sanibel Island so Mama could go the one of the top three shelling destinations in the world. It was our first time to fly on Spirit Airlines – which was a pretty poor experience. We arrived at DFW a little over two hours before our flight and saw a line of at least 125 people. Two agents were working very slowly to check bags. In the first forty minutes, we moved so little that we were in danger of missing our flight. Finally, a third agent was added and Mama and I got the bag checked and headed to security. It was about twenty-five minutes before our departure time. By the grace of God, we were given pre-check clearance and flew through the security line. Our gate was on the outermost tip of the terminal and we ended up walking – a difficulty for Mama – for about fifteen minutes to make the distance. By the time we got there, they were boarding the last of the passengers that had been in the waiting area. Mama and I had had nothing to eat because we expected to have time at the airport. One poor lady who had been in line with us got to the gate as they were closing it. Fortunately, they let her on the plane. The lines, the baggage weight limits, the fees and several other little things made it a bad experience for us overall.

Once on the flight, things got a little better and we arrived in Tampa on time for the appointment I had set up with the director of Hope Children’s Home. That is the ministry that directs the work at the children’s home in Honduras where Cori, Nate and the kids will be working in the very near future. Mama and I spent about two hours with the director at the Tampa home and discovered it to be an amazing ministry. They have a forty-five-acre campus, which is set up with multiple dormitories for girls, boys and very young children, a school building/rec center – all done in an attentive, meticulous manner. It was impressive, very well organized. Mama and I both left there more willing than ever to pray about becoming a part of that ministry in some capacity in the future.

On the drive to Sanibel Island, Mama passed through some of the cities that were familiar to her from a time in her childhood when they had either visited relatives or lived for a time. It was nostalgic for her in a good way. She even called Grandma and told her we were eating lunch in Bradenton, FL. The drive - a little over two hours - was pleasant and uneventful. We rented a little Chevy Sonic and were very pleased with the car. We got to the hotel/condo where we had reservations about five minutes before the office closed for the day, got our room keys, a short rundown on the local events and a couple suggestions on where to eat before we parked and got our luggage taken to the room. It was a generous room with a large bedroom, a small kitchen and bath and a large living room with an adjoining screened in porch. Much nicer than we had expected. We did not wait too long to change and head to Lighthouse Beach which was very near the hotel. To access the beach, we had to walk an indistinct pathway; so much so that Mama and I felt like we were trespassing as we walked through the back edges of people’s yards. But the path did eventually access the beach and in the first two hours we collected about five pounds of nice, high quality shells. Mama was very excited.

Mama had been told that Lighthouse Beach was not the best beach for shells so we were anxious to try the other four on the island. As it turned out, our first beach worked out to be the best one on the island that week so we went back several times, but on the way back from one of the far end beaches, I had Mama call to schedule us a shelling cruise to an island only accessible by boat. It turned out to be the highlight of our fourteen-hour day Thursday. We took a thirty-minute boat ride across the Pine Island Estuary to Caya Costa Island, shelled for two hours and got some very unusual shells. There were so many that we could be very selective. Even still, we came back home with a carry-on bag full of shells so we struggled to keep our checked bag under the 40-pound limit.

The flight back was much better.