Miracle on LAX Street

I made the ultimate error in travel planning. I booked our return flight from Los Angeles only 43 minutes after our flight from Honolulu landed. After an all-night flight, I thought, the last thing I wanted to do was sit for hours in LAX waiting to return to Salt Lake, so when I saw that 43 minute wait, I thought it was perfect. I didn't realize and wasn't thinking about the fact that LAX is HUGE and changing planes--not to mention airlines, terminals and security--takes a lot longer there. Then as the months passed, Hawaiian air changed their flight times and suddenly I only had 38 minutes. I didn't realize my error until the night before we were leaving Hawaii. And I was petrified. On the way to Hawaii we'd had one hour and 15 minutes and barely made our connection. Cam and I are worry warts and we don't handle time pressure and stress extremely well. SO . . . we prayed our guts out and asked all of our family to pray at 6:50 in the morning that SOMEHOW we could make this connection.

The Hand of Providence was kind. Our Hawaiian air flight landed 10 minutes early. We had asked the flight attendants if there was any way they could call ahead to warn our plane that we were coming, but they said there was nothing for us to do but RUN. We had our huge carry-on bags on our laps and when the plane came to a stop, we jumped up--boxing out several first class passengers and waited for the door to open. As soon as it did, we RAN. Our flight attendant had said to stay up top, but for some reason, he headed down the escalator. We got out on the street and headed left, even though, she had said to turn right. I had studied the map and thought we should go that way. No one was down stairs to ask any questions and so we started running. We saw a terminal bus come up to the bus stop, but it was not an "A" bus that we needed to go to the terminals. During our last stop at LAX we had sat and waited 20 minutes for a bus, so we didn't dare take one today. We decided to ask her which direction we should be running and instead she said, "Hop in. I'll take you there."

"Are you sure?"

"This is faster. Come on in." As soon as the doors closed, she stepped on it.

"You are my favorite person in the world!" I told her. Usually those buses are all slow and arrive at each terminal and sit there for ever. She was slamming on the brakes, opening the doors and moving on as fast as she could. We drove the length we would have been running and I realized as much as I love to run, this would have taken FOREVER!--Especially dragging my suitcase along. She dropped us off at United and we tipped her a sad amount (wouldn't it be awesome to be able to give people like that a 100 dollar bill?). We ran inside. It was 7:00 and our plane took off at 7:32. We found a huge security line. No one was interested in rushing us to the front of the line and so we waited. And waited. But, we got through it. By the time we got to our gate it was 7:18. It had taken us 32 minutes to get across this labrynth and it wasn't even time to board yet. We had to WAIT at the gate. I couldn't believe it. I know Heavenly Father answered our prayers and sent that lady to be our miracle on LAX street. Thanks for your prayers!