Blessed are the flexible…

Rainy weather, a menu we couldn't understand and our flights home cancelled! Yet what a great way to end our time in Rome...

As we sit at the airport awaiting our flight home, much much earlier today than we'd planned, it's good to reflect on the blessings of the last 24 hours. Yesterday we got up in good time to see if we could get on a tour of the catacombs (the burial place of around half a million Christians, many of them martyrs, who weren't allowed to be buried inside the Roman city walls during the first few centuries AD). Had we not got on the tour last minute we were going to book a tour for today - which at this point would have been a disaster as at 5pm last night British Airways cancelled the flight we were meant to be on this evening (so flying back this morning was our only real option.) Anyway, we got to go the Catacombs yesterday and the tour guide, a Christian missionary, was excellent. To go down under the ground and walk along the narrow passages where so many people had been laid to rest and to see the Christian markings alongside them, was quite moving. Alongside the small drawings of people being baptised and praying, there were also drawings of Jonah - a reminder of resurrection life and how these Christians were determined to share their faith with the pagan world. Another blessing of this tour was meeting Sally and Mike, an English couple who we got chatting to and who then invited us for lunch. The restaurant we went into only had a QR code menu and my phone couldn't connect at the time, hence the above photo of the outdoor menu board. I had little clue as to most of its  content and found it amusing when we eventually ordered 4 glasses of water and 4 plates of carbonara - it was good though! And how good of Sally and Mike to treat us! By the end of the day we had walked about 10 miles and seen pretty much everything left in Rome we could think of. We finished our trip with a late evening Gelato! Rome may not have been built in a day but you can sure walk a lot of it in that time if you want to! So we'll be home early, but that's probably a good thing too with all that lies ahead for us. It's all been a good reminder again to just trust what God has in store for us, or as we were taught in Zambia years ago, "Blessed are the flexible, for they will not be bent out of shape!!"