bits n' pieces

Yesterday I took the three hour trip to Tallinn to take care of some things with my passport at the US embassy. Aldar's Dad had a meeting in Tallinn and he kindly let me go with him. On arriving at the embassy my first sight of that beautiful flag flying above me made my heart strangely warm. Oh, "Land that I love"...Yes, of course I love traveling the world, seeing all sorts of places, people and cultures. I feel privileged to have lived in 4 countries and traveled through many more. Yet, through all the adventures and experiences I cannot forget my own dear country. Many people, places, and things I miss from my homeland. Yes, tis true..anyways back to my story.
Things went wonderfully smooth at the embassy and I was able to finish in 30 minutes or so. I was then left with three or four hours to wait for David to finish with his meeting. Seeing it was only a two minute walk to Old Town Tallinn, I took off in that direction planning to spend those hours wandering around the web of tiny cobble stone streets. Maybe looking in at some of the little tourist shops, or just taking pictures of the old churches, and castle ruins. I figured when I got chilly I'd find myself a cozy little coffee shop and have a hot cup of tea or hot chocolate and just sit and read for awhile.
Well, whose day ever goes as planned?!

As I walked down the street, I pulled out Aldar's phone that he had given me for the day. At the embassy, when going through security, they had asked me to turn off all electronic devices. So now I flipped the phone open and pushed the button to turn it on. Instead of being greeted by the usual, a small box came up asking me to enter the PIN number. This would have been no problem if I had somehow known the PIN number. But when giving me his phone Aldar had failed to mention that his phone card here in Estonia requires a password to be entered when you turn it on. ah....details!
Well, the plan had been that David would call me when he was finished with his meeting and we would arrange a place to meet. With no phone, and not able to even open the phones address book without the password, thoughts began to fly through my mind. How on earth was I to find him in this huge city, not having pre-arranged a meeting place, or even an exact time?!

"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?
Yet not one of them is forgotten by God."
Luke 12:6

On seeing these little sparrows I was reminded of God's care for even the little animals, so surely I had nothing to worry about.
I won't go into everything that happened or all the possibilites that went through my mind. But basically I prayed about it, then walked what felt like all over town, finally found an internet cafe and it just so happened that Aldar's sister was on facebook and she called her Dad for me and we arranged a place and time to meet. What a relief! Already nearly 3 hours had passed in the process of figuring out my predicament and so I proceeded to get myself a cup of hot chocolate and walk back to the square to sit and wait for David to come.
It still turned out to be a good day. I got what I needed to done, had a lot of good exercise :) got to see some interesting things, and some time to read as well. And of course I got my 30 min of language study in, yay! :)