Cruise Story

I love going on cruises. I have only been privileged to go on three different cruises, but I have loved each one of them. Our first cruise was a short 3-day Carnival Cruise as a family from Long Beach, California to Ensenada, Mexico. Our second cruise was a week-long Western Mediterranean Cruise. For that one, we flew from LAX to Barcelona, Spain before catching the cruise ship. Kyle went with Alan and I on that one. (Our favorite cruise by far!) Our third cruise was to Alaska and was just Alan and I. We flew from LAX to Seattle and boarded the ship there. There's a temptation to eat too much on a cruise because there's food everywhere, but you just have to watch yourself.

I'm going to share an experience of something that happened on the cruise that Alan and I took to Alaska. Even though Alaska is part of the United States, we needed a passport for that cruise because the ship went into Vancouver, Canada. For the whole cruise, I kept my passport in my purse. However, on the last evening, I took a different, smaller purse (hand bag) to go to dinner and do things on the ship, and it included my passport. 

On the last day of the cruise, we were told to keep what few things we would need prior to leaving the ship the next morning and then pack everything else in our suitcases and leave them out in the hall before going to bed. Evidently, the cruise attendants accumulate everyone's suitcases during the night. They also take the suitcases to the airport for everyone and hold them for us to retrieve prior to our flight back home. Forgetting that my passport was in my smaller hand bag, I packed it in my suitcase that night and kept out my larger purse for use the next day. 

Well, when it came time to get off the ship, I looked in my purse to make sure I had my passport, but it wasn't there. Panic set in! I knew I would need to present my passport, but I also knew that I didn't have it with me. I remembered that it was in my suitcase in my small handbag at the airport. Oops! I didn't know what to do. 

There were crowds of people all trying to get off the ship so Alan told me to hold onto his arm and he would show his passport hoping that they wouldn't see that I wasn't presenting mine. Thankfully, it worked! I quickly went down the gangplank and was relieved to retrieve my passport from my suitcase at the airport. I felt like the Lord was watching over me that day, making it possible for me to slip past the authorities and not be stopped for not having a passport. Tender mercy for sure! God works in mysterious ways!