I have been wanting to write about Matt's graduation for a while. It was such a wonderful weekend that I feel like I can't possibly relate how great it actually was. My brother has been working on this since he was in grade school. He has wanted to be a veterinarian his whole life and I couldn't be more proud of him. It is such an accomplishment. Vet school is extremely competitive and he was accepted into two schools, which is unheard of. However different we are, I love him to death, would do anything for him, and feel like I'm going to cry every time I think or talk about how proud I am of him.
He graduated from the School of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University. We flew up on Friday morning into Pasco ( a tiny little airport) on Allegiant Air, which was quite the fiasco that day! Unbeknownst to us, we were supposed to check in two hours in advance. We flew out of LAX and stayed thursday night in a hotel right down the street. We left for the airport two hours ahead of time, feeling proud of ourselves for being so on top of it! We usually push the time limit, and are used to flying southwest and getting there about an hour ahead of time. By the time we parked our car and rode the shuttle it was an hour till we were supposed to leave. We checked in, and thought everything was great! Got up to our gate and they were telling everyone that the flight was overbooked and offering free tickets to take the next flight. Still we felt confident we would be on the flight! To make a very long and stressful story short, we didn't know that they board you in the order you check in and apparently we were the very last to check in. The lovely Allegiant Air personnel told us that we weren't getting on this flight. I had been feeling super guilty because this was the first time I was actually visiting Matt at WASU, and was not about to miss any part of this weekend. I kept going back and forth from being extremely angry at the airline for overbooking and then trying to pray and trust that God had our backs! All while my husband was yelling "THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE" and then telling me to calm down! We were definitely a site!!! We did end up getting on the flight, thanks to these wonderful people for taking the next flight. I had to control myself from hugging and kissing them for stepping up! We weren't able to sit together (who knew!) but I ended up sitting next to this beautiful christian woman. We ended up talking the entire flight. She was heading home after a week spent doing mission work and the Dream Center in LA. I felt incredibly stupid for never hearing about this wonderful facility and living so close! She was an amazing person, one that definitely touched my soul. Her story was amazing and I later realized that God always has a plan, and for that day, it was for me to sit next to her. What a blessing (and a whole other blog post).
We arrived in Pasco, feeling very thankful to have made it and picked up our rental car. It was Mr Sitompul's first time in such a small airport and fun to watch his surprise when we walked out the front door of the airport to pick out our car! We drove about 2 1/2 hours to Pullman. It was gorgeous. I was taking pictures the whole time of the yellow fields and beautiful barns along the highway.
As soon as
we arrived at Matt's we met up with his friends and then drove up to
their property to have a bonfire. It has been raining and was too hard
to drive up the hill so we hiked up and carried the food and chairs. It
was so fun to watch everyone hike up with arms overflowing! We had such a
wonderful evening. Ben and Stacy have an amazing family. They had taken
Matt into their home every weekend and made him part of the family for
the last 4 years. It was always so reassuring that he had somewhere to
go and a church to support him during vet school. Ben and Matt have a
lot in common (mostly guns!) and it was so fun to finally meet them and
their adorable children! It was an awesome night. After roasting hot dogs and yummy corn we had the cake that mom and I ordered. We laughed the whole weekend, bc when we picked up the cake from Safeway we asked them to write on it, when she brought it back to us it actually looked like a 4 year old did it! It was quite hilarious, but tasted good just the same! When it started getting dark, we had a short worship and sang around the campfire! It was the perfect way to start off the graduation weekend!
On saturday we got up and tried to walk, but it was so windy outside we didn't get very far! We all went to church, which was led by the pathfinders and so adorable! We met all the wonderful Christians who had taken Matt into their church and watched over him. During the service the pastor passed out mics to whoever had a prayer or praise. Mom thanked everyone there for taking Matt in and being such a warm church. We knew he was well taken care of! I immediately started crying, I had no idea we were thinking the exact same thing. Matt and I don't talk a lot and have very little in common, but I love him so much and worry about him all the time. This whole weekend was so exciting and overwhelming to see him and celebrate this huge accomplishment.
