by laura beth

I have to tell this funny story, partly because I love how small and connected our world is. Small world stories are my fave.

Aunt Laurie drove us to LAX, and because we had a morning flight, we got there pretty early and the airport was mostly empty. I saw this girl two separate times in the airport. I noticed her because she had a friendly face, and she smiled at me both times I saw her. Later, when we boarded the flight, Kenny and I realized that we were not seated next to each other, but he was seated in the row ahead of me. I was seated next to the Pretty Airport Girl, who very kindly offered to switch seats with Kenny. Once she was seated in front of us, she started reading. We noticed her reading material contained phrases like "the Church Fathers", "Apostolic Succession", and other Traditional Churchy things. We thought, "She must be Catholic," but we continued to sneak peeks at her reading material. Finally Kenny asked what she was reading, and she showed us and said, "I'm an Orthodox Christian." What are the chances? She had to be the only one on the plane. And she was seated with us! So we carried on conversation with her throughout the flight, and she gave us some of the booklets she was reading. Her name is Heather, she is from Canada, and she is engaged to a man (Philotheou, I think, is his baptism name) that spent 10 years at Saint Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery in Arizona (I think that's right), although he was never tonsured a monk (I'm not sure if he was a Novice or simply lived at the monastery). He is now at Saint Lawrence Orthodox Church (again, I think that's right-I didn't take notes, so I'm going by memory) in Felton, CA. Anyhoo, it was a pretty cool "chance" meeting, and a good encouragement in regards to the Orthdox Christian Faith. May God bless you Heather!