Practice makes perfect.
We drove down to Houston once again Friday morning for another attempt
at getting to Nairobi. We had to drive separately, since Pastor Kevin has a
wedding and is returning to Austin starting next Thursday night. Since we were unsure of whether Kevin would
be allowed to fly on KLM without an issued Kenyan evisa (he did have a receipt),
we had arranged the 4 footlockers such that if I was going by myself, I would
be taking 2 footlockers with the most critical supplies like frames for
distance glasses and Gospel tracts for clinic patients. What a difference a day can make. I felt like we were in the movie Groundhog
Day, as we repeated the process from Thursday.
The same personnel were at the counter and were just as friendly, since
KLM and Air France are partner airlines.
They recognized us and were sorry for our delay. They had even given me a 50% off voucher for
a hotel if I had wanted to stay in Houston Thursday night attempting to procure
my visa. We had both decided to go back
to Austin instead, since there was no guarantee the buggy visa system would
work any better at a hotel. They
commiserated with us about the wasted round trip we had made. It proved to have been a good move, since I
was able to use my Photoshop skills at my home office to fine tune the photos
required for the visa application and mine had finally gone through at 3am
Friday.
Another similarity to Thursday was that Kevin and I had the
same clothes as before. No, we weren’t
beginning to smell funny. We had each
done laundry the night before. I have a
new lucky red shirt I am trying out on this trip and figured the bad Karma of
Thursday couldn’t last. I retired my old
lucky red shirt after it let me down and we wound up in Istanbul on my 13th
trip last June. It lived a good long
life, but it was time for it to be put out to pasture.
Anyway, we sailed through check-in, without even being asked
about the evisas. This made it very
plain to me that Air France just didn’t have a grasp of the options available
in Nairobi and didn’t care to go the extra mile to find out. Rules are rule, zero tolerance means you don’t
have to think. New day, new airline,
same personnel, different rules. We left
the check-in counter with everybody on both sides of it smiling. I can say that while we were upset by the
circumstances Thursday, we didn’t throw a tantrum or play the “Don’t you know
who I am?” card so common these days but handled it in a loving Christian
way. The staff encouraged us both days
in doing the human care mission work they knew we were on our way to do.
We also got through security without a hitch and I had just
enough time to grab a sandwich and some waters for each of us before boarding
our KLM flight. Dinner was a choice
between vegetarian pasta with rice and cheese or Korean beef with rice and
candied carrots. I got the beef, it was
very good. I watched the movie Minions,
I love how creative this series is, and it’s as much for adults as kids. Sandra Bullock’s voice acting as the evil
Scarlet was superb. I got some good
sleep and am writing this as we are about 2 hours from Amsterdam and about to
eat once again. They have already
brought hot towels for our hands and faces, a nice touch.
Breakfast was also good, a cheese omelet with sausage, a
biscuit and mixed fruit salad. We often
fly the partnership of British Air and American on these missions. They don’t know anything about food compared
to KLM and Air France!
I got a fair amount of sleep on this first leg of our
journey, which is exactly what we try to do.
It helps in adjusting to the 9 hour difference when we get to
Nairobi. We have about 3 hours between
flights in Amsterdam, I expect about an hour of that will be deplaning, getting
through security and boarding of the next flight, so I should have time to post
this if I can get onto the wifi at the airport.
If all goes well, we will arrive in Nairobi around 8:15pm local time and
it usually takes about an hour to get through customs and immigration. Please pray that Pastor Kevin doesn’t hit any
visa snags. We’re not sure where we’ll be
staying, but we will worship with the rest of our team at the church in
Kawangware where we will be serving this week.
That’s always a great experience, more to follow about that when it
occurs.
We did talk to Dr. Zoch while we were going through check-in
in Houston. The team was already on
their way to their lodgings at a convent we have used in the past, The Little
Daughters of St. Joseph. All were well
and their trip was without incident. I
guess Kevin and I got all the drama this time!
We arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a little after
7am and were pleasantly surprised that we didn’t have to go through any
additional security checks like in London or Paris. Sweet! Looks like we get most of our 3 hour layover
to spend in one of coolest airports in the world. I’m drinking a medium black coffee that was
3.45 euros, not sure of the exchange rate but I’m guessing it’s a 5 dollar cup
of coffee. It’s good, but not THAT
good! I’m going to spend the time after
posting this blog doing my 365 Day Photo Challenge picture for today on
Facebook and letting friends and relatives that may not be following the blog
that so far, everything is good. Stay
tuned!
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