Tuesday and Wednesday 5/28 and 5/29/2024 – The adventure started right away this trip. The incredible weather in Dallas that stretched to the east coast this morning made a mess of the Austin airport.  Our friend Barry Beckman got Rudy, Sarah and me to the American Airlines check-in by 8am as planned. Our original plan was to go through security as a team, but our flight 822 to JFK in New York was delayed from 11:27 to 12:57 and then to 2:30. We wouldn’t have made our connection to London, so we got in a line that took hours. We took turns in that line. Meanwhile, the American Airlines phone app rescheduled some of us to go to Dallas on flight 1595, including me. Arron and Sarah got on that flight, but Rudy and I were next up at the counter when they shut the doors, even though there were empty seats. This had to be because they were ordered to take off by air traffic control. They would have lost their takeoff position if they didn’t pull away from the gate. What a scheduling nightmare! People everywhere and lines that lasted for hours. We joined the other line. Then, I got the bright idea of calling the Aadvantage program, the frequent flier club I belong to with American. Their phone app couldn’t rebook me, but a 45 minute phone call worked and got me on a flight to LA at 3:27 pm. My flight was half an hour late arriving,  so I literally ran for 25 minutes through LAX, took numerous escalators and moving sidewalks and barely made my flight to London as the doors were closing. I learned my heart is still good! I’ll have a 12 to 18 hour layover at Heathrow and if I’m lucky, I’ll arrive in Nairobi at 8:30pm local time after about 55 and a half hours from the time I left home. If luggage is lost, I’ll have to file for that, go through customs and immigration and ride to where we stay. I may end up door to door at 58 to 60 hours total real-time travel, a new record for this trip for me by a longshot. This is a distinction I did not seek!

The others were not so lucky. Pastor Kevin and Jon waited in another line and will get to Nairobi around 1:30pm Friday after a stay in Ethiopia, another first. Sarah and Arron made it to Dallas, only to get stranded when their flight to London didn’t go due to mechanical problems. Ken, Sandra, Elizabeth, Finnegan, Amanda and Rudy never got out of Austin.  They are booked to leave Austin for Philadelphia around 6am Wednesday and hopefully will meet me in London and we will arrive together Thursday night.

Thankfully, with modern communication methods like text messages, Whatsapp, Facebook, etc. we have been able to keep tabs on each other and let Catherine in Nairobi know about all the changes. This trip we planned safaris and other activities before our clinics begin next week because our church staff and teachers need to be back for VBS the week of June 10^th. Our clinics should still be fine. I shared with some of the team all of this trouble is the devil trying to stop us because our work in Nairobi will hurt his cause badly. We need to pray and work twice as hard. It’s actually heartening to know we’re on the radar in the spiritual warfare that we aren’t always aware of. Thank you, Jesus!

Once I got onto flight A134 and found that I got an aisle seat  I was a little happier. We took off on time and after about an hour I had a pretty good meal of chicken and rice with a salad, roll and brownie. I’ve been able to get a couple of hours of sleep and stretch every hour and a half or so. My doctor gave me a blood thinner for the flights to reduce the risk of clots or a DVT.

Looking back, our team has bonded as we had good cheer throughout all of this weather-related trouble. Shared experiences are what friendships are made of, and the funniest stories usually happen under adverse circumstances. It’s just hard to see the humor when you’re in the middle of this stuff!

Blessings everybody! More to follow as I am able.