Delays

A test of patience? God keeping us out of harms way? We'll never know for sure why today (or the last two days depending on how you look at it) have been filled with delays. What we do know is as a team we faced each delay with a smile on our face and we are all safe and sound.

We left Hillsboro, Oregon at 4:30am on our way to the Portland International Airport. Once seated on the aircraft we were informed by the pilot that the tower had notified us of a delay. We don't know what the delay was for but we sat on the tarmac for an hour waiting to takeoff. We landed at the Newark/New Jersey airport a little late but in no hurry since we had a 4 hour layover in our schedule. Waiting for us as we debarked the plane was our 7th team member Delilah who had flown in from Maryland.

Delilah was introduced to the team members she had never met and we did what every team heading into India would do for their final dinner. We ate beef!! We sat down at a diner and ate burgers together. During dinner I received a call from my husband about a tsunami warning around India. After some research we found out that the tsunami warning was actually on the Eastside of India in the Indian Ocean and we were landing on the West side of India. Giving thanks to God we closed down our computers and walked the airport before our long flight.

We boarded our plane headed to Mumbai and as the boarding started coming to an end I looked around and 6 out 7 of the team members had entire rows to themselves. Our 7th team member had 2 seats. We all gave thanks to God for His provision. Little did we know that He had knowledge of what the rest of our day would look like and the extra sleep we received from the extra space would be needed.

As the doors to the airplane shut we got notice from the captain that we would be delayed because of weather i Pennsylvania. The weather was in our flight path. The runways were stacked up because of the delay and it took us 2 hours to get out of Newark. I knew this would put us into Mumbai very late and I was wondering how the details of our day would fall out. I prayed and asked God to work it all out for us and to give us comfort in His provisions and closed my eyes and went to sleep. 8 hour later (YES! 8 HOURS LATER!) I awoke. It is truly amazing how much you can sleep on a plane when you have a couch to sleep on.

As we neared Mumbai the captain came on to tell us that the airport was stacked up with delays and we would have to circle awhile until we had clearance to land. Now, delays can be caused by many different types of weather and technical issues, but have you ever heard of an airport being shut down because there is a dog on the runway? Seriously, a dog was on the runway and it shut down an International airport. We all had a good laugh about it and FINALLY landed in Mumbai 3 hours late.

We pulled up to the terminal and the jetway would not work so after 20 minutes of delays they pulled up some stairs and bussed us back to the terminal.

The swine flu is breaking out here in India and the country is in a panic about it. There is extra security measures at the airport to go through to make sure we are not sick. Everyone is wearing masks. I would covet your prayers for the whole team as we serve. Please ask God to provide health and protection to all of us as we serve.

Our team flew through the health screening station and 5 of us were through the customs checkpoint when the computers went down. Another delay....I sent 3 team members on the baggage area to start collecting our bags while I waited for our team members to get cleared through customs. Finally the computers were up and running and we were all collected again in baggage claim. Praises to God for ALL our suitcases arriving safely!

The team then proceeded to move outside of the airport. We spotted Uma right away and headed through the thick crowd to make our way to him. By the time we arrived outside of the airport it was 1am Mumbai time. We had been traveling for 32 hours. We loaded our luggage and team members into 2 vehicles and headed to Pune, a 4 hour drive. This was the only leg of our journey without delays.

As I'm typing all the team members are snug in their beds and our wake up call should be in about 2 hours. We'll start ministering to the children at the AIDS home tomorrow and visit the Creche in the evening. Please continue to pray for strength tomorrow as we fight jetlag and minimal sleep. But like I told Uma we didn't come to sleep we came to serve our God so we will persevere.

Good night for now.