Happy Journey!

Normally, one wouldn’t necessarily see the need to devote an entire post to the journey to a particular destination however, the Father’s hand was SO clearly seen in the orchestration of our journey that I think it does necessitate a post of its own. We were supposed to depart Memphis around 8:15ish on an American Airlines flight to Chicago, then to JFK, Brussels, Chennai (India) and then our final destination by flight, Hyderabad. We were set to arrive in Hyderabad, India around 9 am local time and the team that was meeting us in Hyderabad was scheduled to arrive before us around 2 or 3am.

We boarded our first flight from Memphis to Chicago and were seated with carryon luggage stowed and seatbelts fastened, ready to begin the first leg of our journey when the captain came over the PA system asking everyone to unload for about 20 minutes while American Airlines personnel try to fix a potential problem with the plane’s hydraulics (not sure exactly what this is but hey, if they say there is a potential problem I’m more than willing to get off!). 20 minutes turned into a canceled flight and we ended up spending the better part of the day in Memphis trying to reroute 6 passengers on the same flights all the way to India.

The very helpful American Airlines representative was able to eventually book us all a new itinerary that was supposed to depart at 2 pm that afternoon and take us from Memphis to Chicago to JFK to Frankfurt, Germany to Mumbai and finally into Hyderabad. And while we were almost assured our luggage wouldn’t make it to our final destination because the new itinerary had us flying on 4 different airlines, it would in fact get us to Hyderabad before our original itinerary and eliminate an overnight stay in Chennai, India en route to Hyderabad. What a kindness of the Lord!

Our journey seemed to be clicking along just fine as we left the States but when we arrived in Frankfurt, Germany we all received another little reminder that the Lord is indeed the one who orders our steps (Proverbs 16:9). You see, we found that our friendly American Airlines representative had booked our Frankfurt flights for January 4 as opposed to June 4. Talk about an extended layover! Now we were completely at the mercy of our friendly Lufthansa ticketing agents to get all 6 of us out of Germany together sometime in 2010. (Side note: It an odd sort of way it was the Lord's kindness that the tickets were booked for January. If they American Airlines ticketing agent had seen June, itinerary #2 would probably not have worked and we probably would have never made it out of the States.) Thankfully, Lufthansa was able to reroute us (yet again) and accommodate as long as the 6 of us could run through the Frankfurt airport (including another pass through security) and make it to the plane that was currently boarding for Abu Dhabi, UAE. This third itinerary was to take us to Abu Dhabi and then finally to Hyderabad.

Fortunately, that is exactly what happened. We made it to Abu Dhabi fine but discovered there that our bags did not (actually, only my bag made it to Abu Dhabi). We also discovered that only 4 of the 6 of us had flights that continued on to Hyderabad. The friendly Eithad Airways ticketing agent somehow worked a bit of magic and was able to free up 2 additional seats. We all 6 finally boarded the plane to Hyderabad where we arrived literally moments before our team members from North Carolina did and hours before our original itinerary. What a sweet providence of the Lord! Obviously the Lord had alternate travel arrangements for us and on the onset of the trip it was a precious reminder that the Lord was in control. He continued to show us this even in the way that he provided luggage for the rest of the team almost moments before out bus left Hyderabad for the villages. The entire time, unbeknownst to us, the Lord was behind the scenes orchestrating our crazy travel plans in such a way that caused us to feast on the fullness of Christ and rest in his kind providence toward us. In this sense, as the Indians say, it was indeed a “Happy Journey.”