We knew the trip was off to a great start when we were checked in at the Delta reservation desk by an employee named "Angel". Our first blessing was when we did not have to pay the $25 checked bag fee, saving the team $350 each way. We thanked Angel, who diligently and cheerfully checked us in, weighed our bags, printed our boarding passes, and checked our passports.
We found our gate easily and stopped to eat lunch at the food court before making our final trek back to wait on the first leg of our trip from Charlotte to Detroit. As folks were registering their SkyMiles points, Angel reappeared at the customer service desk and gave us the confidential heads up that our 3:10 flight would likely be delayed. We found out shortly after that our flight was delayed by one hour. We were anxious to “officially” start out trip, but soon found out that our flight was delayed by a second hour. This meant that we likely wouldn’t get to Detroit in time to meet our connecting flight to Amsterdam. If we didn't make it to Amsterdam in time, there was a chance that our trip to Uganda could be delayed several days since there is one flight in and out of Uganda daily.
Sarah quickly joined the long line forming at the Delta counter while Sherry got on the phone with Delta, hoping one of their attempts would prove successful. The rest of us sat, praying that we would be able to catch another flight out of Charlotte in time to get to Detroit for our connection. We got word that we were rebooked onto a USAirways flight that was leaving ASAP. We ran through the airport to the other terminal, but got there only to find out that they didn't actually have 11 seats available on the flight. Sarah, still at the ticket counter tying up loose ends, got stopped by security (we're not sure really why), so literally the entire flight was delayed because of our group trying to book the flight. They wanted to split our team up and book us on separate flights, but Sarah stood her ground to make sure that we all flew together as a group. When they scanned our tickets, we found out that Bob wasn't even in the system, but somehow the USAirways people let him on the flight since he had a paper ticket.The USAirways person went onto the plane (which had already boarded) and asked for volunteers. How awesome was it that the first two volunteers were two men from AFRICA! They didn't know until after they volunteered that the people they gave up their seats for were going to Africa on a mission trip, but once they found out, you could tell in their faces that they were thrilled to have given their seats up for us. We still lacked two people being able to board the plane, so two other women volunteered -- all 11 of us were on the flight! Many of us were placed beside of people that we didn't know or by other teammates that we weren't originally booked to sit beside, which was a great thing since we got to know each other a bit better during that flight.
When we landed in Detroit, we walked out of the gate to realize that we were going to be sprinting through another airport in order to make our next flight to Amsterdam. Diana apparently got up too quickly and fainted at the end of the gate. We quickly made sure she was okay, but didn't want to chance anything so Kevin pushed her in a wheelchair through the airport to our next terminal. We were taken by bus to another terminal in the Detroit airport and were finally boarding our flight to Amsterdam.
We had 8 hours of calm on the overnight flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, with most of us sleeping for much of the flight. We arrived at the Amsterdam airport on Sunday morning and boarded the last flight to Uganda. The KLM flight to Uganda was met with impeccable customer service by the KLM employees. We were constantly being fed great food, and the people were so pleasant. A little before 4pm local time, we crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Africa. We landed in Entebbe late Sunday night and made it through customs to get our Visa. When we went to the baggage claim area, it was soon apparent that only our carry-on bags had made it to Africa. Since we had been rebooked onto a USAirways flight in Charlotte, our bags had been delayed. We found out that it may take several days for our bags to make it to Entebbe.
Patrick, our in-country facilitator, met us at the airport and we all made the 50-minute trek to the home where we were staying in Gaba. Most of us came in and went right to bed, eager to start Monday morning in Africa.
It was apparent throughout the entire journey from Charlotte to Entebbe that there was spiritual warfare taking place. Satan was pulling out all of the stops -- from delays to overbooked flights to physical harm (with Diana fainting and then Bob dropped his guitar on his toe) to trying to fluster us to the point where our hearts were in the wrong places -- but thank God we had "Angels" on our side to battle the demons, not only in the Delta employee named Angel but also in the angels that helped us along the way and protected us during our travels.
No comments:
Post a Comment