The word for today is...

Although this is being posted on Friday, this is a record of our first day of the trip. It did not get posted yesterday for reasons that will become apparent if you continue to read.

The word for today is probably best described as “delay”. We picked up the Wilsons with only a five-minute delay, and we arrived at the Birmingham airport with plenty of spare time. Then the delays began. The cold front and accompanying storm system that roared through north Alabama on Wednesday had made its way to south Florida by mid-morning today. The plane we were scheduled to be on was coming from Miami, and for a period of time all of the planes in Miami were grounded while the system cleared the area.

While we ate lunch at the airport in Birmingham and waited for our plane, we visited with an interesting gentleman from Texas. He was an ex-Marine (although he said Marines were never “ex”!) He was on his way to the Dominican Republic to do mission work through the Evangelical Free Church. We had some interesting conversation with him while we waited, and gave him a card with the information about our blog and a link to BibleStudyGuide.org where the Bible lessons and teaching materials there can be translated into any language.

When we were finally airborne, the ride was very bumpy between Birmingham and Miami, and the visibility from our window was zero. The weather that greeted us in Miami definitely did not qualify as a “Chamber of Commerce weather” day. It was overcast, cloudy and gray. We got off the plane and learned that our plane From Miami to Quito had been delayed, so we had another setback in our schedule. Finally, we boarded the plane and were all buckled in, only to be told that there was something wrong with the on-board intercom system. So we sat on the plane for over an hour and waited for someone to bring a replacement piece of equipment to the plane and install it, before we could taxi, take off, and head for Quito.

The captain kept giving us periodic updates of the bad news…the piece of equipment was delayed…the piece arrived and did not work…etc. Finally, when we thought “delay” was the bad word of the day, the captain used an even more discouraging word… “disembark“. Apparently the plane could not fly with a non-functioning intercom system, so over 200 very tired people disembarked the plane at Gate 5 and hiked to Gate 33 and waited for yet another plane, and a repeat of the re-boarding process.

When we were finally herded on to Plane #2, the same captain again announced that he knew we were tired of hearing him announce bad news, so he had some “neutral” news for us. His news was that we were at this point waiting for them to transfer our luggage from Plane #1 to Plane #2. He apologized because the pillow and blanket packages from Plane #1 had not been transferred to the new plane. (At this point very few passengers cared.)

After spending an hour seated on Plane #2 and listening to “neutral” news, we finally got the “real” news. We first thought “delay” was the bad word of the day. They we upgraded the bad word list to include “disembark”. About midnight we got the third word… “terminated”. By this time the flight crew had put in their maximum hours for the day and by law had to go off duty. With no crew (especially with no pilot), we could go no further. We were sentenced to spend a night (or what was left of the night) in Miami, and return to take the same flight, which was re-scheduled for 6:30 AM. We were told to go to the Customer Service desk to get our assigned hotel room, vouchers for transportation and food.

To make an extremely long story much shorter, we waited in the line for vouchers almost two hours, finally hired a taxi to take us to the “hotel” only to arrive there to find that we had been assigned to a room in one of the local casinos! After another very long wait in line, we were checked in and eventually got in bed about 2 AM…but that is Friday morning, and the subject of another post!
Midnight: Over 200 passengers patiently (?) wait for their hotel assignments and vouchers.

Summary of the day…delayed planes, long lines, termination of flight, and spending the night in a hotel room in a casino!

But, we must remember that the apostle Paul walked (walked!) for weeks, months, and perhaps years to visit and encourage the Christians in other areas. That sort of puts the day’s events in perspective.