Angels in Street Clothes

01-July-2014 23:00KST/20:00UTC/16:00EST

     While it all may begin well, nothing worth doing is ever without its challenges.  In the case of our outbound journey, those challenges included not one, but two "ground stop" episodes due to lightning around the Atlanta Airport that chased all ground crews off the tarmac and ramps throwing the entire schedule of arrivals and departures into chaos.  When our flight was initially delayed for sixty minutes, I cued up in the line at the counter for the gate for the primary purpose of being assured that we would be able to make our connection in Washington, DC at Dulles Airport. By the time I was finally to the counter, the delay had been extended to 104 minutes, then 126 minutes and our new time of departure from Atlanta matched the departure time of the second leg of our journey.  The wonderfully kind United Airlines Gate Agent, who's spiritual gift certainly must have been patience, quickly was able to re-book our entire team of six travelers on Delta Airlines and an Atlanta-Zurich non-stop that left Atlanta at 5:30 local time and put us in Switzerland boarding our originally scheduled third leg with a 45 minutes window to change planes.

Having done some traveling, and having had to re-book because of weather, I have a small amount of appreciation for the challenge that it poses for an airline to shuffle a single passenger.  To find six seats truly requires a divine intervention.  To be fair, we were also aided by several stellar Delta Gate Agents who made sure that we not only made the new flight,but were seated together, and even went the extra step of ensuring that our seats from Zurich to Nairobi we're secured as they could have been jeopardized by our missing the original first leg.  We were truly in the presence of "angels in street clothes" even before we boarded the first airplane.

I am aware of time zones, and the fact that we were flying forward through time,  but having never actually "crossed the pond" before, I was not fully prepared for the airlines dirty little secret:  when they serve you breakfast an hour before touchdown at 8AM, it is still 3AM in Atlanta.  This is my story and I'm sticking with it to explain why, in a daze (at 3:30AM body-clock time) I went through the security check point in Zurich with my pockets still stuffed with phones, pens, and things that did not make the metal detector happy.  Fortunately, the attendants were understanding and after a debriding of all my metal and electronics and getting a perfunctory pat-down, I was cleared with a knowing smile and a wish for a pleasant day.

On board the Swiss Air Airbus A330-300, I was seated on a bulkhead row which meant my backpack/security blanket had to be stowed overhead, not in it customary place at my feet.  My seat-neighbor was a pretty young woman holding a three-week-old infant.  In my mind I was saying, "well, this should be interesting," but little Raphael was as perfect as he could have been.  The flight attendants set up a wall-mounted baby bassinet after we were airborne and he snoozed nearly the entire flight.  I learned that his mother, Barbara, works for a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, the planes ultimate destination after the stop in Nairobi.  She had been in Europe for the birth, and was now making the journey back to her home, and husband, bringing back a very special bundle of joy.  Her work is in a medical center that provides corrective surgeries for children with physical anomalies and challenges like cleft-pallet.  We briefly discussed the wonderful joy that comes from giving a young child a life-changing gift. She truly is to these children, another angel in street clothes, or maybe in her case, surgical scrubs.

Please remember Barbara and Raphael, and pray for them. Pray that her work would be blessed, that she would be safe, and that Raphael would grow up to be a strong and happy little boy.