18 August 2008

18 August, 2008

Day one of my big, cross atlantic adventure. After a sleepless (for Carolyn at least) night of frantic last minute details and frantic packing, we arrived at the Spokane airport with at least 280 pounds of luggage, loaded to the gills with baby blankets, suits for the pastors of northern Uganda, and an odd assortment of medical supplies. Carolyn slept between myself and a large Ukranian woman on our short flight to Seattle. My back was killing me, and that is just the beginning of the whining. I figure after I get to Uganda I will be so ashamed of how pathetically soft my life is that I will never complain again (right?) so I'd better get all of my whining out of the way now.

Transferring luggage in Seattle was a sweaty frenzy. After we got off of our little plane from Spokane we had to claim our suitcases and boxes and re-check them for our international flight. The line for the Northwest ticket counter wound in a snakelike pattern around the entire ticketing kiosk, back through the shops in the terminal and then in the form of one of those striped squiggly Christmas candies back and forth all the way back to the front. I have never stood in a longer line. We had a two hour lay over and got our ridiculous amount of baggage checked in just in time to beeline back through security and book it to our gate. This all would have been fine if I hadn't lost Carolyn in the security lines when she realized she had lost her boarding pass and had to go back to the ticket counter. So while she somehow miraculously circumvented the formidable line, I paced back and forth, frantically searching for her to emerge from one of the TSA lines. With minutes to spare, she finally surfaces and explains the trouble as we sprint to the gate, with far too many carry-ons to justify. It all worked out in the end, even as the gate check attendant lectured Carolyn on carry-on limits and Carolyn tried to shove her backpack into her laptop case unsuccessfully and hurried through before a nasty confrontation developed. So now we are on a northwestern path over the top of the world toward Amsterdam. Less than halfway there and I have watched two movies and taken a couple of cat naps. 

I feel as though I am careening into this undertaking headlong and blindly, with no clear idea what I'll be doing and no clear sense of how or why I am here, but a sense of knowing it was just something I had to do. That damn knowing sense. It really has gotten me into some trouble over the years. My strongest hope, and my deepest wish is that my hand can some how capture the heart of the people I am going to meet. That I can express their passion would the fulfillment of my mission in this strange new land. I pray that my heart and mind and ears and voice are open to their world.