The First Steps are Always Hard, Even in Missions
Our church is sending a mission team to work with IMB Missionaries,
Troy and Tracy Lewis. They live in Zambia South Africa which is along
way from Buffalo New York.
Purchasing the airline tickets for this trip was a serious hassle.
At one point in the process I thought, "We will have to
call it off." I could never imagine in my wildest dreams
having to call a mission trip off. I guess that happens, but it
has never happen to me.
We prayed about it, followed the planning process, we prayed some
more and all of the pieces came together like we figured they would.
Well, this trip was not that easy.
The cost of the plane ride to Zambia was a lot more than we expected.
It seemed that as the days and even hours moved on the price of the tickets
kept increasing. Each website we visited gave us no hope. The prices crept
up to $2789, then the number $3045 flashed on the sites. No matter where
we looked, the cost was out of our reach.
Our minds were made up to pay about $2200.00 per ticket to leave
Buffalo and land in Zambia, some 3 or 4 planes later. Once we had the
money from the team members in hand the cost of the flight all over
the internet had increased another $800. Do you understand what another
$800 means for each person who has already forked over $2200.00?
I talked to David in Dallas, who gave me some advice to call Delta on the
phone but after talking with them they gave me no real options. Marian and my
wife Adrian got on the computer in the main office of our church and went work,
plugging in different dates and places of departure. They worked feverishly with
me on the search to find reasonable airline tickets. We typed and clicked for 4 hours
or more searching for what I called the “internet miracle.”
I guess I was hoping to see a legitimate airline flash some price like $1500 per
ticket with 5 seats left leaving Buffalo to Zambia. Well, we got our answer. It wasn’t
$1500 nor was it $3,000. We were all happy to find the number $2573. So, here’s
what we did. We decided to drive to Detroit and catch a plane along with one of team
members and fly off in the evening skies headed for Frankfurt Germany. We will use
the Man Van (Pastor’s Conversion Van) and pay for long term parking. Thank you
Lord for getting us over this hurdle! Zambia, here we come on July 19th 2010.
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