Re-routing, Air-mageddon, and a Call to Prayer

June 29, 2022…a day for the history books, or at least one for my own private history and memory.

We climbed into our taxis at 4:30AM, groggily tossing luggage into trunks and bench seats. The weight of this last ride through the cobbled streets of Prague in the dawn hours crushed upon us as we sat in silence, cruising to the airport. I could have wished for the Czech anthem, “Kde domov muj?(Where is my home?)” to have been gently playing over the radio, rendering the scene immutably profound. It reverberated in my mind in any case.

********WARNING: The following is a rather long-winded account. If that’s not your jam, skim down to the next line of asterisks********

A surprisingly long check-in line awaited us, as we met with friends and acquaintances who by happenstance were boarding the same flight to London. Delayed by the long line and a border security officer in training at passport control, we made it to our gate only just in time. However, after boarding we were delayed another hour due to air traffic control problems, leaving us with a shortened window for our connection in London.

Upon our eventual arrival in London, we were met with chaos at the terminal. Masses of people milling about, obscuring already overflowing security lines, and flight departure boards not displaying flight information, inhibiting passengers from filtering to their respective terminals. We made our way to the security checkpoint at our terminal only to be denied entry. According to the officer, there was not enough time to make the connecting flight. We, along with a dozen or so others from our flight were turned away, some with nearly 2 hours before their connections. We redirected to the American Airlines/British Airways ticketing counters to attempt resolution of the issue. After eventually making our way to the front of the line after an hour or so and enduring multiple agents passing us back and forth between airlines, we were engaged by an agent who initiated the phone call to get our itinerary rebooked. At some point, I’d guess about 30 minutes into the hold, all agents were cut off and the entire ticketing system at London Heathrow went dark. No ticketing requests were being received, and not even supervisors could access the system. At this point there were approximately 40 other individuals behind us in line awaiting rebooking. Mothers with young children and babies were huddled in corners, the elderly were shiftless with nowhere to sit and rest their aching joints. We waited over 3 hours for the system to come back online and our agent to reroute our flights. This entire time, not another customer had been assisted. We walked away from the desk with new itineraries in hand, wondering at the fate of the dozens of passengers, wailing infants, frazzled mothers, and elderly who had waited over four hours without moving even an inch closer to assistance. We wondered at our own fate, recognizing that the itinerary we eventually did receive would also be impossible to accomplish, with a mere 2 hour layover in New York in which we would need to clear customs with all of our luggage and then transfer from JFK to LaGuardia during rush hour. We filed those concerns to the back of our minds and made our way through the gradually progressing boarding pass check at the entrance to our terminal. 

What ensued next would be difficult to describe without using terms like “refugee crisis” or “humanitarian emergency”. I would hesitate to use such terms because in reality those words are close to home with the war in Ukraine and the true suffering that is happening there under those same linguistic catch all phrases. I cannot and would not intentionally compare our suffering with theirs, but they are apt descriptors nonetheless. We were funneled into a grand hall, thousands of us. There were no lines, no systems, and no airport staff. It might have most closely resembled the shoulder to shoulder crush of the mosh pit at a heavy metal concert had it not been Heathrow airport. It was every man for himself to press forward into the jumbled chaos, and move toward whatever goal was on the far end of that hallway. It was hot and stuffy, cramped and chaotic, dangerous and vulnerable. After two hours of enduring the jostling mass of moving bodies, multiple people could be witnessed falling into panic attacks, succumbing to claustrophobia and heat exhaustion. There was no help, and no way for help to arrive. I prayed earnestly for my family’s safety. We did eventually arrive at the far end of the great hall, to be greeted by electronic passport control gates, which functioned to limit the flow into the security screening area beyond. The gateways intermittently shut down, to prevent the security screening area from being completely overwhelmed. Unfortunately that meant that only part of our family made it through, and we would wait on one side, while a child was trapped on the other for nearly 10 minutes before the gates came back online.

Another hour or so through security screening and a half mile walk to our departure gate meant that our five hour connection time for our new itinerary at Heathrow was only just adequate to arrive at the gate with several minutes to spare.

After boarding our flight, we waited an additional hour for passengers struggling to make the connection through the dystopian shambles of Heathrow’s terminals. This hour delay also meant that our fate in New York was sealed. We would be going through the rebooking process all over again, albeit on American soil.

Upon arrival at JFK our luggage took over an hour to appear on the carousels, which might have been stressful had we been expecting to make our connection. We meandered through customs and found a kind ticketing agent on the other side by the baggage drop. I suppose I should be careful with the word “kind” as by it, I mean that she helped us. She certainly wasn’t kind to her poor co-worker Charlie, who bore the brunt of all of her life’s frustrations. “Chaw-lee!!! Get it togetha’ Chawl-ee! How long you been waukin’ hya Chaw-lee? You’we like a baby, ya don know how to do anythin’ Chaw-lee!!! You’we wauthless to me Chaw-lee!!!” Charlie was admittedly a bit slow to the party, but he was trying. For a half hour or so we all marveled at the verbal abuse heaped on Charlie as he fumbled his responsibilities and tumbled deeper into a pit of incompetency as dear Cindy harangued and harassed him at his every move. But she knew how to get her job done. She set us up in a hotel for the night and gave us some food vouchers for dinner. $40 each! We thought we might actually enjoy this evening after a harrowing day of travel. However, we soon realized that hundreds of other passengers on rebooked flights were being accommodated in the same hotel, meaning that we waited for over 2 hours at the shuttle pickup location as it made its trips back and forth with loads of rerouted passengers and luggage.

Arriving at the hotel at 9pm we endured another long line of familiar faces from back at the shuttle stop being checked into the hotel. Upon checking-in we were informed that our special $40 meal vouchers would only be accepted at a single restaurant and we would be delivered the food to our rooms since the local restaurants were completely overwhelmed by the meal vouchers and rerouted passengers. It turns out, the restaurants didn’t have enough food to prepare for the thousands of overnighting passengers unexpectedly cast on their doorsteps. Food would not be delivered until after midnight, and it was being rationed. While the rest of the family slumped exhausted into bed and fell quickly to sleep, I had a short conversation with a man stranded at the hotel for 3 days and counting, as none of his flights could be rebooked successfully. I watched a youth group mission team play social games in the lobby as their leader desperately tried to keep morale high among a group of starving teens. Food was eventually delivered. A single plate of shrimp and rice hung on the door handle around 12:30. Admittedly I did consume it, knowing that no other in my family would be in the mood for it upon waking at 6:00am when we needed to catch our taxis to LaGuardia. 

The remainder of our trip was without incident aside from the amusing arguments our taxi driver had with his wife over speaker phone. Hats off to the remodeled LaGuardia airport, it was all quite a nice experience after 40 hours of air-mageddon. We arrived to Kansas City where my parents picked us all up and towed us to their place where we’ve been gradually recovering from jet lag and the last two months of what felt like life in a tornado.

****************THE LONG-WINDED RAMBLINGS END HERE*******************

This year I loved teaching through the gospel of Luke. Luke was such a vital minister on account of both the recording of his gospel through eye witness accounts, and as a traveling companion of Paul. We read in Acts 16 how Paul’s missionary journey was thwarted from the intentions he had set and rerouted from entering Asia to instead traveling to Troas where he presumably added Luke as a fellow minister. He also immediately had the vision of the “Macedonian call” which would have a resonating impact on subsequent ministry direction. While our ministry is a far cry from Paul’s, it is nevertheless comforting to see in the pages of scripture the way that God worked through circumstances and thwarted intentions to reroute Paul in the way that would make him most useful. We would appreciate your prayers as we continue to seek the Lord for the steps before us and how we might be most useful in His service. We have peace that God is leading us to our Troas-Macedonia, but admittedly the process of that rerouting is not entirely pleasant. Please be in prayer for multiple meetings that I am having with key leaders in our mission about the giftings, abilities, and experiences God has ordained for us and how they match up with opportunities for service. We are excited to see God’s hand at work in this area. We will be scheduling our furlough meetings as the direction becomes more clear, and we’re so looking forward to reconnecting with so many of you who have been faithfully partnering with this ministry through the years and what fruit might yet be before us!

As an additional matter of prayer I would bring before you our need for provision. We rarely desire to ask for financial support so directly, but we do have real needs before us. Moving back to the U.S. is no less costly than moving to the Czech Republic was initially, in fact, much more so. However, these costs (airfare, shipping, hotel stays, etc) were not ones that we had spent time raising funds for prior, as when we left toward the field. Understandably, I imagine folks are not nearly as eager to give toward our return, but they are real needs nonetheless. Might we be so bold as to ask that you consider this need? Your financial gifts are especially appreciated as we recognize them as faith-filled investments in a ministry yet to come, yet which touch our family directly.