What do you do when a Microsoft glitch grounds all major airlines 24 hours in advance of your parish mission trip? Duh! You pray!
And when your 7:00 am flight to Houston is delayed so much that you will miss the only United connection to Honduras available for 4 days because of yesterday’s groundings, you check your bags, print your boarding pass and pray harder.
We were surprised when other group members couldn’t check-in, apparently they didn’t disregard the big yellow warning triangles threatening to strand them in Houston on their own dime. So when everyone was considering returning home for the day and regrouping, it did not seem like such a bad idea.
Grace had tears in her eyes as we were seconds away from “calling it” for the day, maybe until Wednesday and perhaps not being able to make the trek to Honduras at all this year. Then something happened that we’ve never seen before and between the group of us, we’ve flown a lot of miles. A flight that had been delayed by 2.5 hours was put back on the board as ON TIME. It was literally a miracle in real time.
Was it a coincidence that there were two groups of mission groups praying? The United Airlines gate agents did not think so as they hugged our necks and hurried to help everyone else check their bags.
There were more challenges and mini-miracles, like the flight from Houston to Honduras also being delayed long enough for everyone to make it without a max cardio workout getting from terminal E to C.
God provided today for this merry band of missionaries dressed in blue. Multiple churches, multiple generations and multiple cultures were joined together with a shared desire to share His love with the children of the Lamb Institute in Honduras. We came within a breath of having to cancel but He opened a door, helped United Airlines find a crew and got us in the air; closer to Him and closer to His work.
We have landed in Honduras. Thanks be to God. For the Kids.