Did the E-ticket say AM or PM?

Hello from warm and muggy Chicago!

I thought this greeting would be coming from Kigali, Rwanda but it's going to take just a little longer than we'd planned to get from the Bay Area to central Africa. Our e-ticket said that American Airlines flight 1612 would depart San Francisco International airport at 9:35 AM. Well, that's not what happened. We arrived at the airport at 6:45 am. We checked in. Everything was going perfectly. Just as I sat down at Gate 66, ready to mark task #1 off the list and enjoy a double cappuccino and a little breakfast my phone rang. I thought to myself, who could this be? I looked at my phone and it said "American Airlines". That's nice. They're just confirming that our flight will indeed depart on time at 9:35 AM. As I was listening to the message Ashley Verinsky confirmed what I was hearing. Our flight was delayed until 11 AM. That meant that there was still a chance that we'd just make our connection to Brussels, Belgium out of Chicago. That delay quickly turned into 11:30 AM. Now we had a problem.

If you've read my First Pres. Messenger article you'll know that my default mode is to start strategizing almost immediately in moments like this. We did go into problem solving mode (nothing wrong with that) but this time I did pray and others on the team did as well. After about 45 minutes on the phone with American Airlines we had new reservations out of Chicago and Brussels but because Brussels Airlines does not fly to Kigali on Fridays that means we'll have an overnight stop in Belgium (not bad) and arrive in Rwanda on Saturday (2 days later than we'd planned).

The 11:30 am departure time from SFO turned into 12:30 pm which became 1:30 pm, 3:00 pm, then 5:00 pm, the 3:15 pm (which was just cruel), and finally 6:30 pm. I love airports and airplanes but even I was ready to get out of SFO by the time we were finally on the plane. American Airlines never did fix the broken aircraft we were supposed to be on but instead finally put us on a plane that arrived from Miami. So many of the original passengers on our flight had given up or transferred to other flights that the 767 to Chicago was less than half full. I haven't seen that in a long time.

The team is doing well. Bridget Nolan is rearranging our plans in Kigali and we hope to be in Goma on Sunday. Thank you so much to all of you who are praying for us. It truly is not by might or by power or by ingenuity or the ability to stragegize our way out of challenges but it is by God's Spirit.

Grace and peace,

Tim