Chapter 15

The Trip to Africa

  A remarkable event took place about 2 weeks before I left for Africa. Remember, at this time I didn’t have a job. Because of the events with Walt I had forgotten to get us signed up for temporary health insurance.

    One morning Linda woke up and out of the clear blue says; "Honey,  do you think we ought to get some health insurance before you go to Africa".
    I said, "Sure, why don’t you go ahead and call Robert McGary (a member of our church) and get us signed up."

    Linda later told me that she felt the Lord just drop that on her heart, just that morning. We didn’t understand why until later.   

    I spent an afternoon with my pastor, Ron Peterson, discussing my upcoming trip to Zimbabwe. I was more than a little apprehensive because this was a totally foreign, third world country and I didn’t know what to expect. I was going as a representative of my church - as a missionary if you will - and I wanted to make the best possible impression. Brother Ron gave me a pretty good idea what to expect,  including the virtual promise that I would be asked to get up before the various churches I would be visiting and give my testimony (what God had done in my life). Since most of the churches had memberships greater than 1000 members, that was a pretty intimidating thing to look forward to. He also shared with me to not expect the people from Zimbabwe to be on time.

    Example;  I found out (much, much later) that if they say they are coming over just now, that would generally mean some time within the next 4-6 hours. If they say that they are coming over now now then they will be coming within the next 1-3 hours.  I didn’t find this out until after I came back from Zimbabwe,  so it made for some interesting experiences while I was there.

    At this point I need to digress in my story and bring you up to date on what was happening with the kids. Remember Ben was riding with me when we pulled into town in April. After we unloaded everything and dropped off the trailer, I asked him if he would like to attend church with us the next day, Sunday. He said he would think about it and I left it at that. Sunday morning came around and Ben went with us to church. One of the things I had prayed about when I first arrived in Phoenix was having my whole family in church, sitting together in one pew. My prayer was answered that Sunday morning.

    Within a couple of weeks Ben had completely changed. He had cut his long hair and cleaned himself up. He attended church regularly and started to become involved in church activities. Brother Ron was scheduled to preach at a youth convention in Switzerland and invited Ben to accompany him. Ben decided to go and he enjoyed his trip to Switzerland very much. It’s one thing to hear of your pastor’s overseas trip and quite another to experience one of them with him. Towards the end of their trip my son was baptized in an alpine lake in the Name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I cannot relate to you the euphoria that Linda and I experienced. What a day of rejoicing that was!

    Brian, my second oldest, being the outgoing person that he is made friends easily within our youth group. One young lady in particular caught his eye and she,  his. It was the  beginning to an unfortunate relationship, but more on that later.

    Carin, my daughter,  fit right in within the youth group and quickly found a couple of girls to pal around with. Her steadfast walk is a blessing to me and her strength of character sure seems to mimic her mother’s.

    Aaron, our third son, was struggling in Phoenix. He did not want to be here, was not having a good time and didn’t hesitate to let everyone know it. Because the whole family was involved in church activities he became involved also. He regularly went to church with us but I didn’t see much of a response. I was wrong! The last service I attended before going to Zimbabwe saw my son Aaron answering an alter call. When Ben and Brian saw him go up, they also went up and on either side of him knelt and prayed for,  and with, him. All three of my sons, kneeling together, praying together. I was up in the sound booth running the sound equipment like I used to do and I was crying uncontrollably. My Lord does answer prayers.

    And that’s how I left for Africa. The trial with the building of the house and pool was over. I didn’t have a job, but because of the money my mother had left me, there wasn’t overwhelming pressure to get a job immediately. And most of all, all of my kids were responding to the call of God and trying to serve the Lord. So began the trip which would forever change my life. The trip where I would almost die and the trip where I would meet God, face to face.

    Well, Linda and Carin took me to the airport and we met Brother Ron and his wife Sandy. We had a quick bite of lunch and about noon I boarded the plane for Minneapolis, my first stop. The plane felt like a cattle car to me. If I tried to read a book and the guy in front decided to lay his seat back, I had to prop the book up on the back of his seat. All I could think of was if this is the way this trips going to be, it’s going to be a looooooooooong trip!.

    Landing a Minneapolis about 4:00PM we had about a 2½ hour layover. As we started to board the 747 for the overnight flight for London they made me repack my carry on baggage because they said it was too big for the overhead compartments. That was pretty irritating because it wasn’t too big, but I knew it was one of those things you have to put up with. We all got seated and the stewardess came up and asked if I wouldn’t mind changing seats to allow a family to sit together. I said sure,  so then she moved me to business class - reclining seats, gourmet dinner,  the whole works! (sometimes it pays to be nice.)

    They started the engines, pushed us back and then we sat on the taxiway for about 15 minutes . . . then they took us back to the gate. Apparently they had a faulty oil pressure gauge on the number four engine which took them about 2 hours to correct. When we reboarded the plane to again takeoff I checked the builders plate on the bulkhead. The plane was made in 1973 and was older than my son Ben! Anyway, we took off and I was on my way to Europe. My seatmate was a businessman who traveled once or twice a month to Germany for a couple of days. From his experiences it seems like the glamour of a frequent airline trips to Europe is probably much overrated.

    I had decided to start a diary of my experiences in Africa because I knew it would be something I would treasure all of my life. I stayed awake late on that night flight to London writing, praying, etc. I was very nervous about having to get up in front of all of those people so I was praying about what to say. The thought came to my mind to sing a song, In Moments Like These. If you haven’t heard it, it is a beautiful song about the love between a son (or daughter) of God and God himself. I knew the Lord was asking me to sing the song and that made me even more nervous. I am not a singer. To me, my voice sounds halfway between a frog croaking and a cat being tortured but - obviously,  I couldn’t say no to God. In conjunction with the song the Lord laid on my heart what to say and how to say it. As I said, I stayed up late that night writing up my notes and stuff.

    We landed in London (Gatwick) about 7:00AM English time and the first thing you have to do is collect your luggage and clear customs. Things started to get interesting at that point. About 120 of us didn’t have any luggage. They weren't sure if it had been left in Phoenix, Minneapolis or was lost somewhere in the Gatwick airport. After waiting around for about an hour the airline has us start filling out these lengthy forms to help recover our luggage. After filling them out we have to stand in line to turn in the forms - it’s now about 9:30AM. All this time I thinking about what am I going to do. Not only will I not have any of my clothes for two weeks, I also will not have any of the tools I had brought to install the sound equipment. Not the way to begin a trip like this. Anyway, I started praying and about 15 minutes later they announce that they have found the luggage bin and all is well. My wife has a little magnet on our refrigerator that says, Why worry when you can pray? Little did I realize that I would need to engrave this cute little saying on my heart for this trip.

    Brother Ron had faxed to another pastor in London, Brother Peter Chandler,  to meet me at the airport if he could, and we could have a little time of fellowship. As I left the customs area there were lots of people waiting for passengers. I looked and I looked, but no Bro. Peter. I had about an 11 hour layover before the final flight to Zimbabwe,  so I was a little disappointed because I had been looking forward to visiting with him. Since I had so much time I decided to take the train into London and do a little sightseeing.

    There was a railway strike. However, there was still some very limited train service so about noon I arrived in the beautiful city of London. Just outside of the train station there were numerous sightseeing busses,  so off I went in a double-decked bus. I was really startled by the tremendous amount of traffic in the narrow streets and the suicidal driving habits of the drivers . . . including the bus driver of our bus! There had been a month's long drought in England so I felt pretty safe sitting on the top of this bus. Wrong! Shortly after starting the tour it started to rain, so all of us tried to squeeze into the bottom deck. Couldn’t see as much but it was pretty interesting listening to the different nationalities, accents and such.

    I had about a two hour tour and then decided that,  because of the railway strike, I better leave for the Gatwick airport right away. Good thing I did because it took about an hour to catch another of the few still-running trains. I had some time when I got back to the airport so I took a shower and cleaned up at the airport. They rented showers and towels and I’m sure my fellow passengers really appreciated my taking a shower. I felt pretty gamy after a day and a half of traveling . Afterward,  I had a pleasant dinner watching the planes takeoff and land (probably a pilot thing) and boarded the overnight flight to Harare, Zimbabwe.

    Just a note here. The country of Zimbabwe formerly was the British crown colony of Rhodesia. The capital city Harare formerly was called Salisbury,  so I expected many things to be typically British. Fortunately,   I wasn’t too disappointed. As I boarded the plane, a modern 767, I was amazed at the numerous flight attendants. There were probably a total of 20 people involved with passenger comfort. The pilot was obviously British and around 7:00pm we climbed into the air for our 11 ½ hour trip to Africa. Since all of Air Zimbabwe’s services were contracted to British Airways,  the meals were pretty standard. Since the airplane was only about ½ full there was plenty of room to spread out (something I usually do when I sit down) and relax. They had a movie after dinner and then they started handing out blankets and pillows and dimmed the lights. I kind of thought that I would be to nervous too sleep. I had already been traveling for a day and a half so I drifted off to a dreamless sleep 35,000 feet in the air at 600 miles per hour.