Scotland 2009

There‘s a song I like that has the lyrics, “Lift up your hands! Stand on your feet! Give God the Glory . . . Perpetual Praise . . . !”

The watchword for flight number #16 out of Newark heading to Glasgow was indeed about patience having its perfect work, placing our full confidence in Him, resulting in the joy of the Lord - who was our strength for sure!

We boarded on time and seemed to be taking off - on time - with our crew, whom we learned later - had already worked more than 12 hours. And a mixed crowd of travel weary Scotsmen - one of who had been trying to get back to Glasgow for 2 days. AND THEN -

DELAY!

First, it was a mechanical failure. Turns out one of the cap seals that connect to the fuselage near the landing shaft was broken. What was supposed to be a - ahem - 30 minute wait turned into more than an hour of sitting on the plane.

Then, one of team leaders got up to visit with everyone. And pretty soon - we were socializing on the plane. We talked. Walked. Visited. And even served each other - and the others on the plane - beverages. We were getting quite cozy getting to know one another. AND THEN -

We had to disembark from the plane, go to a new terminal and wait.

It was there that I met Bill from Aberdeen who said two amazing things.

First, he said, “I’ve been flying a long time, and this is the first flight I’ve been on where people are not GRUMBLING, MURMURRING and COMPLAINING or DEMANDING THEIR OWN WAY because of delays.” When he learned that this convivial motley crew was on a mission, he said, “Good. We need more evangelizing. It could do us all the more good.”

So we boarded the next flight began to head down the runway . . . AND THEN -

DELAY.

We had to stop for a medical emergency, and turn back toward the gate. One of our team leaders, and a speaker at the conference, was escorted to planeside ambulance to be examined. And she was eventually escorted off the plane (though, this blogger is fully confident she will her within the next two days -in Scotland).

But, as the song goes, we “chose to lift up our hands to praise Him.” Turns out that the medical emergency exposed the fact that the oxygen bottles on the flight were empty. Imagine, we could have flown across the Atlantic with no oxygen on board!

Well, all these things happened before we left Newark. I can’t wait to see what happens when we arrive.