Journeying Mercies

"Journeying Mercies"

This hackneyed phrase is much misused and about to be much maligned.

By me.

“Safe journey!”

I’ve heard it a thousand times, seems like. Slipping easily off the tongues of the faithful.

Let me recount the journeying mercies of late.

I sit here in Heathrow, London, awaiting flight BA214 to my natal city—good ole Beantown.

I should have been there last evening. A Kenyan young man, doing his doctorate in biology (insects and plant symbiosis) agreed (as we queued for the third strip and scan at Heathrow!) with my suspicions that the cancellation of our flight BA88 from Nairobi yesterday morning was likely due to insufficient customers to make the flight profitable.

Gregg Okesson, going for car repair in Nairobi, had dropped me off the airport at 7:45 a.m. I like to be early at airports. Like Gregg, I am the kind of traveler who checks for his ticket and passport every twenty minutes on the hour-plus drive from Scott Theological to Jomo Kenyatta Airport. You never know when essential documents, without which you will rot down to your skeleton in some odd-world airport, may de-materialize.

What to do? Join the queue. No rush, really, as I know from past experience there is no further service to London until nearly mid-night. That’s the flight I usually have taken in past years.

A young man at the window re-books me for the evening flight. He has a neck strap that may not have WWJD on it (although I did find myself in a surprisingly calm spirit after giving the situation to the Lord) but it did have “I’m a British Airways Hero” repeated on its orbit around his neck.

Everyone is getting a shuttle and will stay the day at a hotel in downtown Nairobi. Now what will I do at a hotel for 12 hours? No—I’ll go to the missionary manse that we’ve stayed at so often in the past: Mayfield Guest House. But I want a free lift. No problem. (I suppose I’m saving money for them. Who cares?)

At another counter I’m given vouchers on Jatco Taxi. Going to the other side of the roadway where arrivals catch their rides, I find a shouting match ensuing. Some irate whites (probably Americans) are insisting loudly that they are not paying a shilling more for this abominable service!

“Are you with the group?” an employ asks me. “No, no, no” I reply, “not at awl, no. I’m not with them.” I try to fake a British accent. He looks at my voucher. “You can even stand right hear,” he directs. So as several lovely Akamba guys are trying to sort it all out, I start singing softly. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear.” Maybe this will help re-set the minds of those in the melee as well my own.

Soon he comes to check details of my voucher. It will be a few minutes before Jatco comes since most taxis have already spirited off to the city my erstwhile fellow passengers. “I’m good,” I assure him. “I’m singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus to keep me focused.” He beams. “O that is good!” (All words with double O’s are pronounced here as we do “food.”)

I find that if I relate to service people, whether here on the street or at the check-points in the terminal (and there are quite a few post-9/11) that people will relax, smile, and pass good-natured pleasantries with you as they stamp your documents. I think they expect visitors to yell at them. The ole “spoonful of sugar” idea. But I genuinely like these Wakamba (People of the Kamba tribe native to the greater Nairobi area.)

Which reminds me of an anecdote Gregg told me about Jacob Kibor, head of Scott Theological College. People who know Jacob consider him the rare model of a godly African leader—even though he got degrees in America where many Africans are spoiled beyond renewal.

Seems a team came to Scott from an American church, including some of the church “brass.” Jacob went out to meet the incoming van which was disgorging lots of luggage. The team head waved his hand in a motion to Jacob indicating he should pick up his luggage and take it into the guest house. ”By the way,” he says, “ I need to see the Principal right away.”

“That is OK,” replies Jacob. “You can just go over to that administration building and he will be they-ah and you can even meet him then.”

So Jacob takes the bags in and then proceeds to the administration building and goes up to his office on the second floor. Soon a secretary escorts this guy to the office. When he realizes that sitting behind the big desk is the same flunky he had ordered with a silent gesture to fetch his bags, the team leader was speechless!

That is servant leadership—and it is rare here where degrees and how nice your teeth are give you status above others. And also if you wear glasses. I guess glasses means you do a lot of reading are super smart.

Back to the airport….

So I step into the front seat of the compact taxi car. While the voucher is being recorded I catch the eye of three women standing on the walk waiting for their ride. I smile. She smiles as I comment, “Life is an adventure with God!” “Yah—shoo-wah. Eet Ease,” she replies with a chuckle. These Wakamba are so friendly, and so many of them are Christians. You can make exploratory comments like that here and not be frowned on.

Off we go. Zip—slow. Zip—slow. Speed bumps every 100 yards. As we keep making right turns, I jokingly quip, “We’re taking a second scenic tour of the airport!” Actually he had been radioed to come back. As we pull up, the women are still there, laughing as I shrug and wave my hopeless hands. These folk are used to this sort of thing. “Sheedah” is the word for it—it’s one of the two new Kikamba words I learned this trip. In 100 years I’ll be fluent! It refers to troubles—daily hassles that impede the smooth flow of life here in Kenya.

An elderly couple (no comments, please!) are getting into the cab. They have luggage. I offer to hold my carryon in my lap instead of leaving it in the trunk. One suitcase gets put by the back door, the driver having moved his seat back to jam it so it doesn’t fall on the frail oldies.

The gentleman has a beard and a turban that tells me he is a Sikh. I tell him I go to Dehradun, India each year. We comment on the some of the sites that he has been to in common with me. They have lived in London for many years now.

So it’s a short detour to drop them off. “Journeying mercies….”

After dropping the couple off, the gate opens at Mayfield Guest House and feel like I am on familiar territory.

“Please,” I say to the woman at the register desk, “you can rescue me and take me in for the day?” I explain the cancellation. She puts me on the list for dinner and supper and charges me $11.

Instantly a tall fellow comes into the lobby. It’s Gregg! “I thought I heard a Boston accent out here!” So Gregg (staying overnight here while his Land Cruiser is being relieved of its alarm system that shuts the motor off in a most annoying fashion when you least have time to fool with it) and I spend the day talking theology, sending emails on his wireless computer to let Ellie know I’ll be a day late. we hike around Ngong Road area to shop for his son’s bicycle tubes at the YAYA center—a 5 story mall. Once again, a minus turns into a plus!

Over supper I also meet a neat young couple from Brazil going as missionaries to Morrocco. How get into this Muslim country? They will truthfully say they are studying Arabic there. It’s beautiful how God is using such to go unobtrusively into cultures where you and I would stand out like sore American thumbs. I mention how Chet and Fran Matheson spent years in Brazil at Belem as Wycliffe translators. I learn that Belem is Portuguese for Bethlehem. I tell them a Brad Gill story of when he was a “rug dealer” in Marakesh, Morocco at the time when the USA went after targets in the Near East some years back. God protected them through Muslim friends they had made there who were able to separate individual people from the actions of their government. (Both these missionary families have ties with West Congregational Church.)

So here I am with the laptop at Heathrow. There are hurricane force winds in UK today, with snow in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Flights to Holland are cancelled.

But a New York-bound flight just got off. Hopefully the Boston flight will get out before the brunt of the storm gets to London. The BBC anchors on the morning news are reporting all the weird weather in California today. Governor Schwarzenegger is shown declaring billions lost in citrus damage.

Well—it’s time to check the gate posting. Bye for now….

• * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hello again!

Here I sit in a Beoing 777, munching tea and apple pie w/custard whilst looking down 7 miles to the billows of the cold North Atlantic. Waiting at Gate 23, I had struck up a conversation with an Asian girl – ah, woman – whose parents live in Pepperell, where she grew up. She had a Harvard sweatshirt on. I asked if she was at that distinguished university founded by Congregationalists to train ministers of the Gospel, now fallen to “other side” pretty much. “Yes,” she replied, “but way back in 1996. Now I am taking a PhD in biology at Stanford.” (Way back in 1996—give me a break!) She said organic chemistry and physics were her favorite subjects! I confessed I needed something much more fuzzy--philosophy. She had taken a course on public health ethics where they had done some Plato and Aristotle. But she never had the benefit of a general philosophy course. And these people call themselves educated.

We walk down the ramp together. It is a lot colder than Kenya. As I put on the sweater Ellie knit for me 20 years ago (really warm, thick wool) she mentions that as a kid winter was her favorite season, what with skating and skiing in New England. But now she has been corrupted by California. Shame, really. So I tell her about the snow and ice in southern Cal yesterday.

At the end of the ramp where we would normally step into a plane, they shunted us down 3 flights of concrete steps, into the drizzle, and onto a shuttle bus. As we pass one after another planes with boarding steps, the lot of us begin to speculate where we were going. More of those journeying mercies? After riding a full 15 minutes we stop at the last plane. Up the steps, bags in hand. Ah! At least it’s a newer 777. And I have a window seat!

As I settle in a young T-shirt asks if he can swap seats with me so he can sit with his girl friend. I decline. But a girl nearby says she’ll swap. As she slips into the seat next, I am relieved. You see, one of my journeying mercies prayers is that I will be spared the tubby Mrs. Hips who tips the scales at about 275, spilling over into adjacent seats right and left. I had seen that on my other flight. It is not a pretty sight. Her skeletal frame was within tolerance. But how the rest of her slid in around her was a wonder to behold. To be fair, I should say that Mr. I-Used-to-Play-Football can have the same effect. Anybody remember “Refrigerator” Perry of the Chicago Bears? I wonder if they make him fly first class where the seats are big enough for both Ellie and me? Journeying mercies!

Anyway, I ask my seat-mate if she was from the Boston area. Yes – she is at U. Mass, Lowell now. “Where are you coming back from? I query. “Ghana. I went to visit missionaries from our church who have an orphanage there.” She mentions the church—a start-up of some 20 years ago recently moved to Reading and a larger facility. “Bible-based?” “Very,” she says. So we had a great conversation about where we’ve gone on errands for the Lord. This explains why she so readily yielded her seat to young T-shirt—she’s a real Christian!

Journeying mercies, again.

I think maybe I should modify my opening statement on this blog. The return has not been what I planned, that’s true. But maybe Someone else is in charge of this trip.

Like I say, life is what happens between the things you plan into your schedule.

OK—dinner’s over. Nap time. See ya!

P.S. Ellie and Jim Herrick did connect with me at Logan. Home Sweet Home! Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. Whenever you may travel in coming days, I pray you have those “journeying mercies.”