New: In Transit to Madurai, India

I am sitting in the airport in the Indian city of Chennai at 4:06 am (local time) on Sunday morning (July 1st) waiting for a flight that leaves in a couple of hours. We have been traveling for about 2 straight days now! We have’nt even arrived in Madarai yet and already the trip has been quite eventful. Our plane out of Tampa was a couple hours late and then we sat on the runway for about an hour and a half. Our flight from London to Mumbai was caught in a terrible storm and the intense turbulance lasted for over two hours…people were vomiting as we flew in a holding pattern waiting for the storm to subside so that we could be cleared to land. Finally, running low on fuel, we flew to another city about an hour out of the way to land and re-fuel. The airport that we landed at had no indoor facilities so we sat on the crowded plane in sweltering heat for about two hours before receiving the clearance to fly back to Mumbai. Once we landed, our connecting flight had already left and 3 of our pieces of luggage were lost. We were supposed to have to wait to catch a flight late the next day, but the Lord was good to us and we mananged to catch a flight out last night. Once we arrived at this airport (in Chennai) at midnight we tried to sleep but the pest control people began fumigating the airport and soon the entire facility was a cloud of choking teargas incecticide…we spent the night outside. Now we are checked in and waiting for our connecting flight to Madurai where the adventure REALLY begins. We will only have a few hours to rest before begining our long journey up into the tribal, jungle villages to minister. Maybe you are wondering why we are doing all this…because Jesus said “go”.