Blessing in Disguise

Our team, being greeted in grand style (with a fresh flower wreath) by Ou Savorn (AH Director) and his wife Sony, and by Vannak Yun (GP:Battambang Director) at the airport in Phnom Penh

Hey everyone,

First off -- the comments are so encouraging. Knowing that you are praying. Wow. As you will see from this post, it is making a difference already!

Our first meal in Phnom Penh... yummy

We "collected" Faa at the airport in Phnom Penh, a city of three million people, most of whom seem to be riding a motor scooter somewhere, but not in a hurry... After hugging Faa, all of us, many times over, for all of you who asked us to hug her for you, we got in the van and started the long drive to Battambang. It took us five hours to get here. The first hour was spent practically crossing the city, avoiding pedestrians, bicycle's, the omnipresent motorbykes and all manners of other means of transportation usually overloaded with something, even people squeezed between motorcycles, tires, and containers of all sorts. Most of the other team members slept (or tried to anyway during the trip. I spent all the time chatting with Faa, getting updates from her about GROW and hearing stories from her village -- some funny, some heart breaking. We talked almost non-stop for the duration of the trip to the consternation of other team mates (just kidding!).

Jeana, all the way from freezing Ohio to "freeze" inside the van, well, we "fixed" that!

Thank God we have a very efficient, conscientious and alert older driver who avoided hitting a cow who all of a sudden veered to the center of the road because it got spooked by another cow (or was called a bad name by another cow competing for the same interest. :). He also has the gift of "staying" -- meaning he can stay behind a big truck as long as it takes until he determines it is absolute beyond a shadow of doubt safe to pass. He reminded me of the way my brother-in-law drives -- you're sure to get there but never know when... Sorry Allen.

Alive and well (and still good looking, well... you be the judge) in Taiwan after 38 hours

Anyway, here we are, it is five in the morning and I am sitting on my bed at the TEO Hotel in Battambang, enjoying the comforts of wi-fi and hearing the grumbling of a stomach which insists it is supper time in Wooster and I must get some sugar in my system... I mean breakfast.

Here are some interesting things about our trip. While getting on the skytrain to go to our terminal in Taipei, I noticed that two ladies, a mother and daughter I found out later, were not sure where they were going, so I started talking to themm (I noticed they were speaking Spanish). It turned out that they were from Mexico and the mother works for an organization that does family planning and helps to encourage natural and safe births through midwives in some of the poorest countries of the world. Wow. They were both very pleasant and obviously excited to be headed to Cambodia for the first time. The daughter is a college student, an anthropology major in her junior year. Well, it turned out our assigned seats were across from each other and during the trip I had a nice chat with the daughter about our respective fields of interest. It seems likely that the young lady will join us in Phnom Penh on Tuesday when we visit AH orphanages and the state run orphanage there. I was very encouraged to talk to her about our mission and what is dear to us. (And if you are reading this, Valentina, please come and see us again on Tuesday, we would love to have you join us!).

On a lighter side, our arrival in Phnom Penh could only be described as a "comedy of errors that really weren't." First, the whole experience going through immigration was so seamless I felt like going back through the line again. Only one person, whose name shall remain unposted, packed her/his visa picture in her/his checked bag...

Oh yes, there was one other little thing. When I looked at my visa, I noticed that they had given me permission to stay in the country through January 26 only, which is a problem since our flight to Thailand is on January 27. It was obviously a mistake, so they took my passport back and I had to wait a few minutes until they fixed it.

Meanwhile some of the other team members were collecting our bags from the carousel. Somehow, one of our team members, whose name I dare not post, had already put a bag that didn't belong to us on the cart. We quickly fixed that. "Remember, all of our bags have the orange ribbon!" "Oh yeah, I forgot about that!" Another team member, whose name I shall not even pronounce here, counted the bags, gave us the OK sign and we were ready to leave the airport.

But not so fast. One of our bags had clear tape hurriedly put all around one of the pockets. I immediately knew something was wrong. It turned out that the zipper had broken. Quickly the pocket was open and we found out that something was indeed missing. I am not going to publish the name of the person whose bag this was, but I will just say that said missing item was a retainer. Yes, one of those expensive things used to torture the soul of unregenerate teenagers. Sure enough: one was there but the other was missing.

We made the mistake of leaving the baggage claim area because we thought the airline office would be in the lobby area. Well, it wasn't. After talking to different people by way of our gracious translator, Pastor Savorn, AH director in Cambodia, we were finally allowed back in again (in Cambodia you don't even pass beyond the common lobby of the airport, unless you can show a ticket showing that you are going somewhere!). Once in, we were told to go back out and report our problem to the lost and found office at the airport. I didn't want to do that but they insisted it was the correct protocol.

It turned out the two gentlemen helping us at the office were extremely helpful. They both spoke English and were genuinely interested in helping us. The older of the two walked away from us for a moment or two, then motioned for me to come toward where he was. I walked toward him, shrugging my shoulders to the other team mate, indicating I had no idea what he wanted with me. He showed me a tag on another bag. As I looked closer, the tag looked remotely familiar -- it had the name of one of our other team members on it. He said, "Is this one of your people?" I said, "No!" Just kidding... Sure enough. We surmised that one of our team members had accidentally taken a piece of luggage belonging to someone else since our assigned "counter," (remember?) had given the go ahead saying "they are all here."

So I had to go onto the street and find the van (where all of our bags, minus the missing one and the damaged one) had already been loaded... We looked at all the tags and it turned out no foreign bag was found. All the luggage in the van belonged to us. Apparently the official counter counted one of our carry on as one of our checked bags and we were short one bag, and would have left the airport and probably never even noticed that something was wrong until we got to Battambang, without one bag we would need the most -- the one with all the gifts to our precious orphans at Grace Place, Battambang!

Can you believe this story? At the end we had to thank the absent minded team member (who even heard of packing such an expensive article on the outside of an unsecured pocket in your suitcase?) because we all realized that this was a blessing in disguise -- it was God's way of saying "I am looking out for you guys. And by the way, I love those precious orphans!"

Trust me, with a team like ours, we are bound to keep God extra busy with the "looking out for us" department.

Thank you for your prayers!

Pastor Ivanildo C. Trindade

itrindade@woostergrace.org

P.S. We head to Grace Place, Thailand in exactly one hour and fifty minutes. Can't wait!