Written May 6th
I’m currently sitting in the Doha International Airport. We have a long overnight layover until our next plane to Johannesburg.
Over the last several months I’ve developed a new hobby in photography. Suzy is a professional photographer and allowed me to use her camera. As my have skills developed over the trip I decided to upgrade my camera from the four year old point and shoot I have been using. Losing Suzy to team changes gave me an excuse to do that in Bucharest.
So over debrief I did some research and found an authorized seller of Nikons and figured out how to walk to their store. Because of store hours and our debrief schedule, the only opportunity to go was the day before we left. I walked with Raimie to the store and worked with a really nice guy who spoke english. He helped me getting everything I needed. I had done a lot of research in December before we left on DSLRs so I didn’t have too many questions. We got the camera out in the store and everything worked great. Raimie bought a new backpack and we got back to our hostel just before squad worship. That night after worship I began to have issues with the camera body. It wouldn’t focus my lens. So I tried some of Raimie’s lens and it would work with them either. I also found out that the camera was missing a HDMI cable. Uh oh. I had a broken, expensive camera body and we left the next morning for the airport before the store opened.
We were told our bus pulled out at 10 and the store, a 30 minute walk away, opened at 10 as well. I got permission from the squad leaders for Raimie and I to go back to the store, exchange the camera and get ourselves to the airport outside of the city. It wasn’t a problem since the plane didn’t leave until 3:30.
So the next morning Raimie and I packed up our bags early and found a taxi. As the taxi pulled up to the store and we pulled our bags out, I realized in the stress of getting everything together I had left the bag with the camera in it back at the hostel. So Raimie jumped out and I got back in the taxi to make a return trip. I somehow managed to get the taxi driver who didn’t speak english to take me back to the hostel. For once our squads inability to be on time paid off as they had not left the hostel yet. The bag was still where I had left it. I grabbed the bag and found another taxi. Back to the store I went.
When I got back to the store it became clearly evident that God’s hand was in the midst of this. It turned out that our friend at the store was a born-again Christian. Somehow through our check-out process they had missed swiping Raimie’s card, so he had walked off with a free backpack that our brother would have been responsible for. After we had left the store he had also recognized that something was wrong with the camera so he had a new one already waiting for me. This sparked some great conversations about what we were doing in Romania and we were able to exchange contact info with just about everyone in the store.
As we left, the rain started. We quickly found a cheap long-distance taxi and got back to the airport with plenty of time to spare. This is but one of many instances where God has gone before us and worked things out.
PS: The internet won’t allow me to upload photos here but you can see my Flickr account here to see select photos from India, Nepal and Romania.
