For those of you that don’t know, I am one of three logistics leaders for my squad. Our role is to coordinate travel from country to country for our entire squad of 43 people. That means we get everyone to the airport four hours before our flight, we get them checked in, boarding passes in hand, get through security and then wait to board our flight. Or that means booking a bus/buses for the whole squad to go to the next country. Sometimes this looks like using google translate to talk to the bus company or people that we need to contact, it has been a little stressful but this is also month one for all three of us and our first time doing this for this many people.
We have a week left here in Colombia so that means debrief starts in a few days. What’s debrief? It’s a few days that are set aside for the squad to reflect and debrief about the last month of ministry. As logistics leaders we’re in charge of getting a hostel for the squad, hotels for the mentors/coaches and coming up with fun things to do for everyone. Now that you have a general overview of my role here on S Squad, I want to talk about how God likes to show up when you need him most!
Over the last week or two we’ve been working on getting our hostel booked and the hotel for everyone else, but we were struggling with finding a bus for 43 people to travel to Quito, Ecuador. We had emailed companies, searched on booking tickets, called places and all of them we’re saying they either didn’t go to Quito or didn’t have buses available on the date that we needed. Finally we sit down with our ministry host here in Medellin and she calls a few companies with us (she’s fluent in Spanish, so that’s a major key). After contacting a few we finally get a lead, they say they have a bus that fits 42 people will hold all of our luggage and will take us directly to Quito. The issue is, we have 43 people. They send us pictures of the bus and it looks nice, but we’re still needing one more seat to fit everyone on our squad. Another great thing about it is that the bus is a couple hundred dollars under our travel budget which is a blessing. The owner says he will call back in about 5 minutes with details and I silently say a prayer asking The Lord to work something out for us. He calls back and tells us that the bus can fit 43 people!! The way it would work is usually the bus would have a copilot that helps keep the bus driver awake during the ride (its at least a 20 hour bus ride), but if we had people willing to sit upfront with the driver then they would take almost 3 million pesos off the price of the bus!! Luckily for us, the logistics team takes turns on trips keeping the driver awake so we had already planned for this! So in a matter of 5 minutes God completely worked out a miracle and we booked the bus for $1,000 under our budget! #Won’tHeDoIt?!?!?! Now our squad has a bus to our next country of Ecuador and can relax for the next few days and not have to stress about how we’re going to get there! Its just like HIM to show up when we need HIM most!
