Okay, so weekly postings turned into almost weekly which quickly turned into sporadic. Sorry.
BUT – Without further ado…
Miracle in Africa
We’d just spent 2 incredible weeks at Africa University in Zimbabwe and were packing up to come home.
Final debrief- done
Building relationships – done
Encountering the Lord – done
Serving with the Body of Christ – done
All that was left was to load our stuff in the trailer, get in the bus and hop on a plane. We were home free. Everybody was alive and I had survived leading my first international mission trip!! Praise the Lamb!
**side note- why my bosses decided I was qualified to lead a group of essentially my peers half way across the world for two weeks is beyond me, but I am so glad they did. I learned A TON.**
There is a knock at my door at 11:45 pm. It’s a student saying one of the team members (Bree) can’t find her passport.
Obviously, I am a FANTASTIC team leader (
Some of the team had been joking about losing their passport the whole trip because
- This is my first time leading an international mission trip, so it was way easier to make me freak out at this point than it normally would be, which they all think is absolutely hilarious and
- They’ve made great friends with the people there (it’s hard not to) and they don’t want to leave.
That being said, I begrudgingly get out of bed because clearly this is just an elaborate prank. I stumble into the room across the hall where Bree is staying. There I find Bree almost in tears while her roommates and friends continue to search the room and their belongings. I quickly realize this is not a joke. I asked her when she saw her passport last and she said it has been on the shelf next to her purse every day. She said she could see that it was her passport because the cover was slightly open.
At this point, I’m thinking her passport is either stolen or in the trash. Bree and her roommates hadn’t been super vigilant about locking their room door when we were gone (their door was wide open after we’d just gotten back from the site one afternoon) so someone could have come in and stolen it pretty easily if they’d wanted to. Also, Bree’s purse had been on and off that shelf multiple times a day everyday so it was likely that it had gotten knocked off and accidentally thrown away by the people who came in to clean.
But, just to be sure I did need to go into problem solving mode, we search everyone’s luggage (remember, our flight leaves in a few short hours, so almost everybody was wrapping up their packing), strip the beds, move furniture around, everything. While everyone was looking, I called my boss to see what I should do and what would happen if we didn’t find it. He gave me the number for the consulate’s office and said to call him back when we knew something. Meanwhile, he would call our travel agent and see what he thought about re-booking us on a later flight.
To be continued…
