Yikes. It’s been a while. I have a lot to tell you. Let’s get situated:
I’m writing this in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I’ve been for a little over a week. For most of this time, many of us Racers have been busy with the Parent Vision Trip. 11 of us had parents come all the way to Thailand to visit us for a week of catching up and ministry and fun. My mom and dad came and it was wonderful.
Before that, C Squad had a debrief at Lake Malawi for five days, which was also wonderful. And before that, three of our squad’s six teams were serving in Mozambique for the month.
I haven’t written about Mozambique because when we were there, we were asked not to post any new blogs. Mozambique, as you may have gathered from my other blogs, doesn’t love foreigners, so we didn’t want to draw too much attention. But I’ll have something up soon now that we’re out.
And I haven’t written since leaving Mozambique because the story of how we got from Mozambique to Malawi is so crazy, it’s taken me days to write out. It’s still not ready, but expect that story soon. For now, I want to share about my first hours in Thailand, about a week ago…
We left Lake Malawi at 4:30 in the morning on July 31, drove five hours to the airport in Lilongwe, flew two hours to Nairobi, Kenya, waited eight hours, flew 9 hours to Bangkok, waited two hours to settle transportation plans, and rode for an hour in the nicest vans we had seen in months from the airport to the bus terminal.
While boarding the nice vans, I accidentally got settled in the wrong one and was directed to the correct vehicle, where I immediately put my seat back, hoping to add an hour to the minimal sleep I’d gotten since leaving Malawi the previous (I think) day.
When we were well on our way to the bus terminal I decided to listen to some music, so I reached into my pocket for my phone. I couldn’t find it. I checked my backpack, the floor.
No phone.
If I hadn’t been so hellbent on sleeping, I might have been more distressed. But I also felt immediately resigned: ah well, my phone was gone. In the chaos of loading bags and switching vehicles, of course it had slipped from my back pocket, or been stolen. Knowing I’d feel plenty upset later about the loss, I closed my eyes and napped lightly.
As I stepped off the bus, it occurred to me that I had taken my phone out on the first van, the one we were told to leave. I thought I had put it in the seat pocket. Daniel suggested we call the company to ask if they had seen the phone. It seemed like a long shot to me to recover a nice phone in a big, new city, but Daniel called and explained the situation, and they said they would call back if they found an iPhone 4 in a turquoise case with an orange sticker.
To my shock and delight, Daniel’s phone rang again with the news that it had been found exactly where I’d guessed! The driver would bring it by himself in a couple hours, and all I had to do was cover the fare it would have cost to drive there.
I waited, napped, played Uno, and ate a doughnut. And then, just as he’d promised, the kind driver appeared in the front of the terminal with my unharmed iPhone. I didn’t know how to say thank you yet in Thai, so I just said it in English and bobbed my head a lot and smiled.
I was touched that my friends on the squad, especially Daniel, went through the trouble to make those phone calls (and even offer to return to the airport with me if needed). And I was especially touched that the driver of the van was honest and kind and willing to help me out with such a trivial, commonplace problem as a lost American’s cell phone.
That’s what God does, though. The same God that can bust open two borders in the midst of political unrest for a ragged band of muzungus (I’ll explain soon) is the same God that can locate both a lost cell phone in a big city, and the right hands to carry it back to its owner. To update (no pun intended) what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: if God cares even for the iPhones, which are new today and obsolete tomorrow, how much more does God care for us!
(The original is great too: check it out. Matthew 6:25-34.)
