Travel Miracles Ep 1: Meme Worthy

Last week I shared some travel tips! Today I want to share a travel miracle!

One of the things I love about God is that he cares about every part of our lives! He’s not just there waiting for you to go to church or do something “spiritual”. He cares about every detail of the day-to-day life as well… including travel!

I have many stories of how God has really come through and done miracles during my travel and I’ll be sharing a few of those stories over the next few weeks!

My journey to Papua, Indonesia was definitely an interesting time! The team had to take different flight routes to Papua so I was travelling with one of my co- staff, as well as my Aboriginal student and her 4 year old son.

We had a 12 hour layover in Bali which sounded great initially! My mind filled with dreams of exploring the beaches, getting pedicures with those fish that eat the dead skin off your feet, and sipping out of coconuts for 12 hours. But it ended up being the perfect “expectation vs reality” meme.

We couldn’t check in our bags or, even get into the section of the airport which had the check in counters (and air conditioning), until 3 hours before our flight. At this time I didn’t know about the luggage lockers that I mention in this post- in fact, this is the story that inspired me to make the travel tips post. So we realised that we wouldn’t be able to leave the airport… but we optimistically looked forward to getting some food and exploring the airport.

Unfortunately, the domestic terminal was mostly outdoors and there was NOTHING to do. We walked in circles, with the 4 yr old resting amongst the luggage on our cart, looking for a non-existent Starbucks that google maps insisted was right around the corner. We settled for some tourist-trap fried rice as well as going to a little convenience shop to grab snacks and water.

After a few hours of wandering and finding food in the extreme humidity we tried to get back into the small, air-conditioned section of the airport where the check in counters were. No luck, the guards at the door were very adamant about us waiting outside until 3 hours before our flight.

So we set up camp in a corner of the concrete, outdoor waiting area. We played some games, took naps on the concrete, and went on walks with the 4 yr old… eventually the sun began to set and mozzies began to bite. I dont know about you, but I’m not a fan of malaria, so we prayed if we should try one more time to get into the air-conditioned section, even though it was still long before our check in time. We felt like God said to try it… but He told us to wait 15 minutes and to try a different entrance than we had before.

There were guards at each door, checking flight info to see whether people could come in or not. I’m not sure if the guard at our door was being lazy, having mercy on us, or maybe was blind to our departure time… all I know is that they were certain we could not enter before, then God spoke to try again at a certain time and at a certain entrance, and THE GUARD LET US IN.

Maybe it seems small to you… but we have a big God, and that was a miracle! God cares about every aspect of our lives! We got to spend our last 4 hours resting, safe from the humidity and mosquitoes. God is good.

Other travel miracles I’ll be sharing about:

• Episode 2: Broke Down
• Episode 3: “This is the last stop!”… plus all the other crazy things that happened in Nepal
• Episode 4: The one where all the flights are cancelled