The Berean Fellowship of Churches in this country seems to be alive and well.  At least, it seems thus in this particular state.  The leadership is strong, and these 85 men and their families, spread out in 9 districts, are fairly tightly bound together.

They all thing we Americans are special, but I am convinced it is the other way around.

We are trying to take photos of each family so as to keep their memories more sharply alive.

A sweetheart

Children are a highly desired commodity among our friends here.  And there are lots of little kids…lots.  Theirs are not large families – the most children in any one family, as near as we can tell, is three.  But there are oodles of little ones, including a number of babies and toddlers, as well as older school-aged children.  These families have pulled their kids out of school to attend this retreat.

When I walked out to the vehicle that transports us to and fro, about 6 kids were standing on the steps in the entry to the compound.  One of them asked me to sing them a song.  The little guy whom I nicknamed “Waldo” in last year’s photos (because he appeared in about every shot I took, for some reason), said, Sing it in English.

So I sang “Shout To The Lord” for them.  Then I asked them to sing a song for me.  One little gal with two front teeth conspicuously absent sang Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes…in English!

sisters

And the twist on the song was “All for Jesus!”

It was great.

And so was the kiss on the cheek given me by the smaller of the two little girls whose pictures appear in this post.

We spruced up a bit at the hotel and then were driven to the site of the retreat.  It is a Catholic center for training pastors – the same place we met with our indigenous friends a year ago March.

A bunch of children were waiting to receive us.  The worship was in progress in the “Upper Room.”  And it was hot.

Jeff Petersen outlined for the crowd what both the schedule for and purpose of this time together would be.  Then Tom Walker preached.

Did I mention that it was hot?  This is supposed to be the cool, rainy season.  But it hasn’t rained here much, and the temps are close to 100 degrees with significant humidity.  We were perspiring without doing anything but trying to keep awake.  And, some of us didn’t succeed in that last-mentioned activity. Missing a whole night of rest made it tough.

It was a great time of reconnecting.  My poor memory was taxed as I tried to fit names to faces.  Time and distance had not lessened the love these folks have for us.

Did I mention the heat?  Did I also mention that none of the facility that houses the retreat is air conditioned, and that there were probably 200 bodies in that meeting room?  Need I say more about that?

We came back to the hotel about 8 p.m.  A good meal in the Chinese restaurant revived the spirits of the Walkers and us, and the solid night of sleep revived our bodies.

Well, we’ve finally landed…for the third time in the last 8 hours.  We’re here at our first stop in the southeastern part of the country.  It’s about 100 degrees with fairly high humidity, we haven’t slept since Sunday morning, it’s Monday afternoon, and in two hours we head out for the site of the Retreat.

We left Helsinki last evening at 6:45 and flew for about 6½ hours through the night right over Moscow and eventually Afghanistan to land in the capital of this nation at 4 AM.  We boarded another flight there to come across country to another principle city where we made connections for the last leg of the trip.

Luana doesn’t know what day it is anymore.  Just imagine “springing ahead” like you do every April for Daylight Savings Time, only not just springing ahead one hour.  Imagine springing ahead 10½ hours.

Not hard to understand that some sleep is lost somewhere along the way, eh?  And, compounding the time changes was the fact that neither one of us slept on any of the flights.

Why?  Well, the seats are not that wide, for one thing.  And the space between the rows on that AirBus was not especially commodious.  Add to that the fact that the person sitting behind me gave me a massage with his/her feet (or some other bony body part) through the seat, and the persons in front of both of us reclined their seats so far back as practically to invade our private space with their heads.

And it was cold.  A side of beef could have hung back there for a month and been ok.  My nose was cold, my sandaled feet were cold, and my bear-legs were cold.

We are bone-weary, but, we are here…with all of our luggage.  And, it is good.

Church in Helsinki

One of the sights we saw in our brief stay in Helsinki.

Luana and I climbed into what has to be the most comfortable bed in the world last night about 10.  We’d had no significant amount of shuteye on the plane the night before; but we slept for 11 hours in that hotel bed, rising in time to sample the great breakfast buffet here at the Raddison Seaside in Helsinki before we all took the trolley downtown for an excursion on a ferry.

While the others disembarked to tour the Suomenlinna (I think that’s its name) Island, we took the same boat back to the city.  We had to purchase at the very least some toothpaste and toothbrushes and various cosmetics, to say nothing of a few new unmentionables, as they used to be called.

OK, I’ll mention them – underwear!

There was a drugstore close to the boat dock, and we did find a few things.  We knew there was a department store of some kind in the vicinity of our hotel (we’d found it last night after it had closed at 6), so we figured to give it a try.

We chose not to tour the island because of time constraints.  Just finding one’s way around an unfamiliar city, getting from here to there, eats up enough minutes.  Besides, we had to return to the airport soon enough to check on the missing baggage.

We weren’t excited about any of this – perhaps most of all the shopping.  As Luana pointed out, shopping for clothes in familiar surroundings is enough of a horror show.

Alighting from the trolley just outside the Radisson, we decided to deposit our drugstore loot in the room before continuing the safari.  When we entered Luana made the comment, “Somebody’s been in here.”  Since our checkout time is 4 PM, this seemed odd.

And how did she know that, I asked?  Simple, the TV was on, and we hadn’t used it at all.

I looked at the screen.  A message containing these words was there:  “Dear hotel guest, you have a message.  Please key in your room number.”

I did as I was instructed.  These words appeared on the screen:  “Your luggage has arrived from the airport.”

I seriously don’t think “You’ve won the lottery,” “Congratulations, you have a baby boy (or girl),” “You have an offer on your house,” or “The Huskers are national champions” could have produced any more joy in us than that simple message.

This truly was great news, and the sense of relief we have is almost palpable.  Thanks for your prayers with and for us!

It was bad news.

We had a great flight in business class through the night from New York to Helsinki.  Our bags, on the other hand, did not.  Did not arrive, that is.  So, apparently they didn’t have any sort of flight – certainly not a great one.

We’ve found the Finns to be great people, and they didn’t disappoint us with regard to the luggage.  They gave us an allowance for necessities, and we are sitting here with 140 Euros in cash from the baggage-handling department while we wait for the rest of our team to arrive from Zurich.  They should be here any minute now.

The bad thing about the missing luggage is not that all of my clean underwear resides there, but that the medication that’s become necessary for an aging man with half of his brain missing is also in those containers.  So is the daily dosage of anti-malaria pills we’re supposed to take.

However, the situation may correct itself before we leave Finland tomorrow (Sunday) evening at 6:45.  The bags were “heavily rerouted,” and may come in on either the FinnAir flight from JFK tomorrow about 2 PM or on the flight in from Zurich two hours later.

If you’re reading this blog, you might pray that the scenario outlined in the last paragaph actually becomes a reality.  It sure would save a lot of hassle for a guy who hates to shop in a domestic situation, let alone in one on foreign soil.  Luana’s not all that wild about it either.

I’ll let you know if the underwear and pills arrive in time!

We sat on the tarmac in Chicago for 35 minutes, finally taking off for New York about 3:15 PM.  We were to meet our ministry partners (John and Debbie Wetzig, Richard and Toni Crocker, and Jeff Petersen) in the Big Apple, but that now seemed a remote possibility.

As it turned out, we landed at JFK 40 minutes after our flight from there to Zurich was scheduled to leave.  As our plane was taxiing to the terminal I checked my cell phone.  There were two messages from Jeff Petersen to tell me we’d missed the connection.  That was the bad news.

However, the good news was that he’d rebooked us on FinnAir for a ten o’clock flight directly to Helsinki.  He and the others will meet us there via Zurich an hour after we are to arrive.

The bad news was that we had another nearly 4 hours to kill.

However, the good news is that when we checked in with FinnAir Jeff’s platinum pull somehow had landed us business class seats!

So now, after a food-court lunch and a lot of hiking around this terminal, we sit and wait to grace those comfortable, first-class seats.  I just hope our luggage made all the necessary changes and meets us in Finland.  It would be really bad news if it didn’t.

We’ve been dutifully sitting near Gate H9 here in O’Hare Airport awaiting departure.  The first bad news was that the flight was delayed an hour, from 12:50 PM to 1:50.  That would have put us in JFK, New York with just 25 minutes to spare to make the connection to Zurich.

Not to worry.  I was assured by the man behind the desk that we’d be arriving at gate 36 and leave from gate 45.  The bags had been checked through to Helsinki.  Not to worry.

A few minutes ago this came over the PA:  “Allll right…we have 99 international connections, and the departure has been delayed until 2:45.  You’ll arrive at JFK at 6 PM.  You may need to use the rebooking phones.”  Or, something like that.

Now this poses some sort of a problem, because the flight from JFK to Zurich is supposed to leave at 5:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time.  According to the guy behind the desk, to whom I affirmed the fact that I am new to this twist, we, Luana and I, should proceed on to New York to see what would transpire there.  There are 5 of us (we don’t know the other three) who are making this connection, and perhaps they will hold the plane until we arrive.

Wouldn’t that be awesome, an American Airlines Airbus with 400 people just sitting there waiting on…on us!

I sure hope they do wait.  Could make for an even more interesting beginning to this adventure than the one I reported earlier.

Well, here we are at Eppley Airfield’s Gate A2.  That’s in Omaha; and from here we fly on the first leg of our trip in just 15 minutes.  It’s 9:05 AM, Friday, July 31, 2009.

We’re getting to be old hands at this international travel bit.  Checking in was easy.  They have these automated check-in devices that read your credit card and your passport and then cough up boarding passes.  This will happen if, of course, you have properly and accurately entered all of your information at some other prior point via the Internet.  This will happen if you have valid reservations.

Ooops!  It was supposed to be Gate A7.  And while I was writing the first paragraph – something about having just 15 minutes till takeoff, a bell slowly began to ring in my brain.  15 minutes!  Usually we’re on the plane in our reserved seats at such a time.  And, even as my brain slowly turned this information over we heard, “Final call for boarding American Airlines flight 4479 to Chicago.”  Then, “Will passengers VanCampen please report to Gate A7!”

This is not a good way to begin a journey that will take us halfway around the world.  But, I have a theory about why this happened.

A couple of nights ago I stumbled onto a television program titled “Monsters Within You.”  It’s a sort of fascinating but revolting program that details true stories of folks who’ve experienced invasions by a variety of different parasites.  The particular episode I watched dealt with a parasitic worm that can enter the body through the soles of one’s feet.  The worm lives in fecal-contaminated soil in tropical climates.  It does nasty things to the plumbing that leads from one’s stomach to the outside world.

That first exposure to “Monsters…” was enough to make me put my sandals on – in my own home.  But the next show I watched with morbid fascination was even more frightening.  And, sad.  A boy in Florida became sick for apparently no reason.  His condition worsened.  His brain began to swell.  Ultimately doctors extracted spinal and brain fluid for examination.  To their consternation, they discovered an aggressive, rapidly-dividing amoeba that was busy consuming the kid’s brain.

Is that scary, or what?  But it was the place of origin of the parasite that concerned me.  A scientist had discovered that the amoeba lives in the waters and ooze of lakes around the country.  Not all lakes, but some of them.

Seems this lad had spent a day on a lake near his home with a friend.  They’d taken turns being pulled behind a speedboat on boogeyboard.  When the boy wiped out, it forced some of that lake water up his sinuses.  The rest is history, and so is that youngster, unfortunately.

I felt bad for the parents.  I also had a growing sense of unease about myself.  Years ago Luana and I had taken our family on a camping trip to Merrit Reservoir near Valentine, NE.  Our kids refer to this excursion as “The Camping Trip From Hell” because we chose the most mosquito-infested portion of the shoreline as our temporary home.  We also suffered extreme sunburn.  But the part that concerned me these years later was that I had ingested sufficient enough amounts of lake water through nose and mouth to produce a significant allergic reaction.

A year later we took a bunch of teenagers to that lake for a retreat.  This time we camped in a better location.  A friend brought his speedboat, and we all enjoyed waterskiing.  I had the misfortune of taking a severe enough tumble from the skis to force more of that lake water into my cranial cavities.  Another very uncomfortable allergic reaction ensued.

I’m not certain, but I think I was invaded by a distant cousin of that brain-eating amoeba featured on “Monsters Within You.”  This one hasn’t divided itself as rapidly as that one, and its appetite hasn’t been quite as robust, but I am almost certain it is in there, consuming enough material to vitally affect memory and, in some cases, common sense.  Why else would I have been sitting blithely working on my laptop while the plane was preparing to depart from the terminal?

We made it into the aircraft, and we are now sitting in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport at Gate H9 (Luana said it to me 10 times before we even landed here).  Our reservations for the rest of the day’s journey are valid.  I have little doubt that we will be in Helsinki, Finland tomorrow morning.

But I have real reservations about ever swimming in a lake again.  And, I will certainly not wander about the subcontinent in my bare feet – not even in my hotel room!