Sunday, April 10th, 2022
Unfortunately, the last minute travel details were running through my mind as the Sabbath began on Friday. Thankfully God had blessed us with a quiet evening and restful sleep. I often pray for peace on the weekly Sabbath for myself and my family as well as all of my brethren wherever they might be. The more stress and anxiety we experience in the Sabbath the less we are able to fulfill the command to rest and the more we lose of the unity that is supposed to come with congregating with one another. Again God blessed us with a peaceful Sabbath. Lena and I gathered with the NYC brethren in Queens for services and fellowship. There is always plenty of food (physical and spiritual) plenty of smiles, and plenty of beautiful voices singing together. After services the ladies in the congregation packed up some donated items to be delivered to the brethren. It was an absolute delight to see them working together in harmony. Most of the items went into a large suitcase that we dragged home afterwards. Some of the ladies guessed that bag would be overweight since it was packed so tightly. It ended up being only a couple of pounds too heavy. Nearly perfect!
Just after 10pm, having rested a while after our day of rest, Lena and I jumped back in the car and headed to the JFK airport where we picked up Lena’s nephew, Matthew (Matt) Hernandez. Matt works at the Home Office of UCG in Cincinnati, Ohio. He works on the media team creating graphics for publications that UCG produces. You’ve probably seen some of his recent handiwork. Matt had agreed to go with me on this trip in 2020 and finally that plan was happening! He’s not only a pleasant travel companion and an all-around nice guy, he’ll also serve an important role on this journey. Matt will be documenting various parts of our trip, taking photos and videos, and possibly conducting a few interviews of some of our brethren among the congregations we will be visiting. After his arrival, the three of us (four if you count Lola) spent the last few hours of Saturday and the first few hours of Sunday repacking and weighing suitcases, and making sure we could use our phones to call home and navigate in as many places as possible along the way.
Morning came too early, but for some reason I felt refreshed. We had to be headed out the door by 7:30am. Lena, the gracious host, caring aunt, and loving wife, made us some delicious egg tacos for breakfast while we sipped on our coffee and gathered up everything before we left. This will be the longest that Lena and I have been apart from each other since we’ve been married. I believe our previous record was two weeks.
Normally traffic isn’t so bad on a Sunday morning, but there were quite a few people also traveling today. In the airport when we arrived we saw Jewish families headed to Jerusalem for Pesach, Muslim families traveling to visit family for Ramadan, Christians of various denominations going places to keep Easter, and a group of Dominicans embarking on a week long tour of Dubai. Traffic was moderate but Lena made good time getting us to our terminal. The lines to check in were long, but the security lines were short. Matt and I were inside in no time ready to wait for our flight to board.
Through the commotion of early alarms, a few early morning phone calls, some mild but somehow still chaotic NYC traffic, and a slight misunderstanding of the ever-changing travel restrictions for Zimbabwe, Matt and I were able to board our plane and relax a little. Our flights today will be 12.5 hours and 9.75 hours including an extremely short stopover in Dubai and a pit stop in Lusaka most likely to refuel (I doubt we’ll leave the plane in Lusaka). God has brought us this far and has smoothed out all the potential bumps along the way. There’s no reason to believe that He won’t continue to bless our journey. I often find comfort in these words from Paul:
“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:3-6, NKJV).
I’ll take a note from my friend and fellow traveling pastor, Nick Lamoureux, and mention his travel blog which you can read and subscribe to here: http://outofvermont.travel.blog
Just as Matt and I were getting to the airport this morning, Nick was boarding the first leg of his flight to the Philippines to join senior pastor David Dobson in keeping the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread with the brethren there. Please remember their journey in your prayers as well.
– Lewis VanAusdle
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