I walked onto the Delta flight and began scanning the seat numbers to find my assigned seat, 20C. I soon realized I had been assigned the last seat at the back of the plane. Despite my time of prayer in the morning, I could feel my halo slipping precariously over my twitching left eye. This wasn’t the way I had planned to start my mission trip. A negative attitude was beginning to rise in me and before I could stop it, it slipped through, “Why am I at the back of the plane when the flight is not full?” I thought. And just as quickly, I noticed a flight attendant standing in the aisle, right next to my assigned seat, her back turned to the passengers, her shoulders heaving uncontrollably. I knew she was weeping. I felt a nudge, “That’s why!” and without hesitation, I laid my hand on her arm, patting her gently, and without thinking, I whispered, “Father, be her comfort.” Despite my whisper she heard me, and through her tears she smiled and began apologizing profusely, “Forgive me, it is so unprofessional of me, I didn’t want anyone to see me this way, but thank God, he sent a believer down here.” She continued, “Something triggered the memory of my late mother and I couldn’t hold back the tears. She died a few months ago and it still gets me. I am so sorry,” She said. “Don’t apologize,” I responded, “Losing a mother is hard.”
As the flight was taxiing off, we began chatting about God, about faith, about her mother and about life. We talked at length about Esther’s Hope Ministries and about the girls, and what this opportunity would mean for them. The short connecting flight out of Grand Rapids, Gerald R. Ford International Airport was soon over. We quickly exchanged contacts, purposing to stay connected in fellowship and friendship.
I’ve been sitting here in my room at a Christian Guest House in Nairobi musing about this unexpected blessing: a new connection with so much God-ordained potential, a new friend, a new potential ministry partner, and I almost missed it because of a bad attitude! As I think about your partnership in this work, I pray you will not miss your blessing. Keeping a young, rural, underprivileged girl in school, will certainly set you back financially, “not in seat 20C,” but certainly a couple hundred dollars back.
Yet because of you, there’s one young woman who won’t be crying anymore, at least not about getting a life-changing education. Now she can learn, and she can soar. Perhaps she’ll be a flight attendant, a doctor, a pastor or a teacher. That’s completely out of our hands, but she will certainly have a story to tell, about a divine encounter in the dark tear-filled days of her youth, with a compassionate benefactor in the United States, who reached out and touched her when she needed it the most. If you feel a nudge in your spirit, “That’s why!” We are all enroute to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ via unexpected, divine appointments. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9)."