Short-term mission, day 1

This is our fourth trip to Trinidad & Tobago. We took our first missions trip here in 2005 and returned in 2006 and 2007, but this is the first time we've come alone.

After receiving an email from American Airlines to confirm our flight online, I was surprised to discover that our departure and arrival times had been changed, including a nine-hour layover in Miami. Since this was not what we scheduled, I called and was fortunate enough to change our takeoff from Philadelphia from 6:00 AM to 12:40 PM. Of course, that meant we would not arrive in T&T until 10:30 PM.

Of course, we sat in coach. During the first leg of our flight, we had a seatmate who was afraid of flying, especially take off and landing. A software salesman who was heading for Nassau, he survived the flight and we parted in Miami. After a three-hour layover in Miami, we departed on our longest and final leg. I seatmate there was a native of Trinidad and who lived in Canada for 35 years.

We arrived in Trinidad at 10:30 PM. We've never made it through Immigration and Customs as fast as we did this time, which was truly a blessing. We immediately spied Tracy Sandassie who was waiting for us outside Customs. Pastor Andy was parking the car, so Tracy called him and asked him to swing around to pick us up.

This was a good start to what promised to be a great trip.