Christ in me: Nigeria Journey, Part 4

Saturday, November 2

The Nigeria team from Shore Vineyard Church

I'm the one in the bandana.

We left the church yesterday in plenty of time to get to the airport. We all divvied up the bibles, reading material and bottles of vitamins, as well as the watches for the orphans, to stow in our suitcases before we left the church. Then we held hands and prayed and took some photos and we were off!

We got to Newark Airport around 2:30 for our 4:00 flight to Houston. The time flew! I took my dramamine before we boarded and I did just fine.

My view of the Mississippi River, flying west to Houston
so we fly east to Lagos, Nigeria.

It still seems silly to fly west so that we could board a plane to fly to Africa. But just as the sun was setting we flew right over the Mississippi River, which was an unbelievable sight!

Houston International Airport

When we got to Houston, we checked in our bags and the man who assisted us was from Lagos! That was really neat! Then we had quite a walk to the gate that we would leave from and a transport vehicle drove up along side of us and offered us a lift. Darlene, Richard and I climbed aboard and we discovered that the driver is from Owerri! He’s a christian and prayed and prophesied over us. How cool! The flight to Lagos was 14 hours long! I’m grateful that most of if was overnight. I watched a movie, but I really can’t remember what it was. I must have been very tired. I do know that I slept for a few hours, so that was very good.

The sun came up and we flew into Lagos International Airport in the early afternoon. I took a photo out of the plane window of the grass along the runway. My first glimpse of Africa! After I’d gathered my carry on and moved off the plane I stepped onto the floor of the airport and thought to myself, “I’m standing in Africa!” We went down a set of stairs and through some doors to a waiting room that was packed with people, all waiting to get through customs. There must have been a couple of hundred people waiting in that long narrow room with no AC and very few windows. We shuffled forward every few minutes but it seemed as if we would be there for hours! Then, suddenly, Pastor Ignatius was standing by our side and he had some men who looked liked guards with him. He took our passports and told us to stay in line. We continued to move forward, but now, instead of feeling like we might never get out we worried that Ignatius would not get back to us before we reached the customs counter. Just in the nick of time, it seemed, he handed us back our passports, just as we got up to the counter. The agent went through all our paper work and handed everything back and we were through and standing in baggage claim. And there was Lozie! Such a relief to see her smiling face! As we waited for our luggage to come around, some of us made pit stops in the lavatory. After a few minutes Rod started asking who had his passport! No one had his passport! We all looked through our own papers but his was not to be found. Suddenly a white man, (imagine that!) came out of the lavatory and asked if there was a Rod Conover among us. He had Rod’s passport! Rod had dropped it on the floor in the men’s room! Yet another miracle!

We finally got our luggage loaded onto large carts and headed out the doors to the outside world. As I stepped onto the sidewalk I thought to myself, “I’m walking in Africa!” We didn’t have to go through a baggage search. That must have been what Ignatius was doing with our passports. What a relief! Not that we had anything to worry about!

We climbed into a couple of SUVs and headed out of the airport. We had been warned not to take any photos at the airport but I had to get just one of the outside so I brought my camera down low and pointed it up to take a picture of the outside.