We left Tri-Cities on Saturday march 6th at 6:00 a.m. I don’t think I slept for more than 2 hrs the night before. Knowing that I was going to be away from my family for two weeks made me sick, but the excitement of what we were about to be doing gave me strength. The joy of the Lord is indeed our strength.
The airport turned out to be more of a hassle than I expected. We had two oversized suitcases packed with medical supplies for Dr Kumar, that weighed about 70 lbs each. The airline would only allow us to have two checked bags at 50 lbs each. I knew we would be over, but I did not expect to have to pay $500 to get them flown over. Whatever. At least we were able to get them through.
So our first flight was a short one to San Francisco, where we would have a 3 hour layover before boarding our longest leg of the trip, a 15 hr flight to Hong Kong. Wow, is all I can say. That was absolutely agonizing. Poor Richard was pacing the plane for almost the entire flight. I will say, however, that Cathay Pacific is a very nice airline to fly. We had our own tv screens with hundreds of on demand movies, games and tv shows and also had our own power outlet at each seat. I killed a lot of time on the laptop and watching movies. Tried to sleep, but only got about 1 or 2 hours. By the time we got to Hong Kong, I was like a zombie. Our flight from there to Chennai was only 5 ½ hours, and I ended up getting about 3 hours of sleep there.
One thing I will warn you of, is not to ever travel on too tight of a schedule with Trevor. We waited around for a half hour at every security checkpoint for this joker. I think he watched too many MacGyver episodes or something. You wouldn't believe the amount of knick-knacks he kept in his carry-on. He argued for 20 minutes about 
a set of screwdrivers. Screwdrivers! Anyone knows you are not getting on an airplane in 2010 with screwdrivers in your pocket. Anyhow, it made for interesting travel conversation and allowed us to partake in ministry-by-ridicule for a while.
Once we landed and got through immigration, we met with Josh, who greeted us with a traditional Indian welcome. We have pictures of us standing outside Chennai airport with shawls. Thank God for a good brother like Josh, who was willing to meet us at 1:30 a.m.
Day 1 Monday, March 8
Originally we had planned to arrive in India on Tuesday the 9th, so we did not have any ministry arranged for Monday. Our original plan was to spend one extra day in Chennai at the tail end of the trip, but it turns out we saved about $200 per ticket to purchase our airfare on a Saturday rath
er than a Sunday, so we ended up bumping the whole trip up one day. We used the day to get acquainted with the culture and some of the pastors we would be working with. We met with a group of about 8 young pastors for l
unch, then went to the St Thomas Mount and saw the traditional place where the Apostle Thomas is believed to have been martyred. I got to pray on the rock where the legend is that the Apostle Thomas used to kneel to pray.
After that, we went to the crusades grounds t
o pray over them for a great harvest in a couple weeks. The area where the local govt gave permission for the crusades was pretty run down, filled with trash, and the ground was uneven, but the believers worked very hard to clean it up and level it off before the crusades.
We also went to the pastor’s church who was the major player in organizing the e
vent and prayed for him and his ministry. They had all the billboards and signs for the advertisements, as well as the hand-outs for the crusades.
Josh sat the group down in the afternoon for an orientation to India. It was fun to s
ee the rest of the team get their minds blown away by the culture here. Josh is used to hosting missionary teams, so he was able to give valuable information to all of us.
We got to bed early because we were to fly to Rajahmundry the next morning and begin our ministry.
Stay tuned in to these blogs, because what you are about to read over the next few weeks will blow you away!
See you on the streets!