Traveling
Leaving Tamatave last night, the airline agent was giving me grief about the weight of my luggage. Technically, there was some validity to her point. My bag exceeded the allowed weight. Logic was my defense. M and I had combined our things into one bag and were being minimalistic. While that one bag was slightly overweight, it was only one bag not the two we were allowed.
I thought I had won the debate when she said you only get x number of kilos per person. “Right,” I replied. There’s two of us and that bag is almost half the allowed weight. Alas, logic lies in ashes at the feet of rules and regulations. The bag was pulled off and we ingloriously removed things and put them in Derrick’s luggage and my carry on bag (another illogical thing).
Having done these trips many times over the years I find the thought of another airplane trip wearisome. It sounds like I’m complaining but I’m getting around to something…
At the conclusion of our pastors’ training conference, one of the pastors came up to me to tell me how helpful the teaching had been. I asked about his church and where it was located.
He told me it was about 150km away. I asked about how he traveled to the meeting and how he was going home. He said he was taking buses and it would take him two days to get back home.
I’ve seen the buses. That would be a rough couple of days.
Looking him over, I noticed that like most of the men there, he had very little with him, a small backpack that was barely big enough to carry his Bible and a notebook and possibly one change of clothing.
While there, he slept every night on a mat laid out on the church floor with numerous other men who were crammed in the small space.
I don’t know where they bathed or if that was even possible. And that toilet…you don’t even want to know about that.
He and the others did this so as to avail themselves of the opportunity to listen to teaching on God’s word. Several times when transitioning from Derrick teaching to me teaching I would ask if they needed a break and they would say without hesitation, “No. Keep going.”
And that, I suppose, I why I keep going.
