The team gathered at
Mount Vernon First Church of the Nazarene Sunday morning March 15 before the
morning worship service to load up all the luggage and get things prepared so
we could head to Port Columbus International Airport as soon as the service
ended. The church service was an nice “sending service” for the team made up of
people from 5 different churches. I had the privilege of surprising the team
with a quartet version of the song “Jerusalem” along with Rodney Cheek and Kyle
and Becky Tocheff. Then Pastor Russ Gumm, who is on this team, gave the sermon.
We loaded up the vans
and headed to the airport shortly after noon. We are very grateful to John
Crouch and Rob Elwood who gave up their Sunday afternoon to drive us to the
airport. Thank you guys! We ate box lunches in the vans on the way to the
airport where we arrived in plenty of time to make our 4PM flight to
Philadelphia. We always try to arrive to the departure airport early to be safe
and get our bags and group checked in together. Normally we each check a bag
for ourselves and the second check piece is a tub or other equipment that needs
to make the trip. We are traveling lighter than usual on this trip since the
airline charges extra for a second bag. Connie determined it was better to
forgo the second bag and cram the essentials, like bacon, into our one check
pieces and three tubs thanks to the generosity of Jean Taylor, the McKenzie’s and
Sharrock’s who gave up check bags in order to take the three tubs of food. Thanks
to the support of people from First Church we will be able to purchase the rest
of what we need in Israel.
The short flight to
Philly had us on the ground by 5:30 PM with plenty of time to relax, log into
the internet, make phone calls and find something to eat for supper before our
9PM flight to Tel Aviv. The Philadelphia to Tel Aviv flight is a long flight. We
left Philadelphia about 9PM EDT and got off the plane after 8AM EDT the next
morning. However it felt even longer with the six hour time change because it
was after 2PM local time in Tel Aviv when we disembarked.
We arrived in Tel Aviv
to bright sunshine and 66 degrees plus. After the long hard winter in Ohio, it
was a welcome change and a good sign for the weeks ahead.
Stay tuned for more!
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