Some Surprises I had During My Journey to Home

After a long, gruelling journey back to my native country, I finally arrived home last thursday after midnight. It took at least nineteen hours flying time from the US,excluding my stopovers in Dallas, Texas and Narita in Japan. Almost everything went well except for a 40 minute delay in Narita, Japan. In spite of the long flight,however, I was really happy to be home again. As I said in my previous article, there is nothing like home. My two sisters came to meet me at the airport. They were so happy and excited to see me too after a year of not seeing each other.

I had three very interesting experiences during my journey. First, there was an incident that happened when I was just checking in at Newark International Airport in New Jersey. I was standing in line for the ticketing when suddenly one of the ladies at the ticketing booth came and approached me. She told me to come over immediately to the counter to check in my baggage and get my ticket. I was surprised because there was a long line of people. When I approached the ticketing booth, the lady in charge said to me...."I saw you in Church and my kids go to your school." Well, what a surprise. How in the world would I know that this lady knew me and so she was giving me some special treatment. Anyway, I was thankful for her kindness. She checked in my baggage and gave me my ticket without any trouble or questions. The second incident happened when I had my first stopover at Dallas, Texas. I was standing in line to get some food when a young man was looking at me, I guess with some curiosity. Because the line was quite long, I decided to get out of line and went to sit in one of the chairs and wait there instead. After a while, somebody just tapped my shoulders. Before I realized who was tapping my shoulders, it was the young man whom I saw on the line and was giving me a pretzel which he just bought in the counter. Before I could say thank you, he was gone. I thanked God for the young man who was so gracious to buy me some food. What a wonderful feeling to know that there are still some very good people in this world like this young man. The third incident happened during my flight from Dallas to Narita, Japan. I was seated with an American lady. Just before she sat down besides me, she was smiling and very cordial. I said hello. She responded back my saying hello too. Right from the start we engaged in a very cordial conversation. I was taken aback when she began speaking to me in tagalog. When I asked her how she learned to speak in tagalog, she said to me that she was born and grew up in Subic. Now she is married with an american sailor who is now retired, and they now reside in Japan. I said to her, you really surprised me. How would I ever know that you could speak in tagalog. But I told her that God really played some suprises on me in this journey.

I was smiling, trying to recall these incidents, before I dozed off to sleep in the plane. God is really great and wonderful.