Bangkok Airport Anxiety

The florescent lights glared brightly despite the late hour. I shifted in my chair, watching an occasional airport worker walk down the long hallway. The phone on the small table beside me was ominously silent. I had dialed the guest house number several times.

What if I had the wrong number? Would I sit here at the Bangkok airport all night? I was fourteen years old and had travelled this leg from Manila to Bangkok before, but what if I really did have the wrong number! I dialed again…long rings, no answer.

I prayed again, silently. “Lord, please help someone at the guest house to hear this phone!” I pictured the elegant white mansion with the broad verandahs, dark polished floors, the winding teak staircase that led to large bedrooms. “Please, God let someone call back…”

After hanging up I inexplicably began to feel peaceful. I reminisced. The Lord had always taken care of me, of our family. On long flights across the Pacific—even when one of the four engines failed—we had landed safely. During the Ekari uprising when all of the missionaries slept in the big log house (and Dad was on a long trek), He had kept us safe. And when there was an attack on the Dani Tribe in our Ilaga Valley when I was nine, we were protected. God would see me through, somehow. This was the fourth of six flights from home to Dalat High School, but I would be ok.

Around 2:30 am I dialed again—and this time a tired voice answered, “Alliance Guest Home.”

“Oh,” I cried, “you’re there! This is Marlene Larson from Irian Jaya, and I’m at the airport…”

Mr. Carlson was gracious but quiet when he met me a half hour later. The Thai airport officials seemed a little relieved. “I must have missed the telegram from Jayapura,” he explained. We drove through dimly lit streets past shops, apartment houses, open canals.

“Bangkok is a huge city,” I murmured. “Thanks so much for coming for me. You must be pretty tired.”

“That’s alright. There’s a lot of kids going to Dalat this time. Around 30, I think.”

Later I slid gratefully between clean sheets in a quiet room on the main floor. Years ago when I was five, my sister Ro and I had shared a bed upstairs enclosed in white mosquito netting. Mom and Dad were pioneer mission workers headed to what was then Dutch New Guinea. Now, almost a decade later I get to sleep in this same home of hospitality.

I fell asleep feeling secure. God’s faithfulness…my parents’ faithfulness…Mr. Carlson’s faithfulness. There are exciting twists in the missionary kid’s journey…but God takes care of us.