Friday, April 5
We woke up early and were ready to leave before 4 AM, but by 4:15, the bus still had not shown up. Willy, who came to see us off, called Kaizak who woke up another bus driver who finally showed up at 5 AM, an hour late. Our plane leaves at 9:20 but we did not arrive at the airport until 8:20. By the time we cleared security and got to the gate, it was almost 9 AM, and the gates were closed and no amount of begging could convince them to board us. We went to the Turkish Airlnes office, and were told today's 9 PM flight, tomorrow's 3 AM flights, in face all the Saturday flights were booked solid, but maybe on standby, some of us could get on. This is not a viable alternative. The Sunday morning 3 AM flight has seats available but only premium seats which cost $742 per person, almost the cost of our round trip LA to Erbil flights. We called Willy who found us flights on Pegasus Airlines for about $360 each, leaving a 1 PM today stopping somewhere and arriving in Istanbul at 7 PM tonight. So that's our plan. Since we only ate snacks, we bought some food from the airport cafe (for a king's ransom) but found out the cafe worker is from Indonesia. Further conversation revealed he is also a believer who said Christians used to be 5% in Indonesia but are now 30% due to outreach efforts. We checked in at 11:30, not wanting to miss this flight, but Marshall lost his walking cane when security would not let him bring it in and put it in a trash can with several other walkers. Those who have problems walking may have real problems. So we show up at the gate and start to board. The agent said, no, your tickets have been cancelled, two hours before departure, apparently minutes after being issued the boarding pass. Willy had booked our flight on line and used his credit card, but somehow it was rejected. The agent said we had to pay $2910 cash if we wanted to fly! Pooling all our cash, we found out we have just about $3000, so by depleting almost all our cash, we were able to board and now we have arrived in Ankara, Turkey and cleared immigration. Learning from our mistakes, we went to the Turkish Airlines Reservation desk. Lo and behold, because we did not fly the Erbil to Istanbul leg, we have to rebook and pay a penalty then on the Istanbul to LA flight Sunday. It makes no sense but that's the airlines policy. Fortunately, they accepted Amy's credit card to pay the $15 to 18 penalty per person. So by the bus coming late, this cost us an extra $3000 above what we had budgeted. After finally getting our confirmation, we went down to the food court to eat our first non-snack meal of the day (it is now 5 PM). What lesson is God teaching us? It must be more than just encouraging an Indonesian believer in Erbil. Maybe it is to tach us patience which we had to learn as all these ticket changes took a looong time. One practical lesson is for future teams, when taking the bus, to leave at 3 AM instead of 4 for the morning flight, because if we had left at 4, we would be at the tail end of the check in and it is better to have some margin. While waiting, we used the time to debrief our lessons learned. One last adventure to our long day. We were able to get on a domestic Pegasus flight leaving about 2 hours earlier. The agent said our luggage will also be on that flight. When we got to Istanbul, no luggage showed up even with much prayer. Finally, someone said we need to go to the International terminal, and there they were! We finally left the airport around 9:45, arrived at the hotel at 10:45. Praise the Lord. We all got here with our luggage. The hotel is very expensive, the rooms tiny, but elegant. Listed price is 200 Euros for a single and 300 for double, but I think we are paying less. Tomorrow is a rest and sightseeing day so this might be the last report from our group.
