Saturday, April 6, 2019
I woke up at 5:30 am and got ready to leave for the airport. At 6:50, I left my room for the last time and met Jeff M, Sandy, Dan and Robert at the car. Robert came along for the drive to the airport so that we could transfer the rental van into his name, however, we found out that he couldn’t rent the van because he had forgotten his wallet at home and although it was being mailed to the hotel in Saipan, it hadn’t arrived yet and he needed his drivers license to rent the van. Harold had also come to the airport to extend his rental car for a few days so he gave Robert a ride back to the hotel and they would have to try another solution.
The others had checked their bags and cleared customs, but when I gave my passport to the ticket agent, he contacted a supervisor who told me that my flights had not been confirmed. I sat down on a chair near the ticket counter and activated my cell phone to call National Travel in order to get assistance with my tickets. It took about 15 minutes for them to correct the problem before I returned to the ticket counter and checked in.
I cleared customs without any further incidents and then met Roger, Jeff K, Sandy, Jeff M and Dan at the gate. There were no further incidents and we arrived in Guam at 10 am.
Everyone else was continuing to the Narita airport in Japan, some of them staying there overnight, before flying back to the mainland so I was the only one staying in Guam. At 10:30 am, I took a taxi to the Wyndham Hotel and spent the day relaxing in anticipation of my marathon flight back home.
During my supper at the local Applebees, I was quickly reminded of the small, invisible cuts on my hands, when I got some juice on them as I squeezed lemon wedges into my ice tea. I had worn gloves most of the time, when I handled metal or the splintered wood during the past few weeks but my gloves were too thick and cumbersome for the work I was doing and I obviously didn’t wear them enough.
During the 4 weeks in Saipan, no one had been seriously injured, which we attributed to the fact that we had prayed every morning for safety on the job site. However, once we had forgotten to pray before starting our work and one of the volunteers injured his rib cage when he tripped. Fortunately he hadn’t been seriously hurt but he reminded us that we hadn’t prayed, so we immediately stopped our work and prayed for continued safety.
My flight from Guam is scheduled to leave at 7:15 am Sunday morning ( Guam Time – 5:15 pm Saturday EST ) and my final flight arrives in Buffalo at 4:57 pm EST ( 6:57 am Monday morning Guam Time ) which means that I will be travelling for ~ 24 hours.
Ralf Hamm 