Someday I Will (by Jimmy Buffett)

A while back my dad wrote a book entitled When God Says No. Unfortunately, the Billy Graham Crusade messed things up when they thought the title was too negative and they changed it to Praying to a God You Can Trust. I say it’s unfortunate because it’s the former of the two titles that has had such an impact on my heart, often bringing to mind that simple phrase, “When God says no”. I have found many times in my life where I have prayed a specific prayer that it seems God is saying “No”, and sometimes that’s exactly what He’s saying. However, on more occasions then I could possibly count, I clearly haven’t been listening carefully enough. Because, had I been listening more carefully I would’ve realized that God wasn’t saying “No”, but rather, “I’ve got a better idea!” I seem to be in the midst of one of those times right now.
Back in 1985 my parents were wise enough to enroll me in the Northwest Airlines Frequent Flyer Program. Since then, I’ve been saving up my miles. I’ve used a few of those miles here and there for some special trips (like when I flew down to West Palm Beach, FL to see Jimmy Buffett in concert for the first time … and in his home town no less!), but for the most part I’ve just kept saving them. At first I didn’t know what I was saving them for, but as the miles began to build up I realized that I wanted to use them to go to Australia … the cost: 100,000 F.F. miles. Well, I’ve had those miles for quite some time now, but the opportunity to use them just never seemed to present itself. For the better part of a decade now, I’ve been praying to add Australia to my list of countries and continents that I’ve been to, but there was always some obstacle in my way. I come to find now, that what seemed to be a “No” from God was simply a “I’ve got a better idea!”
As most of you know, I’ve been spending the last two months here on the far side of the world working with some friends who run an ethno-tourist company. Unfortunately, most to all of their ethno-tourists come from North America. This creates two significant problems. First, it means that any time these guys want to visit their supporters they have to spend several days traveling half way around the world at an incredible financial cost. Second, since most of the ethno-tourists are college-age and young adults, the only time they have off where they can spend two to three weeks of traveling is in the summertime. This creates a bulk of the year that is essentially downtime … a loss of significant opportunity cost.
On my way to the airport to come over here, my parents, my best friend, and I stopped at a deli for lunch. As we were sitting and talking, I found out that my parents were scheduled to be in Australia just after my time over here was up. So, half jokingly, I asked them if I could go with them. I didn’t really get a straight answer, but with only a glimmer of hope the answer didn’t seem too promising. The proposal was all but brushed off until I got over here and began to do some serious thinking. I scheduled my time to be completed here at the beginning of September while my parents were scheduled to come to this side of the planet towards the middle/end of September. Was there a reason beyond purely personal and selfish longing to go to Australia with them? What about the gap of time between my scheduled departure and their scheduled arrival? Is there anything in the midst of all this in which God was at work and wanted me to be a part of it?
When it comes to traveling and geography, I have this way of thinking that is unlike most other people. For example, when I went to Germany to see one of my very best friends get married a few years past, I decided to spend a couple weeks afterwards backpacking in some countries I had yet to visit. So, I found myself on a train in Frankfurt early one morning on my way to Paris. From there, I decided that, because of a song by, you guessed it, Jimmy Buffett entitled “The Coast Of Marsailles”, I would take a train down to the French Riviera and, as the song says, sit on the coast of Marsailles. From there, after a night of sleeping on the beach because I didn’t want to “waste” the money on a hostile, I headed down to Barcelona for a few days. My line of thinking from there was, “I’m in Europe and when I was in Bali a few years past I made some friends from England … I should go visit them since I’m already here (in Europe).” So, I gave them a call, bought a plane ticket on Ryan Air, and flew up to England to visit some old friends for a few days. That’s just how my mind works. Some people will visit friends because they happen to be in their neighborhood, others because they’re in their city, others still because they happen to be in their state. Me, I visit people because I’m in their hemisphere! Thus was my line of thinking when I started thinking about visiting Australia. If I’m going to be that close, I might as well visit my friends in New Zealand, right?!
The more I thought about it and the more I prayed about it, the more things started to come to my mind and seemingly fall into place. I spoke with my friends here that I’m working with to make sure it was even something they were interested in, and they thought it’d be a great idea to travel down under and try to do some networking for their business. We made contact with the head of the conference my dad is to speak at as well as with my friend in New Zealand and both seem very excited about the idea of hearing about the work God is doing up in these parts and how they might get connected. I’ve run into a few “speed bumps” along the way, such as financial issues, but the Lord seems to be at work in smoothing out the rest of the journey. Nothing is finalized by any means at this point, but here’s what it looks like God has in store for the end of my journey over here on the far side of the world:
To wrap up my experiences here, there is a scheduled debriefing time with one of my “bosses” here. The hope/plan as of now is to do that debrief time at the end of August in Bali after the last ethno-tour group departs. Admittedly, there would be some surfing and scuba diving as a part of this debrief time. From there, I would head up to Thailand to visit a missionary friend of mine from Westwood for a week or two. This would sufficiently and appropriately fill in that early September gap until I head down to Australia to meet up with my parents for the conferences. There, I will set up a booth and have my dad promote me from the stage to have people come over and here about the work God is doing where I am now. The idea with this is that churches from all over the country would be coming to me instead of me traveling to all of them. After a couple weeks in Australia, I will head New Zealand to spend a couple weeks with my friend. I would meet with his church as well as connect with some other churches in the country with which my friend has connections to, sharing with them the same information I will have shared in Australia. From there, I would head back to the states with a few personal days of checking out Tokyo, Japan … someplace I’ve only seen from inside the airport.
So, the question that is left to answer from all this is why? What’s the purpose? Well, the answer is simple. The organization here would not only expand their number of ethno-tour groups throughout the year, they would also have a shorter and cheaper distance to travel to connect with some of their supporters. Plus, the same restrictions of the college-age and young adults only being able to get time off in the summer would allow for ethno-tours to come year-round during the US and Australian summers.
What can I say, God is creative! I could never have come up with something so masterful on my own, nor could I have ever anticipated such a purposeful and substantial reasoning for my first trip down under. Not only that, but it allows me to use my F.F. miles for one of my two backup plans: 1) Fly to Tanzania, Africa to scuba dive in Lake Tanganyika and climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, or 2) Fly down to Argentina where I can find a relatively inexpensive cruise to Antarctica that I can join. We’ll see what the Lord has in mind, because His ideas tend to be exponentially better than mine!