Memoirs: My first trip to a foreign country

My first trip to foreign soil was probably the most exciting thing, besides flying from Chicago to Honolulu, I had ever done. Being in a new Country I was leaving Hawaii, to go to the Philippines, a foreign Country where everyone spoke a new language, ate different foods, had cool new customs, I was very excited. We had one stop, it was in Tokyo, one of the more crowded cities in the World. Quiet but crowded, very foreign I must add.

When we left Hawaii, I had one piece of luggage and just my dreams of the foreign land we would see. I was still amazed how a kid from a lower income family could live in Hawaii, then go to the Philippines, bringing a message of hope to a people I believed to be hopeless at the time. I was in for a big surprise.

We flew over Mt. Kilimanjaro at the perfect time of the day, the sun was out, there was no clouds in the skies, and we saw the perfect white cap of one of the most picturesque Mts. in the world. The pilot was Japanese, so was very happy to circle the amazing Mountain, our team of Youth oohed and aahed over the amazing Mountain. You could see the snow didn’t go all the way down, it was as if the mountain had a perfectly made white skull cap. The rest of the mountain, or as far as we could see anyway, was a lush green, very impressive from where I was sitting.

I have to give a little background, our team of Missionaries, left Honolulu Airport the day the Allies invaded Iraq in 1992, January 17th. The Airport in Tokyo was supposed to be a target of Terrorist activity, so when we landed the security was very tight. We were instructed to stay, for the whole ten hour layover, in the International corridor of the Narita Airport. It had a few shops but nothing spectacular.

The story however began on the plane. We had a Japanese girl on our team. She was looking forward to seeing her parents, and taking our team (12 people) to a special restaurant while we waited for our plane. Because of the security issues, we weren’t able to do this. Our team had, like I said twelve people.

There were two leaders and ten students. I was a student, and so was the Japanese girl, her name was Rie Shibata. Rie couldn’t speak much English, she understood, but responded in yes with a bow, or no with a bow, this was the extent of her communication. Consequently, we still do not know exactly what happened to her on the plane before we landed. What we do know is she literally turned green, and became violently ill.

I was sitting near her, our