Do NOT pass Go, do NOT collect $200!

Due to the nature of the situation described below, none of us managed to get a photo, but we had an… er… “interesting” experience in Paris as we changed planes to embark on the final leg of our journey from Paris to Chennai. After being whisked off the plane onto busses (seriously, the busses were just for us) and driven rally-car style around the airport at break-neck speed, we went through another layer of security and then…uh…oops. Our resident Missions Ninja (Miss Skip Dodge) was held up at the end of the security checkpoint with several polite but very involved security personnel beginning to ask her to open her luggage. Long story short, the security squad apologized for the inconvenience, but indicated that Skip’s bag had triggered one of the Ion Track explosive detector systems, and that they were going to have to engage extra security measures before allowing her to proceed. It would have almost been funny if we hadn’t been living it. “Have you been to a shooting range lately, Mademoiselle?” “Have you been handling firearms lately, Mademoiselle?” “Do you work around explosives, Mademoiselle?” Skip works in the IT Dept at Bethel College, which is about as far away from handling or manufacturing weapons-grade explosives as you can get, and somehow through the process, I managed to stifle the urge to launch into a sermonette about how Skip was “packing the heat of the Word of God” and “carrying the tactical nuke of God’s love to a lost and dying world”. Heh-heh… :- )

At any rate, already on a tight timeline to make our connecting flight, the team waited and prayed in eager anticipation until finally Skip was given the “all clear” and allowed to proceed. While piecing her luggage back together and rushing with the rest of the team to the gang-plank to board our 767, Skip was a little rattled, but very grateful to be moving on. I’ll tell you one thing, it’s scenarios like this that make you value having a bilingual team-mate! Chad Anderson (who grew up in France while his parents served as missionaries there) walked Skip through the entire process, was able to engage the security personnel well, and helped to encourage the general smoothness and eventual resolution of the issue, and we all found ourselves pleasantly stowed on our aircraft and glad to be underway and still on-schedule.