Airport lessons - lost luggage (1)

If you’re reading this post on the day it’s published i.e. Wed 2nd Sept, I am right now transiting through Tokyo’s Narita Airport, my first time here but my luggage’s second time here. Which brings me to the “little incident of the kidnapped luggage” during my first missions trip to the Philippines 10 years ago.

Until now I’m am still not quite sure what sort of lessons the Lord had wanted me to learn from that incident. I certainly learnt to always keep a close eye on my things, and I haven’t had another disappearing luggage incident in every mission trip since.

Was it an attempt by the evil one to discourage me, so that I would not consider going back to the Philippines again? Yes, perhaps, but God overruled. Perhaps it was to tell me not to cling to material things? I didn’t, I was in fact quite pleased to not to have to do laundry when I returned home without luggage.

So what really happened – We were back in Manila after a 3-week mission trip, and with lots of time to kill till our flight at around 2pm, we went to the airport cafe for a very long lunch, and left our luggage standing near the door of the cafe.

There was an oldish Japanese chap surrounded by a few local ladies in that same cafe, and they finished their merry-making and left before us. A little later, we also made our way out of the cafe. And that was when I discovered that my one piece of luggage was not there. It had been kidnapped! The other interesting thing was that there was another piece of luggage, which looked rather similar but not exactly similar to mine, standing in its place. O dear, my luggage was not only kidnapped, but substituted??

The strange things some folk bring along on their travels

We looked over the suspicious substitute, and although it was locked and had no name on it, we concluded that it must belong to that Japanese chap, who could have been distracted with the company he was keeping (and probably going to say farewell to). We prayed first, then a couple of us took the bag and hurried to look for the flights bound for Tokyo while the rest went to check in for our flight home.

It was true, there was a flight bound for Narita airport, Tokyo, about half an hour before ours. The ground crew at the airport tried their best – they took the abandoned, substituted luggage, and went on board the Tokyo-bound flight to make announcements – who does this belong to. They came back to me with the abandoned one to say no one on that flight claimed it.

I flew back home without my luggage, because our Singapore-bound plane wasn’t waiting for me to go scrambling into all the other Tokyo-bound flights to go after the elusive Japanese chap. There wasn’t anything important in my bag anyway, so I looked on the bright side – no need to do laundry. Can go shopping for more new clothes. Three days later, I got the call from our airport. Luggage had returned from Japan and would you come to claim it? I was very impressed with both Narita and Changi airports.

So here am I today, touring Narita airport where my little piece of kidnapped luggage had the privilege to arrive in 10 years ago. Other brethren who had travelled on mission trips also have their lost luggage stories to tell, and their lessons to learn. Would anyone like to share these?