The Cabana mission

As, I said earlier, my pool cabana seems to be a place where people land when they need a little help.

Last week, I hosted a kid from Argentina who was here for a few days buying instruments for his church (or so he said...THAT story is another blog post entirely) and needed a place to stay. A good friend of mine asked me to host him and vouched for his character. It was an interesting adventure, but again, a different post entirely.

On Tuesday, a friend was flying through Miami on his way back to a mission trip in Haiti. He had a 3 hour layover at which time he called with a request, "My friend on this trip is a dentist and he forgot to grab extra dental mirrors. Can you get some?" Within an hour, I was handing them 2 mirrors donated by my own dental office. Felt good to help out.

LAST night on his way home, he called again: "A member of our team got food poisoning on the plane. They are taking her to the hospital in Miami. We're not sure what to do next." Again, within the hour, I was at the airport, picking up some stranger's luggage and heading to a hospital to introduce myself. She was pretty sick and the doctors said she wouldn't be released for 3-4 hours. I gave her my number and told her to call when they discharged her. She could spend the rest of the night at my house (the cabana is now "conveniently" unoccupied) and take her to the airport whenever she could continue her travels.

She called at 3 AM and said, "There was another missionary on that flight that ate the same thing I did. She's in the bed next to me in the emergency room. I know it sounds bizarre, but do you mind if she comes, too?"

And so, that's how I ended up with two missionaries from Haiti in the Cabana, which is my own little mission field. Today, I helped them get clean clothes and get back to the airport. Mission accomplished!