For as long as I have been traveling back and forth to East Africa there is one event I anticipate long before leaving. It begins when I book my airfare, especially the time of day my flight leaves from Amsterdam to Uganda. I ensure my seat is on the righthand side and the window view is not blocked by the wing. After the long journey from the US to Amsterdam it is the anticipation of what’s ahead that brings my most favorite hour of flights! The plane has ascended way above the clouds as the sun begins its descent for the day. There is no other sunset the same as this experience. There is not another window shade open on the plane which makes me want to stand up and tell everybody…you are missing one of the greatest sights of our Creator that we can’t experience on the ground!

This trip I was blessed to have a nice man named Marcus from Sweden as a seatmate. When you are on the tarmac for 2 hours before the plane takes off, then a 3 hour wait for the plane to be changed out, followed by an 8 ½ hour flight you have time to chat. He endured my need to see the sunset as it was bright in his eyes, I’m sure he thought I was crazy, until he got a glimpse of the beauty of the heavens! 

Unknown to me, there was a photographer from Rwanda sitting in the aisle seat of the middle section. As I was closing my shade once the beauty was turning to night, I realized that the glare had been in his eyes as well. I apologized to both these men who had endured the hour-long time I took to draw near to my Heavenly Father, yet like the gentlemen they both seemed to be, they said no apology was needed.

Hours later when we landed in Kigali and Marcus had headed up the aisle to catch his next flight, Richard moved over into his seat, where he then shared that he was a professional photographer and wanted me to have a picture he took of me watching the sunset.  I was speechless when I saw the picture, not because I was in it but because he had given me a gift in capturing my most favorite place in the world to watch the sunset!