I flew to Atlanta on Friday for a Tax and Finance Seminar that was sponsored for the 17th straight year by a missionary group that EFM is a member of. We get all sorts of good info there and I enjoy going, even though I'm not a CPA and some of the info is over my head and beyond what EFM needs. There are some things we need to incorporate.

Anyway, I started hearing on Friday night about a coming snowstorm. Mike was concerned enough that he called me that night about it and said that, the way things looked, I might get stuck down there.

The next morning I was sitting in one of the best of the sessions when Kathy called a little after 11:00. She had gotten a message from NorthWest Airlines that my flight (for 5:30 that afternoon) had been canceled (6 1/2 hours before it was due to take off!). When I went out to the hotel desk to see if I could check back into the hotel (I could), it was snowing.

However, it never got nearly as bad as people thought it would. They got an inch or less of snow; it laid on the grass and bushes, but only made the streets wet. From my layman's perspective, we could have flown out with no trouble.

Maybe there were some other factors, though. For one thing, they were expecting freezing temps (like in the 20's) by late afternoon or early evening (they didn't come till after midnight). For another, the airlines might have projected not having enough planes coming into Atlanta to give them equipment sufficient to handle the load. And, for as large as the airport is (it contends with Chicago for being the busiest in the nation), they only have 4-7 de-icing machines, according to reports that I heard.

So, instead of preaching about the sanctity of human life here in Bedford this morning, I was sitting in one of those winged aluminum tubes, sleeping as we flew over Indiana on our way to Detroit. I did get home in time to make it to the evening service, though.