September 16, 2009

All the Way to Davos

2009 1526 page25 cap DIDN’T WANT TO ATTEND FUTURE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT DMITRY MEDVEDEV’S preinduction party in the same black corduroy slacks and rumpled blue-striped shirt I had worn for the past four days. But I didn’t seem to have any choice.

 
The last bag swung past me on the baggage carousel at Zurich Airport. It looked very much like the black garment bag I had checked in a few hours earlier in Moscow. But it wasn’t mine.
 
Everything seemed to be going wrong for my first trip to Davos for the 2008 World Economic Forum. As a journalist I had an unusually packed schedule for the weeklong event; foremost because the Kremlin had decided to dispatch its largest-ever delegation after all but ignoring the forum in previous years. Medvedev, the head of the delegation and a first deputy prime minister at the time, would make his international debut in a gambit that promised to determine his chances of becoming Russia’s next president.
 
But Medvedev’s biggest activities would fall during Sabbath hours. While he planned to throw a reception on Thursday evening and meet with select journalists for a roundtable ?on Friday, the real news would probably emerge from a formal Russian dinner on Friday night and a major Russia-themed plenary session and news conference on Saturday.
 
2009 1526 page25And now, to top it all off, I had no change of clothes.
 
“No, God, why now?” I prayed at the carousel. “I’m already stressed out enough about my first World Economic Forum and the fact that all the big Russian meetings are on Sabbath.”
 
I looked around the baggage claim area and saw the lone bag. It closely resembled mine, ?but it was made of hard plastic rather than soft canvas.
 
Praying silently, I went to the lost-and-found desk to fill out several forms and leave the name of my Davos hotel and my Russian cell phone number.
 
Heading toward customs and the exit, I passed the baggage claim area again and decided to take a careful look around. No people, no bags. Even the look-alike bag had disappeared.
I exited customs and approached the World Economic Forum counter to buy a bus ticket ?to Davos. As I counted out Swiss francs, my cell phone rang. It was the woman from the lost-?and-found desk, and she had good news. She had found my bag!
 
The woman smuggled me back to the baggage claim area through a network of dark corridors and back doors, and handed me the bag. She said she had just walked by the carousel and found it lying on the floor. She said some other passenger had probably taken my bag by mistake, realized their mistake, and returned to swap it for their own.
 
Needless to say, I thanked God all the way up the snow-covered Alps to Davos. God seemed to be saying, “Don’t worry about what will happen if you skip the Russia sessions to worship Me. I am in control of everything.”
 
And God was. The bustling week included Medvedev’s party, a chance to quiz Medvedev at the roundtable, breakfast and an interview with St. Petersburg’s governor, lunch with Ukraine’s prime minister, and, best of all, one of the most blessed Sabbaths of my life in my hotel room, spending quiet time with God.
 
Oh, and it turned out that the Russia-themed Saturday events were so big that forum organizers decided to videotape them. On Saturday night I went online and watched them. Then I filed my reports.
 
Solomon had it right: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Prov. 3:5, 6).*
 
All the way to Davos.
 
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*Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright ” 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 
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Andrew McChesney is a journalist in Russia.


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