Thunder shook the ground. As the lighting flashed across the midnight sky, I could see the churning clouds and palm trees bending in the wind. The hot, humid air signaled the arrival of a tropical storm. Standing under the open night sky, outside a small village in Africa, I had nowhere to go. The day had started 18 hours earlier with a flight on a small Cessna airplane from one Mennonite mission in Congo to another. I had just attended a meeting of community development workers and was now returning home. The national airline offered weekly air service between a regional airport near our meeting place and the small city where my wife and I served as Mennonite Central Committee