117th Year, 34th Issue Thursday, March 30, 2006 Sparta, North Carolina

Margaret Mitchell (45K) Margaret D. Mitchell is the author of “100 Passengers.”

100 Passengers - Mitchell’s book chronicles her spiritual journey

By LAURA DEAN
Staff

Margaret D. Mitchell, the daughter of Sparta residents Booker C. and Georgia DeBord, recently wrote a non-fiction book based on her workplace mission work. “100 Passengers” is slated to hit the stands in July.

As a former airline stewardess of 16 years, Mitchell encountered a large number of people from different countries with different spiritual beliefs than her own.

“God taught me that our workplaces are our mission fields,” Mitchell said. “He revealed to me that all Christians are in full-time ministry, just by nature of being Christian. He taught me that wherever He has called us, we are to walk in His love and in the fruits of the spirit and extend the grace and gospel of Jesus Christ. Since we spend the majority of our waking hours at work, what better place to reach people?

Mitchell continued, “So, ‘100 Passengers’ reveals how I stepped into that particular commandment of God called the Great Commission. It was a choice I made to overcome any blockages (fears) I had and move in the love of God to share His love with those around me at work.”

Mitchell noted that during her prayers, God revealed, “He wanted me to chronicle divine appointments that He would give to me each week.

What’s most interesting to me is that (during the two years of writing the manuscript) God revealed to me the dual meaning of the title, that it refers to passengers on airplanes and in airports as well as all people who pass through life.

“I carried my laptop with me on trips, and I would record them each morning in my hotel room after they occurred so that they would be fresh,” Mitchell continued. “But even while on the airplane, when they occurred, I jotted down notes on the back of my trip itinerary. This book is also about my own spiritual growth and development. Even after I had enough divine appointments to include in the book, God kept giving them to me until He called me out of the airline.”

“Each chapter of ‘100 Passengers’ is an account of God teaching me as I went,” Mitchell said. “Each chapter contains at least one divine encounter with another person whom God put in my path to challenge me to come up higher, either to teach me a lesson, to help me overcome an obstacle, to pray for me or to train me in a certain area. Each little story reveals a natural progression of spiritual growth and courage and how God showed up with whatever He knew that I needed along the way.

It’s all about the ongoing process of sanctification and journeying in the Great Commission today.

“God had me down on my knees in the aisles of those airplanes, at 35,000 feet and in front of planeloads of passengers, praying for their needs,” she said. “He had me praying with flight attendants during an in-flight emergency. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes of any company."

Get the rest of this article in this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

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