The last few days and nights on the African Continent were
eventful. I spent a couple days
traveling and living with the “61” Girls.
We stayed at the lovely Meerhof Lodge (this time without the kidney
stones!)
If you’ve kept up
with the other blogs then you know that we dealt with a lot of “stuff” at
debrief. Living in community does that
to you! But it wasn’t all hard
work. It is always fun to reunite with
Squad Bwe enjoyed the added treat of spending time with C Squad too. It doesn’t take long under these conditions
to forge friendships.
I spent our last full day driving teams back and forth to
the Mall in a rented Toyota Corolla. I
mean….from about 8:45 in the morning
until after midnight. About 20 of us went to the African eating
experience known as “Carnivore” (a restaurant).
I ate Kudu sausage, chicken livers (not a big fan!), Giraffe, Zebra, Ostrich,
Beef, Pork ribs, Chicken wings and legs, Crocodile, and I don’t know what
else. The waiters bring the food out
skewered on iron swords and cut the meat at the table. It was pretty cool. I’m still picking my teeth.
Yesterday morning Squads A & B parted company with C
Squad (bound for Mozambique,
Botswana and Swaziland)
and began our journey to South East Asia. We endured a 13 hour flight from
Johannesburg, South Africa to Hong Kong (which from the Airplane windows looks
utterly astonishing- the biggest city I think I’ve ever seen and beautiful from
the air- sitting amidst green mountains and an island littered blue-green South
China Sea). We were an hour late
arriving in Hong Kong but thanks to a technical glitch
on our transfer flight to Bangkok,
we made it just in time to be escorted through the terminal to our connecting
flight. Finally we arrived in Bangkok
around noon. I think I am 13 hours ahead of Central
Standard time now. In just a few hours
it will be today here and yesterday back home!
Our ministry host here is amazing. Jimmy and Joy have done an incredible amount
of work preparing for us. We are safe
and comfortable. We have a day off
tomorrow to rest followed by a race/cultural experience on Saturday. We’ll have church Sunday morning and most of
the teams will begin overnight bus rides later that day to reach ministry
points all over the country. I plan to
go to Chiang Mai with two of our teams.
I’ll stay with them less than a week before taking a couple days off to
meet my Compassion Child next Friday. I
can’t wait to tell some stories about that.
