This month we logged lots of hours traveling. Fortunately most of the transportation was decent…at least the long-distance traveling. Of course we started out by flying from Bangkok, Thailand to Johannesburg, South Africa with a short stop in Kenya. We then got a bus to Nelspruit, SA and stayed there about a week. It took awhile to figure out transportation to Mozambique but we fi
nally were able to secure vans with trailers to take us. They were long trips, but fortunately not as long as they told us they would be. We stopped once at a missionary’s house and camped for the night by a lake, before waking up and enduring another day of van travel. The second day was the worst part because the roads were so bad…holes everywhere!
We got stopped at a check point place and the police tried to convince us that we had to pay a huge fine to use the roads. Fortunately, Iris came and picked us up from there and we were able to continue our journey. People have a tendency to try and weasel us “rich” Americans out of money!
While in Iris we traveled a couple times to evangelism. This meant cramming a bunch of people onto the back of a truck and enduring lots of bumpy roads and muscle pain (at least for me!). But it was cool because the Africans we were traveling with sang most of the way and kept us entertained!
The final mode of transportation we used this month was the Shopah, or however you spell it. It is like the public bus, except it’s a van and they squeeze as many people as possible into it when necessary. I preferred to sit in the back, cause most of the squeezing happened in the front. I am glad I don’t have to travel like that every day to work!
We found bus transportation back to South Africa and made it safely. It won’t be long, though, until we get to start the whole thing over again to our next ministry destination!
