A week ago (in Mozambican time), I was still sitting on a 14-hour plane ride from Atlanta to Johannesburg, South Africa.
A week ago, I was not even 24 hours into this thing called the World Race.
It’s crazy how much can happen in a week.
As much as I want to be able to share with you all these crazy awesome God stories that have happened, most of the past week can be broken down into 1. Travel time, and 2. Down time. Our hosts have been very good about giving us a few days to recover from our travels and prepare for this upcoming week.
So, I just wanted to give you a quick rundown of how this first week on the World Race has gone!
We spent a total of about 48 hours traveling from Atlanta, Georgia to Gorongosa, Mozambique. Our plane ride to Johannesburg was awesome (we had little tvs in front of us and could watch movies!). I did not sleep much, but it was still really neat to fly over the ocean and Africa!
After that, we met up with our drivers at the airport and drove about 5-6 hours to a hostel, where we slept for about 3 hours and then got up early to get to the South African/Mozambican border. We drove another hour after that to Maputo, the capitol of Mozambique, where one of our teams’ ministry hosts welcomed us graciously to rest and recover for a few hours.
After that, my team and another team caught a sleeper bus (that’s right… our “seats” were BEDS!) to make the long trek from Maputo to Beira. The bus broke down 2 minutes into the drive, we sat for 3 hours, and then we had about an 18 hour drive to Beira. Once in Beira, we met up with our ministry host, bought supplies for the month, and drove 4 hours to Gorongosa.
Needless to say, it was a long, long journey.
The past few days have been a huge blessing because we have been able to catch up on rest and get to know our hosts! They are incredibly godly people who have already taught me so much just through our conversations. They believe in the power of prayer and hearing from God, which are two things I so want to grow in! One morning, Jaco sensed God telling him to anoint us with oil. So, he individually poured a cup of oil over each one of our heads, and prayed over us. It was so encouraging and so beautiful.
Yesterday, we got to visit an African church service. It was very different than what I am used to (and according to our hosts, a little different than the norm here anyway). Tomorrow, we will be going into the bush to visit one of the churches and do house visits and church services throughout the rest of the week until Sunday. I will be sure to update my blog after this week! Please keep my team in your prayers, as this next week will probably be quite a culture shock.
