*Edit… quick post, crazy slow internet.
I can’t add any flair like pictures right now and personal emails are secondary to this blog right now.
Thanks.*
First and foremost… alive and well.
It took us over 96 hours to finally arrive at our destination in
Manzini,
Swaziland.
96 hours.
Because of either my incredible foresight or my rather nerdy nature, I started a timer on my watch when I passed through security at a couple minutes after 6 am at the
Columbus,
MS airport on Tuesday.
I met the team in
Atlanta and after a bajillion hugs and some tears (not from me, yet) we got in line to check in.
We were shortly turned away after being told that because we had no proof we were leaving
South Africa (i.e. plane tickets or visas to neighboring countries) we would not be allowed to go.
How did we respond?
With a split second of panic and then some prayer for air travel.
The amazing staff at AIM came back for us and got to work taking care of business.
We spent the night in
Gainesville at HQ and were able to get half of us on a flight Wednesday night and the other half Thursday night.
I was in the latter group and we, upon arriving in
Johannesburg,
South Africa via a layover in
London, met with the others and got in vans for the drive into
Swaziland.
It’s a good story filled with tons of laughs and struggles to sleep well on planes.
The January WR team was standing outside of our place in Manzini with a big banner.
It was the most amazing welcome party.
They have embraced us as their own and are sharing their laughs, stories and wisdom with us.
We are very blessed to have such support out in the field.
The next few days are for training before we embark on our first ministry experience alongside the January team.
Swazi is an incredible place and is ridden with natural beauty.
It’s actually the
Kingdom of
Swaziland and ranks as one of the few remaining absolute monarchies.
God is already here and working; we heard Him.
A group of us were walking from our meeting area to our sleeping area and noticed a noise coming from the other side of the creek. Imagine our joy to discover that we heard singing coming from the neighboring hill.
A group of potentially the poorest and most disease stricken people in the world were singing their hearts out and clapping and perhaps even dancing to their God on Sunday morning. They were busy loving Jesus. We simply stopped and listened to God working for a few minutes.
It’s the best thing that’s happened to me so far.
Thank you, everyone, for praying me this far and I’m asking for God’s help every day.
