After 3 continents, 7 days, 3 flights, and 69 hours on buses my team finally arrived in Zomba, Malawi last night. It was an incredibly taxing week, but I am very excited about Malawi and our ministry.
We left Bucharest at noon last Saturday and caught a flight to Turkey. We landed in Istanbul right at sunset and hurried through customs and the ticket counter and had about 30 minutes to spare when we arrived at the gate. There we learned that our bus travel from Johannesburg to Malawi had fallen through. We prayed and then boarded the plane to Dubai.
We flew on Emirates airlines which is the nicest airline I’ve ever been on. We had all kinds of electronics and movies to keep me busy and a beef and lamb dinner that was one of the best I’ve had since I left the states. I had been praying for a window seat on this flight so I could see Turkey and Dubai and God smiled on me and I got one.
The flight took us over Turnkey, Iraq, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf before we landed in Dubai. I was able to see the lights of Baghdad over the horizon as we flew by. It was kind of surreal to see the places that I have seen wars being fought over on TV with my own eyes.
As we approached Dubai, I got to see the tallest building in the world and snapped a few pictures of it. Dubai, or at least the airport in the middle of the night was quite unlike what I was expecting. It was huge and beautiful and was full of people, shops, cars, and all kinds of things. It really felt more like a mall than a airport.
Leaving Dubai, I got to see the huge, straight, well lit roads that lead from the city into the desert. It was a crazy sight to see. We flew several hours and arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa around noon on Sunday morning. We waited in the airport for several hours until around sunset when we headed to a hostel to wait for the morning when we expected to board a bus to Malawi.
We stayed at a huge compound style hostel and we all had our own beds at night. We were told to be ready to go at 11 in the morning, so we had our bags packed and put in the courtyard. Then we waited, and waited and waited. Finally around 5 or so we were told we would stay another night because the bus needed to be inspected and we would be leaving around 2 the next day.
That night I was talking to Derek and said that while it was nice to have a few days to rest I would have rather just gotten straight on the bus. He replied that He was certain we stopped for a reason and that it was probably God’s doing because God knew what was coming next.
The next day, I walked to the mall with Jon and a few others and got a cheeseburger and Wifi, both of which are to be treasured here in Africa. We hurried to be back by 1 so we would have plenty of time to catch the bus.
Well 2 came and went and no sign of the bus. Around 3 it came and it was much smaller than I expected. It had exactly 65 seats, which is the number of people on our squad, they were arranged with 2 on one side of the isle and 3 on the other. The luggage compartment on the bus only went in about 2 feet on each side and we quickly realized that something would have to give. We loaded as many bags as we could and expected to be able to put the rest in the isle.
After carefully filling each compartment with bags, we still had over half left. So the bus left and headed back to the depot to pick up a trailer. It returned an hour later but we had to wait another so we wouldn’t get caught in traffic. At 6 on the dot we loaded the bus and left.
There are too many stores of the bus ride to share right now as I have about 5 minutes to type this blog. I will be able to consolidate my thoughts and type it up at the house this week and post it soon.
Here we are staying with an amazing family and working in small villages to help spread the word. The ministry is Harvesters International Ministries. Their goal is to start with evangelizing people in an area then give them all bibles and help disciple the people in the area and eventually teach and equip people in the area to lead the church for themselves. So far they have 5 or so churches in the southern region where we are at.
The people here are amazingly friendly and for the first time on the race the official language where I’m at is English. So I will be able to speak easily with the people here. The weather is not too hot and the landscape is beautiful. Life is good.
