Safe and Sound – now on to India!

For those of you that haven’t heard our entire team (minus my team Kaleo) were robbed by gunpoint Tuesday night. My team was returning from Botswana and arrived about 5 mins after it happened.  Thankfully no one was hurt!  This is an email that our squad leader Rusty Jackson wrote to our parents.  I seriously have loved Africa so much and was really shocked all of this had happened, but God is good and everyone is safe.

 

We leave for India today which I am super pumped about!  Thank you to everyone for your prayers.

 

Much love,

Jen

 

 Rusty Jackson’s Letter:

First off I want to apologize to ya’ll
for just now getting in touch with you. The last couple days have been
hectic and stressful to say the least. And my TOP priority has been
getting the squad moved out of the hostel and into a location where the
folks can feel safe. Not to mention, some of us have been scrambling to
get new passports and visas for our upcoming trip to India. So thank
you very much for your patience in all this. I can’t even imagine the
worry ya’ll must have been going thru and are still going through.

I’m sure you have heard all sorts of
things about what happened two nights ago, so let me just give you the
facts. Tuesday afternoon the whole squad, minus Patrice’s team,
(Patrice, Nate, Angie, Andi and Jen) arrived at The Brown Sugar Hostel
in Johannesburg.

I realize it’s got a funny name, but the
hostel is not in a bad part of Jo’Burg plus we have stayed there three
different times while in Africa. So I felt safe about bringing the team
here. Anyway, around 8p that evening probably four, maybe five men came
into the hostel armed with pistols and told everyone to get on their
face in the lounge area. That’s where about 12 of us were and the rest
of the squad was being held in their dorm room.

Guns were pointed at people, threats were
made, but NO ONE was physically harmed. Praise the Lord! However, LOTS
of our stuff was taken: cash, cameras, computers, passports, phones,
clothes, IPOD’s, etc. I’d say the whole thing lasted about 20 minutes.
As soon as it was over, the first thing we did was to make sure
everyone was OK. Then we started taking an inventory of what was taken,
I called AIM, and then people began calling and canceling cards. So
anyway, things are just now settling down.

Just so you know, I got the squad at a
missionary base an hour away from Jo’Burg. Luckily, when we get to
India our team coaches Michael and Kathy Hindes will be there to help
us process thru everything. Believe me, we are taking this matter
seriously and we do understand the need for counseling at this time.

Now speaking of India, those that needed new
passports got them and the whole squad has its visas. So, we will fly
out in two groups this weekend. The first will leave Friday and the
next group Saturday.