We arrived safely back home on July 28, Saturday evening after more than 30 hours of travel time. Today was the first day back since our trip that we woke up and felt like we actually slept! We didn't have too much difficulty with the jet-lag when we arrived in South Africa, but it has been quite difficult returning to our normal sleep patterns back at home. For four consecutive nights after returning we were mostly all up at around 3am! We are now finally back to our normal schedule (for the most part). So I wanted to at least update you on the first portion of out trip.....
Thank you to our family and friends for all your prayer support while we were traveling and in Africa for 2 weeks. God used your prayers especially during our travels because Calvin did so well on each leg. I don't even remember him crying much at all during most of our time traveling. He slept quite well on each leg especially on the longer flights where Emirates provided him a bassinet. It was cute because he was a bit big so that his feet were dangling out of the bassinet. As for Juliet and Noah, they were simply in heaven. Emirates Airline which by the way was awesome provided each seat with a screen filled with movies, and games for all to enjoy. Juliet and Noah took advantage of that and watched countless movies while being served yummy food and snacks they usually don't get from me. Henry and I were able to also finally catch up on some movies as well.
When we finally arrived in Johannesburg (Jo-burg) after traveling for more than 30 hours, we then rented 3 cars and drove to White River which took us about 3-4 hours. It was a bit scary toward the end of our destination because we got lost and found ourselves in an unsafe area very late in the night. When one of the team-mates called George (founder of Hands @Work) and told him where we were, he told us to keep driving and not stop for no reason since we were in an unsafe area. Needless to say, I was scared. We drove for a bit, and thankfully we were able to find George's car blinking in the black night. It really was pitch black since it was 1am. I just said thank you God over and over again. When we arrived at the base of Hands @ Work, Carolyn (George's wife) was there to greet us and help us get settled in. As we unloaded close to 30 pieces of luggage, we realized that one of our suitcases were missing. We were under the impression that every luggage was accounted for, but somehow we missed it. It happened to be the one where I packed all of Calvin's diapers, clothes, and Noah's clothes. Thankfully I had some diapers left from our trip in our backpack, and we ended up using some of the donated clothes we brought for the orphans. I don't know what we would have done if we didn't have those clothes so thank you to all who donated =). We ended up having to use the donated clothes for the first week since our suitcase didn't arrive until a week later.
The very next day was Sunday so we rested by settling in in our rooms and going to an English speaking church nearby. George also took us to the grocery store, and then we came back and cooked dinner for ourselves since we had to fend for ourselves on Sundays. I have to confess that I took a longer nap than expected so I had no part in making the wonderful dinner the rest of the team help make.
More to come........also, our team photographer took over 1000 pics so I will select some to post on this site when available.
Comments (4)
Welcome back.... I wanna move to Cali.