The Journey

I am quickly writing my first Africa trip post in my spiral blog.....a spiral notebook with a real ball point pen. This is how people used to blog before technology made pens and paper seem like a lot of work. My handwriting has clearly suffered from lack of practice. We are sitting on a little prop plane.

Yes, that's right.....a prop plane that is very similar to the one Charles told me we would not have to ride on. Very interesting that we missed our original flight and are now on what I had dreaded flying on. I think sometimes God just chuckles at the way we think we have everything planned and organized.

We think it is Tuesday afternoon, but not being sure feels very strange. We have felt strange the whole way, fish out of water in so many ways. I guess that is what it's like when you travel the world....different languages, customs, food, conveniences or lack of. It is now 28 hours into the journey and we are in Johannesburg, South Africa, wondering what to do. Our flight from London was delayed because a little engine at the back of the plane was not working. The pilot assured us that this engine was not in any way involved in flying the airplane, it just pumped air into the cabin while idling on the ground. It also had something to do with getting the plane to the runway. Once the plane's jet engines were on, this little engine turned off. After an hour waiting in a very stuffy airplane cabin, they told us it was an easy fix....a breaker had blown. We were now on our way, but we were not going to make our connecting flight to Maputo once we arrived in Jo-burg.

We had just spent about 5 hours running (literally runnnning) around London with friends of the Johnsons, the pastor of William Cary Baptist Church (which really was William Cary's church before he left to begin the modern day mission movement...how cool is that!)  and his wife. Very fun and joyful people and they invited us to come stay with them if we ever came back this way. We made fast friends with them while we tried to see some sights. Her Majesty was out of town for tea, so we just had some fish and  chips together before heading back to the airport.  We rode the Tube (London Subway) and I listened to the Headphones song while we sped underneath modern day London. It was all very surreal and went by too fast for my brain to process much of it.  

So after a couple of hours of trying to get the prop plane out on the runway....sound familiar?....we finally were on the way to Maputo, where yes, we had already missed our connecting flight to Quelimane. We would have to wait there over night until the next flight, which was in the morning. The airline paid our expenses and put us in a very nice hotel in Maputo overnight. It was wonderful to have a shower and sleep horizontally, in a bed even, before we went to greet the Dinas. A missionary there named Steve gave us a ride to and from the airport. It's a cool city, right on a water front, and the hotel was really nice.

We are almost there and even though it's been 48+ hours, we feel like the journey has not even started yet.

David Johnson told us their verse they have clung to  lately and for this trip:

Psalm 30:11-12 

  You turned my wailing into dancing; 

       you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

 that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. 

       O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever.

I have a 7 page spiral blog post coming up just about today, but I'll have to type it later. I am hogging the computer now and need to share. So hopefully it will be up tomorrow.