I am sitting on the 48 seat propeller plane of Air Botswana next to Danita Estrella across the small aisle from Teresa Pinson. It is awesome! I barely have enough room to open my lap top on my lap as I type this. Haven’t taken off yet—I’ll let you know later how it goes. We are going from Johannesburg up to the Okavango Delta to Maun, Botswana, the home of Love Botswana Outreach Ministries founded by Jerry and Jana Lackey whom Victory supports monthly. Our morning in the Jo’burg airport has been interesting. This airport is HUGE and I mean HUGE. I am so grateful that a couple of guys from the hotel took our baggage all the way to the Air Botswana ticket counter early this morning (although we were up by 3:30am—thank-you jet lag!) We had too many bags and too much weight.

The ticket clerk got on the phone and we overheard her conversation: “They have a case full of music CDs. What do you want me to do?”

She proceeded to tell us that we would need to go to another area to have the case bubble-wrapped. I let her know that there was a foam interior that protected the CDs to which she responded, “They steal things at that air port in Maun. These CDs are perceived as something of value, so if you bubble-wrap them, they will be safer going through the ‘fragile’ line.”

"Awesome”, I thought. “Can we bubble wrap the other suitcases as well?”

After a $200 overweight charge to get the curriculum and Bibles to LBOM, we found our gate. We were dressed real spiffy because we were to be speaking this very day at a LBOM Women’s Conference.

1st delay: Fight delayed 1 hour (we texted Jana to let her know we would eat lunch while waiting)
During this delay as we were melting because of the heat and humidity, Teresa’s and my naturally curly hair was getting bigger and bigger.

2nd delay: New flight time came and went. Teresa put my hair up with bobby pins and we noticed that the beautiful red scarf that Barb and the ladies had prayed over was bleeding on to my white shirt. Not to worry, we found a way to hide the stained section.

3rd delay: After finally being transported by bus out to the plane on the runway, we sat on the tarmac for another 45 minutes. We questioned a wildlife photographer from Canada whom we met in the terminal about the delays. She shrugged and said, “This is Africa”.

We finally took off 2 hours and 35 minutes after our originally scheduled flight. As we settled in for the 2 hour flight, we were offered snacks in a basket which consisted of Chili Biltong (some kind of dried jerky) and Marula Stix (a type of dried fruit). The stewardess poured us Mango juice—very tasty! The lady behind us is extremely unhappy about the unprofessional nature of this international flight and has complained vociferously about the delays. Fortunately, we did see our luggage under the plane as we were boarding. It is not too bad now that the air-conditioning has kicked in.

So…not sure if we will make the conference. Thankfully, I believe Jana had a Plan B.

Meanwhile at home, I have found out through text that Victoria has strep throat and has been taken to the doctor and put on antibiotics. Please pray for Mark and the kids while I am gone.

More later….Love to all,

Jennifer