Wow….Overwhelming would be the best word I could use to describe our first day in Lesotho which I am finally writing about on the end of the second day. Everyone who knows me knows how cheerful and positive and idealistic I can be, but when I saw the condition of the property, my world tried to come crashing down. I was reeling for about 3 or 4 hours.

I felt like Moses at the bank of the Red Sea. There was no turning back. I had led all of these people here and I had a team moving in 4 weeks. The property looked pretty much terrible.

There were leaks in the roof, holes in the ceiling, there was water on the bathroom floor from an active, severe leak in one of the fixtures, the carpet was nasty, there was junk in the garage and the house smelled just awful. The master bedroom was smaller than I remembered, the circuits were overloaded. The landlord, bless his little, old heart, did not even have a key to the security gate or the front door. Joey’s skills came in very handy as he broke in to the property.

Ben Hayes said it was worse than he thought it would be. Gil White heroically spent the first night at the house and this morning presented us with 3 large centipedes that he found on the front porch.

All of this we faced without lunch that day, (the restaurant I had eaten at across from the bank in Ladybrand last September was closed—I had encouraged the team to wait for the long 5 hours drive for this delicious restarant in Ladybrand and it was closed—and Lebona did not know another good place) and after a 3 hour visit to our bank—can’t even give you the details on that—too tired, but I will let Amy know that all the money was successfully transferred.

The men did seem to have a burst of testosterone as they schemed, planned and corroborated at the extreme challenges we faced.

As we met for prayer that evening before bed, I encouraged the team while trying to encourage myself. Although we faced the Jordan with a seemingly impossible challenge in the amount of time and with the amount of money we had, they were like the priests who walked out into the Jordan and stood there until the water receded. I encouraged the team that we had come before theBDSteam to part the water so they could go across.

As we went around the room sharing our experiences of the day, we had 5 Basotho people who had spoken to different ones of our team members and voiced to each of them that the person would like to move to the US and would do so in an instant if they could only get there. These were all total strangers. Today at the bank, the teller asked if she could go home with me in my suitcase.

That night, we literally fell into bed at 10pm and slept like a rock (even though Teresa and I had no air conditioning—broken) until about 3am. Then we couldn’t sleep because of jet lag and excitement so we both got up.

We turned on VC.TV and watched on our computer as we both teared-up over the outpouring of love for Lesotho as voiced by Mark.

Family…….we love you and we sure felt your prayers today (much better).

More later….for now, we are in the middle of the Jordan doing what we can do, expecting God to part the waters so our team can cross over.