Wednesday, March 3, 2010:

Hello Africa!

After around 30 hours, we made it safely to Johannesburg, and were delighted to see my good friend, Pearl Kupe, who met us outside of customs with a ‘welcome’ balloon. I say that Pearl is my good friend, but this was actually the first time I had met her face to face. Pearl is best friends with Jana Lackey of Love Botswana which is one the the missions that Victory supports monthly. Pearl is a businesswoman in Johannesburg, originally from Botswana who lived for some time in the US and received her law degree from Scotland. She is also an ordained minister and preacher. She has been corresponding with us by email and phone as we prepared for this trip.

Pearl walked with us to our hotel and joined the team for dinner last night. She gave us some tips and pointers on culture and proprietary etiquette. We also discussed one of her friends, Synodia Dube whose husband pastors a church in Lesotho. We are going to try and connect with her.

I also received an email yesterday from Kgosi Dichaba (Papa T) whom I met last year when I was in Lesotho. Kgosi is the son-in-law of Bishop Michael Kolisang who was Rheinhard Bonnke’s interpreter for many years. I was invited to once again preach at both Sunday morning services at Fill the Gap Ministries, one of the largest churches in Lesotho. Please pray for God to help me deliver His word effectively and that I will say what He wants to be said. I will be preaching with an interpreter which is always challenging as Sesotho is their national language along with English.

We had a little minor problem today—Gaye Jacob and I missed our flight to Lesotho so the rest of the team went on without us, while we had to come about 5 hours later. It’s a long story of minor calamities, but the bottom line is we all didn’t get to the airport in plenty of time and they gave Gaye’s and my seat away to people who were flying standby. Not to worry—I am writing while on the flight now and all is well. Matthew will pick us up at the airport after they had a nice lunch with Ray and Sue Haakonsen. Oh well….Gaye and I had to suffer through a little shopping—the Jo’burg airport is like a huge mall.

Just let me say we made the best of a difficult situation!