Thursday, March 5th 9:30pm

Wow!

What a day! My first day in Lesotho felt more like 3 days. At the end of the day, I am tired—but fulfilled and inspired.

We started our day when we awoke at 3:30am to get to the airport 2 hours early for our 6:25am international flight from Johannesburg, South Africa to Maseru, Lesotho. As we came to the end of our 1:10 hour flight, we could see the rugged mountains and mesas that began to emerge on the horizon. This looked a little like the parts of Arizona that have mountains. In fact, it reminded me quite a bit of Sedona, Arizona with the jutting rugged rock formations spiking up over rolling cornfields (as they call it—maize). The vegetation here is desert-like in some parts with cactus and yucca growing, although the cool, crisp, clean dryness of the air reminded me of Colorado.

As we disembarked down the tiny stairs of the plane, I could hardly believe I was finally in Lesotho. We caught a 30 minute ride into the capitol with a shuttle bus from the hotel where we will be staying on Friday and Saturday. We made our way down the 2 lane main road as we saw the beautiful people of Lesotho in their colorful head scarves, with blankets wrapped around their shoulders and torsos. Most of the women are wearing dresses, but a few of the younger ones have on pants or jeans. We saw the school children fresh and clean in their uniforms walking to school or waiting for a bus. The men in this area looked clean and dressed up with pants tucked in. One obvious thing I noticed was fields and fields of corn everywhere. This is the rainy season and they have had much rain according to the shuttle driver, so the land is green and fertile.

At the Lesotho airport customs desk, they had asked me the address of whom I was visiting and why I was here. I told them I did not know the address but that I was here to visit Bishop Michael Kolisang. As soon as I said his name, her face lit up and she wrote on the form “Fill the Gap Ministries”. Also, when I mentioned to the shuttle driver that I was here to visit Michael Kolisang, had he ever heard of him? The driver told me, “Oh yes, he is famous!” Then he proudly proceeded to tell me that he had gone to school with one of the Bishop’s sons.

I am so grateful for the connection with Bishop Kolisang that Dario Navac gave us. I made reservations at the Maseru Sun hotel restaurant where we will be having dinner with the Bishop, his wife, daughter and son-in-law on Friday evening. It is obvious that God has prepared the way for our time here in Lesotho.

I will have to finish telling you about the wonderful happenings of the first day later. Must sleep……

Love to all,
Jennifer