Wednesday, December 1, 2010

After arriving in the Jo’burg airport, I experienced a few firsts: Spent an hour renting 2 vans from Thrifty (they wouldn’t take my SA bank account debit card, they wouldn’t take an AmericanBDScheck, and they wouldn’t take dollars or Rand. So thankfullly, I had my Victory Church credit card (Thanks, Victory!! We’ll work out the details later!), but then my Victory card was declined for the 2nd van, so I used my personal credit card (Thanks, Mark Crow!! We’ll work out the details later!)

We loaded up 30 bags plus 10 people and their purses/backpacks into the vans and Chase Shadid and Joey Chappell led us on the wrong side of the road (right on a major highway) to our hotel—a different one than we’ve ever been to, but very nice.

Pastor Lebona from CRC Church in Maseru was here to eat dinner with us and he will be guiding us back on the 4-5 hour trek across the border and into Maseru tomorrow. We will meet for breakfast at 6:30 am (which is in about 2 hours), and try to hit the road by 8am.

We plan to stop for lunch in Ladybrand while Teresa and I do someBDSbanking and get our dollars exchanged for Rand and get her added to the bank account.

Lebona said the border was so congested yesterday that he had to travel to another small town border post to get through quickly. Please pray for favor. We want to get through as quickly and easily as possible with no major questions about why we have so much luggage. It would be wonderful if they didn’t have to search through all 30 pieces of luggage.

Ironically, if we do get through without being searched, this will demonstrate the problem at the border with human beings being trafficked across there without effective check points. We could easily be hiding people under our luggage in the backs of our vans. Of course we ‘re not, (unless Your’s Truly falls asleep because of jet lag), but it will be interesting to see how we are treated. From a personal perspective, I hope they don’t search the vans, but from a trafficking perspective, I wish they would.

Well, thanks for praying, Church Family! I love you all and we feel your support. I’ll try to update you this evening—that will be tomorrow for you!