Day 3 - July 17 - Saturday

Spent most of the morning/afternoon on a bus travelling from Johannesburg, South Africa to Ezulwini, Swaziland. We checked in at the Lugogo Sun (our permanent residence until we leave), had a brief orientation, then a few of us walked to a local market for a few minutes before heading back to dinner. The Lugogo is pretty much like any hotel at home, but with a more awesome pool. (http://www.go2africa.com/swaziland/ezulwini-valley/hotels/lugogo-sun) As a matter of fact, a lot of South Africa and Swaziland looks like home - except for little parts of it that remind me of the Wild Animal Park. Tomorrow we go to church at Project Canaan and take a tour of it and it facilities.

Days 1-2 - July 15-16th - Thurday-Friday

Went on two plane rides from 8AM on Thursday to 9AM on Friday, going by California time. Sat by someone I knew for the first (five-hour) flight, then next to someone I didn't for the second (twenty-hour) flight. Got to know her pretty well during that time - Jocelyn is a nurse who came from the Philippines when she was 15, and she is a part of the Heart for Africa team as well. Thankfully the longer flight had a great movie selection, so I spent my total twenty five hours watching three movies,reading Great Expectations, sleeping (barely), and listening to the plane's awesome classical music. We checked in at the City Lodge hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa. It's a REALLY nice hotel... check out their link. http://www.citylodge-joburg.co.za/Rooms.aspx
Tomorrow we bus over to Swaziland!

Got home yesterday morning...

... and I have tons of photos and stories to share with everybody!!! I'm sad to be back home, but it is nice to be sleeping in my own bed again... so far as the jet lag allows, that is. Woke up at 3:00 this morning. Good news is, I slept in until noon Swazi time! Oh well. Since I'm up, I figured I might as well start to share my adventures with you! Here's the way this is going to work - I'm going to make a new post for each day of my trip; I journaled every night, so I'll simply type up what I wrote in there for all of you. Then, after I've posted for every day, I'm going to post random stuff about the people that I met there, other stories that I didn't journal about, all the awesome answers to prayer that we had while there, etc. in no particular order. And at some point I'm going to sift through my 2,410 photos and find ones worth sticking up here for all of you to see. :) Enjoy!

MY GOAL HAS BEEN MET!!!

Thanks to my amazing donor and friend Craig Baldon, the last of the $3,850 that I need to complete my funding deadline has been filled!!! Thank you God! It's official... I'm on my way to Swaziland! :D Thank you to all of my wonderful donors! I couldn't have done it without you!

My Trip Itinerary...

Click picture to enlarge....

What will I be doing on my trip?

Finally, the answer to the question you've all been asking! I will be flying to Swaziland with about 300 other participants. We will be broken into groups of about 20 each, and each group will be assigned to a different Swazi church. Each day we will leave the hotel and drive to "our" church to put on a VBS for the orphaned street kids in that area. This is something Heart for Africa has never done before... in previous years, the teams have simply helped out at Christian children's homes in Swaziland. However, the homes aren't big enough to reach out to all of the orphans there, so this year the organization is trying to involve local churches. Representatives have already scouted out churches and discussed reaching out to the street orphans with them, but the pastors are having a hard enough time feeding their own children that they can't even imagine helping all the orphans in their community. That's why Heart for Africa is making this trip - to show the churches there how easy it can be to put on a VBS for the kids, and hopefully begin helping them see a way toward helping these kids long term. At the end of the week, all of the kids and us volunteers will be packed onto buses and taken to a large stadium for "Litsemba Day" ("litsemba" means "hope" in SiSwati), an event of worship, fun, and a sharing of the Gospel message. This, in a very large nutshell, is what I will be doing! The trip is from July 15-25; the first and last day will be spent in flight to and from Africa, and another day will be spent visiting a game preserve and a local marketplace. The rest of the days will be spent as I wrote above. :)

Keep an eye on my progress here!

https://www.heartforafrica.org/trips/FundRaising.aspx?Profile=12

On this page you can see how much money has been raised and how much I need to raise in total. On the left is a link to my donors, where you can see your donation listed among the others I have received. :)