It was quite an eventful ride but we are finally here and becoming accustom to the 9-hour time difference.
Most of us only had about an hour of sleep on Tuesday Night before we left. What was the point of sleeping?  We had to be up by 2:00 am to be at the airport by 4:00 am, for a 6:00 departure.  The flight was pretty uneventful as far as Washington.  It seemed like we were all set to make a normal on-time departure until the announcement was made that there might be a delay in boarding due to severe weather in our flight path north-east of DC right.  We finally boarded about an hour late and seemed like we were on our way until we got out on the runway then we were put on hold for about 5 hours waiting for the weather to clear.  The captain was just deliberating about turning back to the terminal and delaying departure until Thursday morning when he suddenly got a five minute warning from the control tower that we were cleared for takeoff.  So that little episode turned this eighteen hour leg of the journey into a twenty-three hour flight.  We were too late into Johannesburg to catch the last connection to Durban so we slept at a hotel in Johannesburg and resuming our final leg on Friday morning.  Weary but partially rested from our four hour sleep in Johannesburg we finally arrived if our final destination at noon on Friday, forty-five hours after leaving LAX.

During our brief sleep over in Johannesburg, Robert and Nick connected with an Indian missionary pastor who was returning home the USA with his twenty-one year old daughter after attending a conference.  He has contacts in many for South Africa's neighboring countries and seemed interested in learning more about our AIDS education program.

Friday July 31, 2009 PM

On Friday afternoon after we got established in our accommodations we took drive around the Richards Bay harbor area and Robert and Nich took the bathing trunks and took a dip in the Indian Ocean.

We had a great meeting on Saturday with our team leaders and a group of pastors interested in helping us establish discipleship programs for the students that have been through our program or that want to get the AIDS education program started in their area.
We had two pastors visiting with us that have been working with the teams in Richards Bay and want to tak ethe Better Choice AIDS education back to their home countries of Swaziland and Mozambique.

We had a pleasent surprise from our team leaders about a variation that they have planned in out training activity this year.  I will tell you more about their plan in my next update.  Stay tuned.

Robert and nick played ball with the boys and Robert did some video interviews with the kids while I was finishing up some business with the pastors that attended our meeting. 

 

As I am sitting here finishing up this email I am listening to the rain pounding down outside.  It has been raining since 03:00 pm and we have been having thunder, lightining and pooring rain for about the last ten hours.  It doesn't sound like it will be letting up any time soon.