HI EVERYONE! I’ve officially made it home from my trip to Africa. I wrote out blogs every week of Swazi, so I’m still going to post them all as if I were doing them on time. Thanks for reading!

#1

       Monday was our last full day in Johannesburg at Impact Africa. There was a little staff meeting in the morning, then we went to the mall for the last time. We had some quality time with the interns in the evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       Tuesday, we had a flawless travel day to debrief! We packed and cleaned stress free, then our driver Khuliso came to pick us up to drive us to Marloth Park for our debrief. We had a beautiful 6 hour drive to our Airbnb. My logistics girls found this Airbnb that was an actual safari in our backyard. In the evening we were first greeted by a wildebeest and bush babies. We cooked some dinner and got settled in!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       Wednesday morning we fed zebras, warthogs, and kudus, and got to see a giraffe wandering in our backyard. I took a walk with Elizabeth and Caitrin and we saw some elephants bathing at “Crocodile River.” We had team debriefs, then braaied for dinner. Raquel, Banks, and Caroline hopped on a call for us to share some testimonies about South Africa.

 

 

       Thursday, there were some crazy monkeys wanting bananas. I took another walk with everyone. That afternoon was our little adventure, which was four wheeling. Going into it, we were hoping we could call some Ubers to drive us there, but unfortunately there were no drivers available. I felt SO much peace about it knowing it was going to work out. AND IT DID! Our house keeper, Justice, walked us down to a safari transportation place and they said we could pay them $25 to drive us there and back. It was the nicest guy named Million and he was awesome. The quad adventure was really fun. When we were done, Million drove us to dinner! We ate some amazing food there, then drove home with Million again. Emma Claire made more of her famous banana bread, then we ended the night with watching Narnia. It was such a good day!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       Friday, we packed and got picked up to go to Swazi! On the way to Nsoko, we actually stopped by Manzini which was Wesley’s home earlier this year for his race. It’s funny because the Gap D boys are there right now, so I got to see Carter which was sweet! Eventually we got to our home in Nsoko with the girls from Gap D. Wow what a difference from Impact haha.

 

 

 

 

 

       Saturday we had orientation, then a full day to rest praise God. Same with Sunday; we just went to church.

 

 

 

 

       Debrief was really sweet and I’m so thankful everything logistically worked out perfectly. It felt pretty hard to slow down and actually process when we weren’t actually where we were going to be for the next month, but it was still fun. Now we’re in the bush. It’s going to be so, so good. I’m excited to see what God does in the not-so-comfortable living situation. We still are SO so blessed, but Impact was just so bougie lol. We start kids ministry at our care point this week. It’ll have to be a daily surrender and moment by moment type thing with putting in as much as we can. I know it’ll be so good though. I’m expectant for everything God is going to do in my squad and also in my heart. It’s crazy that we’re already here.

TIME IS GONNA FLY.