Arrival in South Africa - Pretoria

After more than 24 hours of travel, we've arrived in Pretoria South Africa where we are staying with a local pastor and his family. His wife is in Brazil leading a team of 10 missionaries. Stephanie Brockett was on our flight to DC, we snapped a few pictures and wished her a great trip as she is heading to Europe for the next two weeks.
Our flight was pretty good. They have personal entertainment centers on the seat in front of you that offer games, movies. music, TV shows...etc. They even have these sweet Nintendo type controllers. Very nice. it was a total of 15.5 hours from DC to Johannesburg, so you can imagine there were a couple movies watched and many games played. I particularly liked the logic games, which made me feel good about sitting down for more than 15 hours. They made my brain feel good at least, the hind end was a little sore.
We narrowly missed an opportunity to exchange our direct flight to Joburg, for a roundabout...England to Joburg. The payoff was either 400$ or a free round trip ticket on South African Airways. Dangit. Considering we have an overnight in Joburg, it might have been nice to re-route through England in exchange for another $2500.00 ticket. What do you think?
Apparently Joburg is a dangerous place. There are lots of muggings, carjackings, and Willie, the pastor, his house looks bombproof. His neighbor has metal fencing that resembles hundreds of vertical SHARP spears, along with 5 electric lines, never mind the razor wire. We are not in the ghetto either. Willies house has steel bars over ever window, all doors and screens are locked separately - add steel bars too. His place has been broken into 3 times in the last year.
Willie and family speak English and Afrikaans, a derivative of Dutch and German that has been spoken here is South Africa for the past 300 years.
Started reading John Eldridge's book "Wild at Heart", midway through chapter two...a very good book so far! No, I haven't read it yet, despite it being quite old. It has great things to say as to the way we were designed as men and the passions of men's hearts. (He even mentions women's hearts too)
There is still a great sense of expectancy as we head to Malawi tomorrow. Once there we embark on an 8 hour van ride to Mzuzu where we will be getting dirty with building and working in some schools.
Please continue to pray for us as we travel, also that we may be changed!
Dankie - Afrikaans for Thank You

Malawi - ready to roll

All packed and ready to roll. We're staying at Jen's house, getting up plenty early in the morning, and flying for an entire day.

PDX to Washington DC = 4:45
DC to Johannesburg = 15:15
Jburg - Malawi = 3:00

Sounds fun!

My brother Ben helped me pack up some gear early on and decided he wanted to take the trip with me!


Try to post from Malawi.
Keep Prayin'
J

Big Wave Surfing

Though surfing big waves is not my passion. I deeply respect guys who charge, especially considering the punishment they receive when the don't make it.

Fireworks

After a little prodding from Ian, we met in Gresham and left for The Dalles. Actually across the river from The Dalles. We went to buy fireworks from the Indians. You know, the kind that you don't find here in Oregon, Boregon when it comes to fireworks. No, we are not in high school anymore, but can't men get into some fireworkage? I certainly think so.

Made the drive, rounded up the necessities..



Not enough money.

Back to The Dalles to withdraw more, +$2.50 service fee. ah

Now back to the reservation! At one point I busted out the line "What kind of stuff do you have under the counter". This brought back memories!!!

The drive back is the weird part of the story. Everything going great, we get back on 84 and head for Portland. We'll Ian never bothered to check the gas. We're on E...actually, well below E, and apparenlty we had been for some time. 40 miles from the nearest gas station, what to do? After about 30 minutes at 60 mph (the speed at which we thought we would get the best mileage) we pulled into Multnomah Falls and begged several people for gas. None had any! We got back onto 84.

Then we see the sign for Corbett, low and behold, there is a gas station in Corbett, albeit 1 1/2 miles straight uphill. So off we go in search of gas for a truck that has gone way too far already. Little did we know the gas station was already closed. It was actually a convenience store with a half pump in the front by the porch.

Decided to ask some locals. Ran into a fire chief who was mowing his lawn with his last tank of gas....no dice there either...

Enter Steve.

Steve pulls up on his cherry red Titan motorcycle. Very nice! He is a rock sold believer, works 50 yards from Ian, and is excited about cruising to lunch with us in the upcoming weeks! Steve calls his girlfriend, her cousin jumps on his Harley with a gallon of gas in his side bag, rolls over to us 20 minutes later, tops us off (not really) with this gallon, and sends us on our way!

Steve is my man of the week.

Despite the trip taking 5 hours with no food. We realize the trip was a total encouragement to us and Steve and a confirmation that Braddah J.C. is large and in charge.

I'm amazed at God's provision and the Body of Christ.