I am posting from end to beginning so that when all the posts are on the blog, they will be in order from the beginning of the trip to the end. I may be adding some more pictures that my cousins took, once they send them to me.
This is just one example of the strange sights a person might see in Africa! This was taken in Namibia on our way back to South Africa.We stayed in Namibia for a day to do some shopping and offload the boxes of Bibles that were left.
Yours truly frying eggs for the next day's sandwiches. We would put a fried egg and some tinned meat on bread and toast the sandwiches. That was what we ate as we drove. They were pretty good!
Our little caravan getting ready to leave the lovely campground in Namibia, where we had waited several days on the way up for paperwork to be processed.
After a couple days of driving, we met Phil Geise in South Africa. Here the guys are loading all our suitcases into Phil's trailer (we had left all our hard suitcases with a friend in Pretoria, taking only our duffel bags on the Bible trip). Phil had picked up another American visitor, Daniel, who was also coming to visit the family that Geises work with. After we loaded up, we said our goodbyes to Oom Piet, Tanni Hester, and Kone. Then we set out for Mangusi, where the Geises live. After ten hours and many kilometers, we arrived safe and sound about eleven at night!
The Geises have a house on the same property as do the Blignauts, the missionary family they work with. The Blignauts have ten children. The Geises' house is not completely finished yet, so meals were eaten at the Blignauts' house. Besides all of us, there was a gentleman and a young family visiting from another mission the first few days, making a total of 28 people to cook for! The Blignauts love having visitors, so they didn't seem to mind all the people too much! The younger children loved playing Uno, which is what they are doing in this picture.
The boys helped hand-mix concrete and pour a sidewalk in front of the Geises' house, worked on puttying window panes, and helped prepare a platform to lift a water tank for the Geises. My cousin Candace and I were both not feeling well, but we did help paint linseed oil onto the wooden window frames to seal them from weather. We also enjoyed reading books to the little ones. The kids even convinced me to play a couple games of Uno! The day before we left them, the Blignauts and Geises took us to the beach. We had to make a couple stops on the way to add more water to the Blignauts' Land Cruiser. I was in Geises' vehicle behind them, and I just loved the faces peering out at us from the back of the Land Cruiser! The little boy on the right and the little girl on the left are the two youngest Blignaut children. The girl in the middle is one of their older sisters.
The Indian Ocean was beautiful! The picture doesn't do it justice. We even caught some glimpses of dolphins!
After playing around in the water and eating some lunch, we walked down the beach. Phil climbed up on this rock. See if you can find the two little boys beside the rock!
The sand dunes were the best part! Climbing up was a little hard, but running down was fun!
Walking back to where we had parked.
The next day we said more goodbyes and headed for Pretoria with Phil and his little girl. We gave ourselves an extra day just to be sure any unexpected problems wouldn't make us miss our flight. Thankfully, we had no problems and made good time. We stayed overnight with friends in Pretoria and had a few hours the next day for shopping before we went to the airport. We flew all night from Johannesburg to Zurich. As we neared Zurich, we saw mountains out the window! We figured they must be the Alps. The view was breathtaking!
Thank the Lord for good connections and safe flights! After we got through customs at JFK, my cousins were picked up to go home, and I boarded one last flight to Denver, arriving home about midnight. And that, my friends, is the end of the story for TAT III (The African Travelers, third time)! We were invited to come back by several people, so maybe someday there will be TAT IV! You never know!
