Africa update

I had an informational meeting last night for my South Africa mission. Other than the news that we might not get to build, the meeting was great. A received little new information on the trip, like that we get to serve food to the kids through the Kids Against Hunger program, which will be awesome (You might remember me writing about that awhile back, here is the link to the Des Moines chapter http://www.kidsagainsthungerdsm.org/). It will be nice to see the program at its destination, since I have only been involved in the production part of it. Now I will see it doing the good I've only heard about. I still can't believe I get to do this, thanks to all of you who were able to donate to my trip, I hope I represent you well. On the build front, Dr. Blessman said the organization that was supposed to manufacture the pre-fab houses, backed out of the deal 3 weeks ago. He is scrambling to find a new manufacturer, and may have found one in a South Africa. He is supposed to know by Friday if our Abod houses are a go, or if we have to go to plan B. Plan B is to construct pre-fab houses that this same SA company all ready makes. Plan C is we do the optical mission and give glasses to kids. I'm not really comfortable with the optical mission, but you know what? My first trip to Mexico I was so uncomfortable, and now it is a part of my life. God will put in front of us the need he feels needs attention, and I will serve the people of SA in that need. I'm really getting excited about the trip, even though I'll a bit nervous as well. That is a looooong way from home. We discussed the flights last night and it appears it's DM to Atlanta, which is a couple of hours if I remember right from the time I flew there for work. Then, its off to Dakar, Senegal, which is 8 hours and 50 minutes away. There, we sit on the runway for 2 hours as the plane is inspected and refueled, we can't get off the plane. The last leg is to Johannesburg, and looks like it is another 9 hours. If ever there was a time to go crazy, this might be it. In summary, that is 20 hours of flight time, 2 hours of runway sitting, followed up by a 3 hour ride to the farm, and you know what, I can't wait. Where we will work is 1.5 hours from the farm, so we will have 3 hours of commuting each day, just like being back in Washington, DC. I lived there for 5 years and the drive from DC to Springfield, VA, where I actually lived, at 5:30 at night, wasn't much different. I'm guessing the scenery will be much better, not very likely you would see an elephant running down highway 95 on the outskirts of DC.