Tues 060226

Today the Our Redeemer group of 6 caught a flight from Johannesburg (South Africa, OR Tambo Airport) to Manzini (Eswatini, King Mswati III Airport). And hopefully, per plan anyway, visited Travel Siteki to buy groceries for the week. I know all is well with them because Pastor texted the group the following culinary item of interest around lunchtime...


So I can only imagine that they likely had a fine lunch....

Meanwhile this was my long flight day. I flew out of Newark around 9:25 last night and arrived in Johannesburg 6:30 this evening (which is 11:30AM Iowa time, as Iowa is 7 hours behind). Basically, it was a very long flight (15 hours) over a whole lot of ocean. It does make one appreciate the vastness of the oceans...I was sitting next to a very pleasant couple from Michigan who were traveling first to South Africa for a week of sight-seeing and then were planning to travel to Eswatini to visit their daughter who is currently in her 2nd year of serving in the Peace Corps in Mbabane (the capital of Eswatini). The daughter had previously served two years in the Peace Corps in rural Togo. She has a degree in public health and her role in the peace corps is very similar to the role of many of the organizations that we will be interacting with - providing basic medical care including cancer screening, HIV screening and treatment, etc.) She knew about Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki (where our group is touring tomorrow). It's a small world after all!

We were served a nice dinner soon after we left Newark, and then breakfast shortly before landing in Johannesburg. I'm not sure why breakfast, since it was 6:30pm local time. Maybe they figure that our bodies are more thinking it's breakfast time after what they perceived to be a long night, so they will just play along with that and let our bodies figure out that it really isn't morning AFTER we leave the plane....I don't know...

Not a lot to take a pictures of during the flight since we were over ocean and it was dark, but this is coming into Johannesburg

It looks like pretty much any other city from that height, except the cars were all driving on the left. Now some would say this next picture is blurry, but I kind of like it anyway. Think of it as the Art Deco version of Johannesburg.

We were pretty much the only plane pulling into Johannesburg right then, so the lines at Immigration were not long (they had many agents working). Between Immigration and baggage pick up, I passed by this decorative elephant.
We were the only baggage claim in operation, so again, that was pretty easy to figure out.  Anita's directions on how to get to the hotel shuttle were great, so I had no problem with that either. Soon I was at the Protea Hotel, where I felt right at home with the large picture of an airplane above the bed (and various other airplane related decor throughout the room...

The bed DID look inviting after attempting to sleep sitting up for 15 hours. But first I thought I would take a shower, relax, maybe have a snack, drink some water.... (All well and good except for the splash of water into my face when I opened the water bottle. Yes there is a change in pressure even within the cabin of the plane...)

As the Our Redeemer group starts their interaction with the local groups tomorrow (all 6 members from Our Redeemer touring Good Shepherd Hospital in the morning, then splitting into groups to go with either the Home Based Palliative Care nurses or with Possible Dreams International), take a moment to pray for the encounters they will have starting tomorrow and throughout our time here. Pray that we will be able to reflect the love of Christ to all we encounter, that the body of Christ would be built up, that we would see each other not as foreigners and strangers, but as fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God (or as those whom God loves and desires to bring into His kingdom). 

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.  In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

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