Live from Beira

I'm here!!! And what a journey it was. God looked after us well inspite of bumpy flights and thunderstorms. My faith has grown ten fold already. The first flight to Dubai was great and I was amazed by the onboard facilites. We watched the take off on the seatback screens, taken from 2 cameras mounted on the nose and underneath of the plane. It was absolutely amazing, and really made that actual leaving quite exciting. The gin helped to settle the nerves, and the flight was really quite fun. However, the second two I prefer not to dwell on!! The highlight of the flight to joburg was the sunrise about 90mins after take off which was amazing - to see the sun above the clouds in such glorious red colours. I was reminded of what I had said to the children about us looking at the same sun and moon wherever we were, and I thought of them safely asleep at home.

We arrived at Beira at about 5.30 Beira time - we're 2 hours ahead of you. We were picked up by Pastor Bongo and Boniface. One slight panic was when they discovered the needles and syringes in my case and wanted to confiscate them. Boniface talked them around and convinced them I wasn't a druggie! We eventually got the passports back complete with visas, though it did take about an hour. I now have 3 stamps in my passport - very exciting!

We went to the base - the main centre, and met the staff and had a meal of rice and chicken then Simao and Boniface took us up to our hotel, now aptly renamed by us as "Fawlty Towers". Camping at New Wine seems like luxury now!! We also went to the shop to buy water. Once at the hotel it all seemed just a bit too much, so I decided bed was the best plan for me, so left Vic and Ju to it in their room and went to bed. I knew lots of folk were praying for me as I slept really well and was woken at 7.15am by the girls who were fully dressed and heading for breakfast!! Ooops!

This morning has been spent sorting out money, phone cards, skype etc, and I'm hoping that later we will get to see the boys. Just had lunch of spaghetti, rice and stew (think it was goat) which was actually very nice. Vicky and I braved a trip to the shop to buy drinks too which we are very proud of!

So - so far so good. Thank you for all the prayers and love drifting out to me. I'll try and blog again later to let you know what the rest of the day has held. xx