We are here!

Greetings from South Africa!

We arrived at OR Tambo Int'l Airport in Johannesburg yesterday morning around 9am.  We departed the US from O'Hare on Monday evening at 9pm, had a 7 hour layover in Munich, Germany and then another 10.5 hour flight down to SA.  It was a long trip but we all survived no worse for the wear.  Stella was absolutely amazing.  She got pretty bored in Munich (as did Matt and I) so she was a little on edge, but on the flights she did great.  The takeoff and landing didn't seem to bother her ears at all.  Thankfully she's still small enough to fit in the baby bassinets on board, which were wonderful.  She slept really well in those, for 4-6 hours at a time.  And using the bassinets meant we got bulkhead seats, always a plus when you're traveling that far.

Beth and Rene' Blessman came to pick us up from the airport.  It was great to see friendly faces.  The drive to Shikwaru Game Farm took 2.5 hours.  We stopped for lunch at Steers, which is a fast food burger chain, where we randomly ran into Doc (Jim) & Dustin Blessman and Randy, who is here from Iowa for a month helping launch the fish farm micoenterprise.  They were out doing some shopping and they happened to stop at the same place we did at the same time two hours from home, go figure!  The drive was gorgeous.  Grassy pastureland, rolling hills, small mountains, interesting trees, cows and sheep.  Everything is green and alive.  The weather is hot (80-90 degrees F) during the day and cooler (60-70) at night, which is perfect.  It is sunny and breezy and couldn't be any better after leaving snow-covered Illinois.

Shikwaru is down a long dirt road off the tar road near the town of Mokopane.  It is out in the country, or "bush" as they say here.  It's quiet and beautiful.  Shikwaru Game Lodge is on one side and Shikwaru Estate, where we live, is on the other side.  We live in a two bedroom/two bath two story rondavel with a thatch roof, tile floors and lots of windows.  It's comfortable and cozy.  There are three other rondavels with a common building in the  middle with a small kitchen, office space and a shared laundry.  The Lethabo Sewing Center is in this area too.  Next door to us is the Bettinger's home, which is one-story.  Then Jim, Beth, Dusin and Rene' live in a house about 200 yards away from our little cluster of homes.  Between the Blessman home and our home is the main lodge, the Lodge of Dreams, and the short term mission team housing.  There is also a boma, which is a large fenced-in area with a fire pit.

We are working on unpacking, which is going well and is about half finished.  We need a few pieces of furniture like a couch, a nightstand, and some portable drawers for the bathroom, but everything else is provided.  The ministry has a really nice pack n play type bed for Stella to use, and she's napping in it right now.

Stella had her first solid food this morning, rice cereal!  She seemed to love it.  She slurped it right up and didn't even try to push it out of her mouth with her tongue.  It was so much fun to see her take this next big step!

We have met most of the other people living here on the estate.  Everyone is wonderful and very friendly and we look forward to getting to know them better.

view from our bedroom

Thank you all so much for your endless prayers for safe travels.  God gave us a wonderful trip and we are so grateful.  We felt so safe being lifted up in prayer for those days.  We would appreciate continued prayer as we jump into work here.  The first short term mission team of 2014 arrives tomorrow night, so we're hitting the ground running!