After 22 hours of travel, including one 15-hour flight, these are VERY happy smiles from 5 tired girls who are glad to be in South Africa!Our team of 7 included Lauren Mathis, Ashley Beatty, Kim Brown, BethAnn Waltermire, Stephen Gibson, and Mylon Albright - a great group!
Nearly all the kids at the mission speak both the native language (Zulu) and English. This girl taught us some words in Zulu. They were a lot of fun to be with - I think they enjoyed us too!
This is the auditorium on the mission grounds. Yes, it's extremely large - it seats 10,000 people!
We had a safari fun day that was absolutely unbelievable. We saw zebras, elephants, giraffes, lions, baboons, rhino, buffalo, warthogs, and a few other animals I didn't even recognize. It was a very exciting day! Yes, I took many pictures of all these animals including these zebras. That day was the first time I realized the mane of the zebra was also black and white striped - amazing!
We visited an AIDS hospital. It was very sad to see all these patients with AIDS, but it was also very incredible to hear their conversion stories and the many miracles that are taking place there. This mission AIDS hospital currently has 48 beds and they are preparing to expand to 3,000 beds. Despite this large increase, they will never be able to keep up with the demand. For every 3 people you see in South Africa, one of them has AIDS - that is an extremely high percentage.
We all loved South Africa and thoroughly enjoyed our trip. However, these words are such a welcome sight!Since my body is still on South African time (it's 3:30 in the morning there!), I'm off to bed!
7 comments:
This looks like so much fun...we'll be waiting to hear and see more!
Welcome back, Brenda!! Neat pics. of the mission. Glad you had a good trip and a safe return!!
Welcome Home! I am glad to see that you made it there and back safely. I love the picture of the zebra.
Glad to read some tales of your trip. I was shocked to see Ashley and Lauren! So glad they were able to go. Both of those girls attended the school in Dayton where Troy was the principal. In fact, Ashley is the one who took the photo that I use on the profile of my blog.
Looks like you had a great trip. I've always heard that South Africa is beautiful. I'm sure Aaron is glad to have you back.
Martha - I enjoyed having Ashley and Laruen on the trip very much. Ashley and I talked a lot about photography, but I didn't know she had taken that photo. That's neat.
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