Wow! What a journey! I've dubbed a name for the traveling to North Africa - a comedy of errors. One thing after the other happened. We missed our flight out of JFK to Africa. So we were booked on the next flight - 24 hours later. Even in what seems to be bad circumstances, God was good. We were able to stay in Manhattan at a Pastor friend's church - WHAT A BLESSING! We were able to see some of the city and he spoke with us about really studying scripture - eating the meat and not just drinking the milk.
We made it in plenty of time to make our flight to Africa, and it was delayed. We were supposed to leave around 8:20pm. Apparently they combined a couple of flights and we finally took off around 4am or 4:30am. It's kinda crazy on those international flights. The flight crew was French and they speak to you in French and then will switch to English if you don't understand. All those years in French class are definitely paying off!
We landed in Africa around 3pm. We got through the passport stuff just fine and went to baggage claim, only to find out our baggage was not there. We had to go to the counter and describe our bags and stuff. I learned my first lesson in culture: there are no lines. You just push your way to the front and whoever is there goes first. Finally we meet the person who is supposed to travel with us up the city we will be staying in - he had been waiting 2 days! We got on one train, switched trains, then arrived in the city. Total train time: 7 hours. Needless to say, we were exhausted. I honestly think it was better NOT having our luggage on those trains. God was watching out for us - it would have been very hard to handle all that luggage up and down the aisles, on and off, and all that kind of stuff.
We found out where we were all staying, got to take a shower AMEN and slept for about an hour. It was very interesting when we went shopping for clothes and toiletries to last until we got our luggage. It was kinda like a market in Peru. After dinner we had to go back out for somethings we forgot. There were many more people out and about at night than during the day. One thing I saw while we were out shopping was quite interesting. The call to prayer sounds (you can't help but hear it) but no one stops to pray. I expected everyone to stop what they were doing and pray, but that is not the case. From what I've seen so far, there are so many groups of people and everyone does it a little different. For the most part all the women have head coverings, but not all. Some men wear the long robes, but not most. I'm not sure what I expected, but I don't think this is it.
So Praise the Lord, He is still in the business of miracles! Honestly, it's a miracle I'm here: from the health stuff, to the travel comedy of errors. Plus, He knows better than we do and what we need. It was very nice not having massive amounts of luggage on the train. I'm praying God will give me a great love for the people, and allow us to speak boldly for Him. Keep on praying!
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