Greetings from Jbay!

Hi everyone,
I know it’s been a while since I wrote, and I bet you are all wondering how we are doing. Well, we are doing great! We had a wonderful visit with Jim and Shelley in London and got to see lots and spent a wonderful day touring London. We did the bus tour, and the good thing with that is you can hop on and off and so we spent the day doing just that! We met them at 10am and we had the whole day together, it was fun! We finally crashed around 8pm as neither Jim nor Shelley had slept on the plane and were starting to get tired, but at 3 in the morning, they were wide awake!! After a few minutes of being awake at 3, Jim and Shelley went to call home to let everyone know they arrived safe and sound. Then around 3:30 we all went back to sleep and slept until 9:00am, had breakfast and then went around and saw some more of London. Around noon we headed back to the hotel as they had to make it to the train station for 1:30ish.

First, they helped Bob and I bring our bags to the train station (which was just down the road from our hotel) and we caught the Heathrow Express to the airport. We got to the airport around 2ish, which was early as our flight didn’t leave until 7pm!! When we got there we found out that we were only allowed 1 carry on each!! (Including purses!) As I had two carry on’s, we had to stuff everything into one! Let me tell you, that was not fun!! When we got out of security we saw lots of people with 2! (not sure why they say you are only allowed 1 and then let others get away with 2!) Oh, well at least we knew we did what was right, even if we had to throw away our one bag......Our flight left London at 7 at night and was a 10.5 hour flight!!! Mum and Dad, we thought of you as we got on the plane and found the TV screens on the seat in front of us and we had a lot of different things to choose from. They had so many movie choices!! I ended up watching Shrek 3 and I think Bob watched about 3 different movies. I slept after watching my movie. Bob on the other hand, couldn’t sleep at all – I felt bad as I drifted in and out of sleep. The flight was good, although long....we arrived at Johannesburg at 6:30am and went through customs there.

From there we had a 2 hour wait until our next plane that took us to Port Elizabeth. We arrived at Port Elizabeth around noon. We were met by Loes, she helps in the office here at the base and is from the Netherlands originally, and she has been here for the past 4 years and has committed to another 3 years. We got in her car and met another girl that is also one of the students, she’s from Brazil. Then we had to drive about an hour to get to Jeffreys Bay. Oh, you wouldn’t believe it.....it’s so beautiful!! The ocean is so crystal clear and blue and the sands are white. I guess Jeffreys Bay is where lots of people come to retire and so the one side of the town are huge big houses and then the other side is the poor end of the town. The school is located on the poor end and has a huge impact in this town. Apparently lots of people know about the school as they are trying to reach their own community.

We found out when we got here that there is another married couple on our team too, so that was good to hear. They are from Australia and we also found out that as married couples we would not be staying on the base. We are about a 10 minute walk from the base in the “House of the Nations” that YWAM has for people that are coming to visit from out of town. We got to our room and were pleasantly surprised, we have our own room with a bathroom and everything. The bathroom is kind of neat, cause when you first look at the room, it looks like there is no bathroom, and then when you open the closet, there it is :-)

Since we have been here we have met quite a lot of the staff and some students. Someone said that there are going to be 10 different nations represented in this school, so I think that will be awesome. We are starting to adjust. It’s different, but it’s also good. I know that God is watching out for us. We have been on some walks with different people just checking everything out. The school leader is Dan and he is really nice, he took us two married couples around this afternoon for a tour of the town, I can’t tell you how awesome it was! It now feels a lot smaller and safer now that he has showed us around, when we first got here, I was nervous and not sure what to think, but now, it is starting to feel good. Thank you all to everyone that has been praying...I can tell God is answering your prayers!

Well, I have written a novel, sorry....I guess once I start I just can’t stop! It just seems like everytime I come to blog I have so much to write about. Because we don’t have internet where we are staying, we won’t be on line as much as we have to go to an internet cafe. I think what I am going to start doing (which is what I did with this update) is just typing them up at home and then just copy and paste once I get there, that way I don’t waste too much time writing.
Well hope all is well with everyone, we would love to hear from anyone! You can leave a comment on my blog so I know you are reading or if you would rather, send us an email. We would love to keep in touch with what is happening at home.

If you think of us, please remember to pray for us, as school is starting this Sunday night and then classes start on Monday.