Trip to South Africa

Early tommorrow morning I fly to South Africa for 10 days. I am traveling with 12 others - all of the local leaders of Colorado schools save 2 moms, one new staff, and two students who are planning to STINT a year from now.

I will leave home somewhere around 5:30 am to catch a bus to DIA in order to check-in around 6:30. So when boys awake I will be gone. Our first flight leaves Denver around 8:30 am and we have a 2 hour lay-over in Dulles. Then we fly to Johannesburg for 15+ hours. Oh joy!

The first day after we arrive, we will host a Christmas party for some orphans. In the mroning we will buy gifts for 80 or so kids whose parents have died of the AIDs epidemic. They don't even live in an orphanage just in tin shacks on their own. This lady runs a development center for them where she feeds them, clothes them and basically shares the love of Jesus. (The pic is of our project last summer while they were at the development center. Two of the folks traveling with me - Bekah and Amanda - are in the pic.)

We will try get on the Unviersity of Pretoria campus but school's on a holiday and my contact is out of the country. He was supposed to set up a tour for us. Just hoping he did because I can't reach him to confirm it. We have a party planned for some students one night too. Later on our trip we will meet with some of our South African leadership to formalize a partnership. We plan to send a project this summer and teams until the work is done.

While we are not going as tourists. We also will take some time to do some cool stuff like go on a safari and see Soweto.

Should be a memorable trip. My mother-in-law, Carolyn, is coming out to help Robin for part of the time I am gone. If they stay busy the boys may not even notice I am gone.