Count Down to Africa

T minus 5 weeks until we leave for Maputo, Mozambique. The NCO team will be helping build a gym at a Nazarene school campus in Maputo. We had our team meeting in December at the home of Tim and Connie Sharrock. We filled out forms and turned in Passports and pictures to be sent off to Washington DC for our travel visas. We drew names for prayer partners and discussed our flight schedule. The travel to get to and from Africa will be an adventre in and of itself. We leave Mount Vernon First Church at 1:30 AM February 12. We fly from Columbus to DC, then on to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and finally Maputo at 1:35 PM local time on February 13. Total time in the air...19 hours and 5 minutes. Since we will get to go on safari at the end of the trip we will leave for home on February 28 from Johannesburg, South Africa and fly back to Ethiopia, then on to Rome, then DC and finally Columbus, arriving homeat 2:03 PM on March 1. Total return air time...23 hours and 43 minutes.

I recieved an email message from Dr. David Restrick on Sunday. He will be watching over our team in Maputo. He is the academic dean at Seminario Nazareno em Mozambigue (official language of Mozambique is Portuguese). He assured me we will have WIFI Internet connectivity while on campus where we will live and work. So we should all be able to stay in touch with friends and family on a regular basis during this trip.

Over the next few weeks all the team members should be getting started on malaria pills and packing. Connie reminded us all of the importance of good bug spray since the bugs are pretty bad in this part of Africa. Bug spray with 40% deet is about as important as sun block on this trip. we learned that the hard way in Belize a few years ago. Just ask Connie:-).