This is a journal I wrote while I was on a week long mission trip in South Africa.
You'll read stories about my adventure to South Africa, interactions with the locals, the amazing food, and most importantly how God used that week to transform me, t...
Once Matt finished with the prayer, our team members began to say their goodbyes to our friends and family. I wrapped up Bob and Shelley in a big hug. They told me that they loved me and that they’ll be praying for me while I’m gone. As I watched them leave I felt tears welling up but I quickly received a jolt of encouragement as I kept repeating to myself,
“I can do this!”
The group then made our way to our rooms the women entered their room on the left of the hallway, the guys entered into their room that was across from the ladies room on the right. As the night began to wind down I began to prep for bed and then we noticed that we had a problem. There were three of us in the room and only two beds. Mike then looked at us and said,
“I guess I can make the first sacrifice on this trip for you two and sleep on the floor.”
As the night crept on I kept waking myself up with a dream of myself being left and having to hitch hike back home. Suffice to say, sleep was in very short supply for myself through the night. The next morning was a blur. We woke up at 4 am and began moving our bags to the lobby to be loaded into the shuttle that would take us to the airport. We arrived at the airport and began checking our bags, getting checked by TSA, and awaiting our plane to come in.
Our plane then landed and we began scanning our tickets with the attendants at the gate. Mike was ahead of me and when the attendant scanned his ticket, it didn’t scan correctly then she went to scan mine but it wouldn’t allow her to, which lead her to say,
“Donald?”
She then looked at me and said,
“Is your name Donald?”
I looked bewildered at her. And was about to answer when Mike doubled back and answered,
“Yes, that’s my middle name.”
I don’t know if it was my lack of sleep that was the culprit, but I began to chuckle under my breath,
“Heh. Heh. Donald...”
I was met with a sarcastic rich eye roll as we continued to down the jet way towards the plane.
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We then found our seats and began to settle in for our first flight. We took off and left Omaha at 6am and landed a few hours later in bright, sunny, and sandy Phoenix. We had a few hours for a layover that were mostly spent looking out the large glass arch way out into the vast sandy desert of Arizona. After an hour of waiting, we proceeded to line up at our gate and began boarding our next flight and departed for Los Angeles.
