More Adventures

June 13
Oh today has been an adventure to say the least filled with a driver, currency, airports, water, and machines.

So the three of us that are in Manzini right now (Sarah, Burger, and I) made our trek to Joburg, SA to pick up the Encounters Team but it was not without a few hiccups. Don't worry we made it safe. If not I wouldn't be having internet currently. But so the driver, Hanson, came to pick us up but not in the sprinter like it should have been. We loaded up in his VW van to go into town to get the sprinter. And then it didn't have a trailer like it was supposed to. But we made it work. We then start our trek which can be anywhere from 4-6 hours drive depending on all the circumstances. And we are doing great and making great time. Until.....

So we got to the border of Swaziland where we become bumbling Americans who have are not quite sure exactly what to do...even though we do. But we were all so anxious about everything. So thanks to Hanson we get through the border just fine with no problems and we continue on our trek.

Then we stop at Alzu which is like a gas station, restaurant, store, and a place where animals hang out all in one. And we go in to buy snacks for us and water for the team until we realize that the money we had was not rand, which is the currency for SA. We had emalagane which is the Swaziland currency. Also to note, rand and emalagane both work in Swaziland and they are equal when exchanging in Swaziland. So we scrounged up enough rand to buy our snacks and figured we would exchange the emalagane for rand when we got to the airport. The other issue with that is we need enough money to pay for the lodging for tonight. So we call Matt to figure out what to do and we continue on our trek.

Sometime down the road, Hanson pulls over. And by the way we are basically in the middle of nowhere after getting off the main road and essentially going down a road with corn on either side. But he pulls over to find out that a hose got unhooked from the radiator. Thankfully, Burger learned enough stuff from his dad who is a mechanic to figure out how to make it connect again so we could continue.

We got to the lodging to get the keys since we knew it would be late before we all returned and the office would be closed. Thankfully we got that with no problem.

Then we went to the airport to pick everyone up. We find out that one flight got delayed by almost 2 hours which later turned into more like 4. One person missed there flight so we will pick them up tomorrow. The airport wouldn't exchange emalagane for rand so we had to make shift that by using a credit card to pull out enough cash. Thankfully that got taken care of because I was getting hungry by that point. We got 3 of the people and we took them upstairs in the airport for Nandos :D Yum! And I talked with them for quite a while as Sarah and Jesse waited for 2 more to come. They eventually joined us and had Nandos themselves. And so we all hung out and talked to wait for the next 3 until we found out that their flight was also delayed. So we, everyone except Sarah and Jesse, came back to the lodging. But before we could do that, I had to pay for parking. So we got everyone out of the airport and into the sprinter with all their bags and I went to go pay for parking. But the machine wouldn't take my money and I kept trying and trying. Then Hanson came over and he couldn't get it to work either. So about 15 minutes later after asking for help and then going back into the airport we finally paid for parking and were able to leave.

Everyone is now in their rooms and probably passed out after a long day of travel.

Pray for us as we head back to Manzini tomorrow. Pray for safe and smooth travels.