July 2009 Josh, Marie, Tom, Sergio and I recently took a week long trip. We spent the first half of the week doing some missionary work in Mozambique and then took the final half at the Kruger National Park. Mozambique We left Johannesburg on Friday morning, July 24th, around 6 a.m. We took Domingo with us who had to do some family business at his home close by the Kruger Park. We arrived at the border around 2:00 p.m. Normally, the border crossing into Mozambique is a real challenge. The South African side of the border is pretty controlled, but the Mozambique side is chaos. However, after telling Tom and Josh how bad the crossing would be, we went right through in around 30 minutes. We got to Maputo around 3 and went to Sergio�s house to visit for an hour or so. We then hooked up with the Troesters who are American missionaries in Maputo. We spent the weekend with them ministering with them in their church. On Saturday we started the day by meeting up with Sergio for an early morning run on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Sergio and Tom decided to take the pace up a bit and I spent the entire run trying to stay with them. After breakfast we went with the Troesters into the area in which they hold their services. We did evangelism with a number of young people from the church. Since the evangelism was in Portuguese and since the young people didn�t speak English real well, we mostly observed and piped in little suggestions where we could. This was the first time most of these young people had gone out like this and it was a real learning experience for them. Afterwards, Tom gave a short challenge to the youth with Sergio translating. On Sunday, Josh gave a message from 1 John 5 on the assurance of eternal life. Sergio again translated. We ran into some trouble getting to the church as we tried to get there on our own only to get lost. With much of the back roads being sand we were very worried we�d get stuck. Thankfully we didn�t and eventually got to the church. After Josh�s message, Sergio gave a quick overview of the 10 Questions system of studying a chapter of the Bible. On Monday, we departed for Xai-Xai (Shy-shy). We got a late start when we had trouble getting out of the driveway (there was another vehicle in the way and we had to eventually push it out and back in), but eventually got on the road around an hour late. The car was a bit crowded and Tom had to sit in the boot (the area behind the back seats). When we arrived at Xai-Xai five hours later; we did a quick tract drop and invited people to open air evangelism. Josh and I preached a couple of messages with Sergio translating into Tshangan. Sergio seemed more comfortable translating into Tshangan than into Portuguese and even gave his own message at the end. We ate supper and traveled back to our camp where we got a good night�s rest. On Tuesday we met up with Sergio and his family and headed back to Maputo. On the way we stopped at the beach to see some fantastic waves. However, Anita, Sergio�s youngest daughter, went into a convulsion and stopped breathing for around a minute. Thankfully, she is fine and we were able to continue our trip, albeit a bit shaken. We arrived back in Maputo and decided to head down town to get some fabrics. We arrived back at the Troesters around 7:00 p.m. and prepared for the vacation part of our trip. Kruger National Park We left around 5 a.m. for the border. The trip back to South Africa through the border is normally much less fretful than the one into Mozambique. This time was no exception and we were into South Africa before 7:00 a.m. We arrived at the park and signed in before 7:30 and were ready for our animal sightings. We had heard there were lions a few kilometers from the gate but we never found them. We did have a very exciting morning, however. We saw several things we�d not seen before or at least had not seen often. The highlights were two rhinos lying in the road two giraffes �necking.� We found out later that giraffes� �necking� is actually a fight. They swing their heads around and whack the other giraffe on the back. Neither animal is injured in this process. It was quite neat to see this. Around noon we got our first lion sighting. However, the lions were lying down and we didn�t get any good pictures. Thursday was one of the most remarkable days we�ve ever spent in the park. Marie and I were awakened by the roar of a lion outside the camp ground. We couldn�t leave until 6:00, but we got ready all the while continuing to listen to the lion. When we finally got out of the campsite we went looking for the lion. Around 7:00 we hit pay dirt�two male lions walking through the bush. We got to watch them come together and continue their roaring. We drove up the road and found a large number of cars parked along the road�usually a good sign. We asked one driver what they were looking at. �Leopard cubs playing in the tree,� was his response. We spent the next hour watching these cubs jump around the tree. We never saw the mother, but she was apparently not too far off. We continued up the road and pulled into a small water hole and found several cars parked. Josh was driving and as we pulled around the line of cars, Josh yelled, �Cheetah.� Frankly, I couldn�t believe it, but there it was standing around 10 yards from us posing for some fantastic pictures. Late in the afternoon we came upon two rhinos eating along the side of the road. We pulled up and took pictures until one of them decided to charge. We moved away pretty quickly. Sergio managed to get the whole thing on video and we�ve had a good time laughing at ourselves while watching the video. When we returned to camp we found elephants just outside the campsite and we watched the family playing for awhile. As we were preparing for bed Josh startled a �cat� that was by his cabin. After it ran up the tree we were able to spot it by the glow of its eyes. We didn�t know what it was but we took pictures with our flashes and found out that the animal was a Jennet. What a fantastic day. Friday was slow in comparison with Thursday. We again heard and found the roaring lions. The highlight of the day was a second leopard sighting. The leopard was lying pretty well concealed in a dry river bed. We eventually got a good view of her, but not too many pictures. Saturday, Josh, Tom, Sergio and I ran a half marathon inside the park. There were rangers with guns all around and (disappointedly) we didn�t see any wildlife while we were running. The most excitement we had was when Josh collapsed 500 yards from the finish line. He�d become dehydrated and both his legs locked up and down he went. Sergio and I assisted him to the finish which took us around 20 minutes. He did, however, get a large ovation from the crowd! Because of the delay from the race we couldn�t make it back to Johannesburg in time to return the rental so we decided to take our time going out of the park�good choice. In the three hours we were in the park we, for the third day in a row, saw each of the Big 5 (Rhino, lion, leopard, water buffalo and elephant). We got our best sighting of the week of lions walking along the river. It was a very enjoyable trip.
Preaching,
Xai-Xai,
Odds and Ends
