The return Flight

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May 14 Leaving Namibia and the Knightly’s
Dakotah and I both woke up before 8am then we got carried away in conversations. Trevor and Dakotah exchanged e-mail addresses and Charlene and I talked about how difficult it will be to present the things we learned and have it sink in with people who are not mission minded. Or to those who have certain views of missions work. With our brief time we have not experienced all of what it means to be a missionary but our exposure really shows that short term missionaries can be effective and make a difference but are very different than long term missionaries. In Namibia CHI, they have had many missionaries go home early because of difficult situations. When you are a long term missionary you have to come up with methods to cope and deal with the things and do your best to contribute to solutions. Charlene and Pete have done this. They still struggle with those things that they are waiting patiently for God to change but they have helped many people to hang in there and get things done right. We quickly loaded the car and we said good bye to the boys. Pete had left earlier to work. Charlene and Megan took us out to the airport. After having the picture shrink wrapped we walked up to the check-in desk and confidently said “we need our bags checked through to Vancouver Canada.” And they did it without looking at the baggage limit on our tickets. Charlene coached me on that. We told the lady that the airport people in Namibia are so much better to deal with than in Canada. Charlene and Megan stayed with us as long as possible. We bought some Biltong from the shop there. I had no Idea what blessings that God had in store by arranging our detour to Namibia. Charlene had an excuse to take a break after some really difficult times in ministry in Okahandja. And it was great for the kids as well to go in to some of those attractions on the highway instead of driving by.

We said goodbye and disappeared down the little hallway. Off we go on our South African Airlines Flight. This is a nice plane with lots of leg room and they played Just for Laughs (from Montreal, Canada ) on the overhead tv screens. It was kind of funny when they walked down the isles with insecticide sprays before we took off. They served a great meal then we arrived at Johannesburg for our 6 hour wait. I decided I would try and get the refund for my other tickets we didn’t use since we had so much time. We had to go outside of the transfer area and into South Africa to the ticket desk. All this to find out again that they can’t do the refund. Then back in through customs and security again. At least we wasted an hour. After lots of shopping and discovering that there are no interact machines inside the security area we had Sushi and French Fries for dinner then boarded our Virgin Airlines flight to Heathrow. 10.5 hours flight with no leg room but they have the little tvs in the back of the seats and you can play Tetris for 10 hours if you want. I had about four hours sleep - that’s pretty good. It made the wait time in Heathrow much more tolerable. I do now know that I like Johannesburg Airport much better than Heathrow. We bought Chocolate. And Kotah got herself a magic trick. We had to try and stay awake for the 10 hour AirCanada flight that took 2 hours on the clock. We cheated and had a little nap. It was really cool flying over Greenland and I saw Prince George from the plane. In that 10 hours AirCanada fed us one meal. So the seats were more comfortable but the service was lacking. Mom and Dad picked us up from the airport, the flight was right on time. We stopped off in Abbotsford to visit with Uncle Barry and Aunt Bernadette for dinner. Dakotah got her wish… When we got home at 10pm The power was out to the neighborhood. Too bad we were so tired and slept through it. Home at last.

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