South Africa – 6 (Journal Day 1)

Sunday, August 16, 2009 We had a wonderful time of praise and worship at my home church this morning, Second Baptist. We went home after church for a quick lunch and to grab our suitcases and head to the big ATL. My youngest son Jonathan and his wife Erin drove us to the airport this afternoon. He is such a good son! Our flight left Atlanta, Georgia, USA, headed for Johannesburg, South Africa at 8:10 p.m. It was a non-stop flight and I praise God for that because if it stopped…we would have been over the Atlantic Ocean! The flight was long, long, long – 17 hours long. Our seats were toward the back of the plane in the very middle with a 3-seater section. I sat in the middle with my sweet man on my left and a very tall young man named Ty on my right. Ty was headed to South Africa as part of his doctoral dissertation work. He was from Washington state. His work sounded very heady and concerned proxy government negotiating…I told him we were going to sing and share about Jesus, and thought to myself that God would do all the negotiating by his Holy Spirit! Amen to that. We slept some on the long flight and that was great. Leaving at night also helped, as did the Ambien I took about 2:00 a.m. Thank you, Dr. Heaton! This was my first international flight, and I was pleased to discover that everyone had a little screen on the back of the seat right in front of them. You could choose from dozens of movies, TV shows, all types of music, and even a “flight-tracker” to keep up with the progress of the flight (which was basically a little plane icon over the OCEAN). I did not want to see that – but of course, my husband did… I watched several episodes of “24.” Thank you Jack Bauer for making me feel safe, secure, and proud to be an American. All in all, I was so blessed and pleased with the flight and my lack of a claustrophic fit of fear. I truly felt the prayers being lifted up for me and the peace of God surrounded my heart. I look so forward to all that God has in store for me the next 10 days.