Travel from Katima Malilo to Walvis Bay

Psalm 138: 1-3 I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart: before the “gods” I will sing your praise. I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. When I called, you answered me: you made me bold and stouthearted.

We had quite a journey this week.

Our mission was for 2 reasons:

1. Go to Windhoek to get pages added to our passports. Since we will need to transport teams and volunteers to the airport, it requires crossing boarders so we just want to make sure that we are having enough pages to get people (including ourselves) in and out of the country.

2. Second was to go to Walvis Bay to pick up our stuff that we had shipped. We received notification and a telex release that our stuff was here and we could pick it up.

Our travel was long. We rented (here they say hired) a car since ours have not been reliable and drove 3100 KG (which translates into 1,926.26 miles). So we left just after 6am on Sunday and drove about 12 hours to get to Okahahdja.

We saw many animals along the way including elephants, baboons, work hogs, antelope, ostrich and of course, many cows and goats (mostly in the road instead of alongside of the road.)

 

 

 

We had a training here where we met a wonderful lady named Sylvia. She has already been such a blessing to us. She connected us with a wonderful couple and their 6 children that are missionaries from the USA. They have been in Namibia for about 3 years. They are working with finding foster families for children that are vulnerable but do not run an orphanage as we do. So, there is a similar ministry connection. They invited us to come for dinner and stay the night. What a blessing this was! They have a beautiful home with a flat out back where we had the place to ourselves. It was the well needed safe rest and food that we needed. Prior to this town, there was nothing along the way. We barely found gas in time to refuel! And where we did refuel, it was just a tank in the middle of nowhere. God provides for our every need! We also had nothing to eat except the snacks that we brought with us. We had a great evening of conversation and visiting with our new friends and then a great nights rest prior to heading back on the road first thing in the morning.

From Okahahdja we drove on to Windhoek (the capital of Namibia). We had trouble finding the US Embassy but there was a nice gentleman that led us to where we needed to go. We went in and filled out the forms. Then the lady told us the cost (luckily Travis put in $200 of US money because they did not take credit and they did not take Namibian dollars) and then said they would be ready in about 3 days! We must have looked like a deer in the headlights. We obviously couldn’t wait 3 days so we told her we would take the applications and come back another time. We had the paper work still in our hands and on the way out there was a gentleman coming in. He saw the paperwork and said “so, applying for new passports?” We told him the story. He said, well I am the one that needs to approve that and I can do the approval for you now if you can wait about 2 hours to get the pages in! Now, that was a God appointment!!! So we had to go to the bank to pay for our stay for the night (you have to pay at the bank instead of paying when you arrive because they do not handle money), had lunch and needed to pick up the passports and head to the coast. We would have loved to spend more time there but we needed to get on the road so that we were not traveling too late at night. There are no street lights here so when it gets dark, it is VERY DARK! So the danger is that animals are crossing the roads and sometimes you cannot see them. Elephants for example, have nothing reflective about them including their eyes so you literally cannot see them at night.

 From Windhoek, on to Swakopmund on the coast. Another blessing from God through Sylvia. She knew of a nice place where missionaries stay here. It is a Finnish School. We stayed in another lovely flat that was one block from the coast. Since we got somewhat of a late start, we drove right into the beautiful sunset! I think I will do a whole series on just the sunset pictures because they are so beautiful. Look in the photo gallery of our website to see more pictures. Again, we did not arrive until after dark and left by 7 the next morning. Apparently right up the coast there are penguins! We did not take time to see these so, again, we will need to come back on a more relaxing trip.        Now to head on to Walvis Bay.
We are praying that they will release the stuff and it will fit in the trailer and truck and we will get back safely.
There is SAND EVERYWHERE!!  It feels like we are on a different planet!  AMAZING!
 The wonders of God!  AMAZING!                                                   

Once we got to the bay it took a little while to figure out where we needed to go. Once inside of the building, they did confirm that our stuff had arrive (on the 20th and we were told it arrived on the 17th) so at this point, all is good. Then the lady starts talking about all of the paperwork that needs to be completed and approved and the agent that we need to hire and that it will all take about 3 days (something to figure out about this 3 day thing). Again, deer in headlights look!! She saw that and started talking slower. She gave us the name of a person that “is the best”. Also, his office was across the street so we walked there instead of calling. Bottom line, there is a whole process that we were not told about. All of this needs to be done prior to them releasing the stuff. Good news: He said they will bring it to us!!! We do not have to go back to pick it up!! So, we decided to relax and walk around a couple of hours before starting the drive back.

The return trip:

Walvis Bay to Okahandja where Steve and Kerrie invited us back again for dinner and a good nights rest.

Okahandja to Katima Mulilo (home) on Wednesday.

Empty trailer but SAFE!!!

Oh well! This is Africa! We are still learning. We are so thankful that our trip was safe and we met some wonderful people and we had great, safe places to stay each night we stopped.

Thank you for your prayers!!!

Thursday: Travis’s Birthday and Thanksgiving. There is no turkey here but we did go out for Travis’s birthday. I had chicken and pretended it was turkey and he had a steak. The children made him nice cards. Since we just got back from being gone for 4 days, I can’t say we had a relaxing day because much awaited us but we did have a good and blessed day.

We were praying for all of you and just in awe of how thankful we are to God and how he provides for our physical needs and our emotional needs and gives us great family and friends that we love so much.

1 Chronicles 16:34 Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever.