Wednesday, April 3rd - arrive in Johannesburg!

Johannesburg! Finally here with 18 months of  luggage

We have finally arrived! We were so glad to get off the airplane. We got through customs with no problems and then were off to get our mound of luggage. The five Elders and one sister going to Mozambique looked lost and approached us to see what they do next. I felt kind of sorry for them, but we sent them to the airlines booking desk and they sent them to their flight. It's hard to imagine being 18 or 19, first time out of the United States and not sure what to do. By now they are in Mozambique and learning about the African people.




We were met at the airport by Elder and Sister Hatch, the couple we are replacing. They were very nice and got us back to our flat while filling us in on driving on the left side of the road and suggestions for safety while driving or walking. Apparently there are a lot of 'grab and snatch' occurrences, where you come to a stoplight and if your phone or purse is visible from the street, they use a spark plug and break your window quickly and snatch the item. The advice was to keep things out of sight. Sometimes beggars will get close to your car asking for handouts, but they are really scoping out the inside of the car and relaying the info to the snatchers. Elder Hatch said all we had to do was eliminate the opportunity (by putting our things out of sight) and we would have no problem. They took us to our flat, which was on the third floor of the apartment building. We lugged all our luggage to the elevator and up to the apartment while getting instructions on where to park, how to use the electronic gate, etc. Then they left us to rest up and get picked up at 6 pm for dinner. One of the other couples had purchased food for us, so we had bread, milk, eggs, juice, peanut butter, fruit, etc. It was great not to have to worry
about that stuff. We tried to communicate with our children, but the email did not work and we had no phones, so we put in a call to our IT person from the church who was not available until the next night. We started unpacking our stuff. The apartment was large with one large bedroom and a small office, plus a large bath, large kitchen and large living/dining area with big windows. All windows in Johannesburg have bars on them and there was a gate to our apartment with a lock on it and a patio before reaching our front door. I was happy that there was a mall across the street from the complex, in case we needed groceries, etc. After we unpacked, we took a two-hour nap and then Hatches picked us up for dinner and took us to their favorite restaurant where the food was indeed great. We were told that we were expected for a meeting at the area office at 8 am the next morning. We slept okay, but were still pretty wiped out.