We Made It!!

I'm so tired, I have to go to sleep, but I'll post the email I just sent out to all the parents and supporters and expand more later! Love - Erica

Hi everyone! We made it!!!! ☺. It is currently 9:25PM here in Franschhoek and we feel like it must be at least 3AM. Haha. It was a looong journey (which we expected), but everything went quite smoothly minus a few small bumps along the way (also to be expected!). We didn’t end up with much time in London, but we did get to walk around and get some fresh air as well as catch a few photos of Big Ben and Parliament. It was a fun couple of hours together!

South Africa is beautiful. It’s very green with big mountains and long rolling wine country. Just beautiful! On the drive between Cape Town and Fraschhoek we got to see where all of our kids have come from or will be coming from, a township called Phillipi (and a few other townships which are very close by). It was just a long stretch (probably a mile or two long) of tiny shacks lined up along the other of side of a wall beside the freeway. Very impoverished, and very sad. But I think it was good to see that, so we get an idea of what these kids are getting to escape for the week they’re at camp (or for 4 years for the ones who go to the Academy).

Tonight we had a fun cultural night with the Academy kids (high schoolers who live and go to school here). I’ll give more details later, but it was really fun and they made us chicken's feet for part of our dinner - cultural for sure!☺. Tomorrow morning the College Team starts teaching at the Academy, and our team will prepare for our 80 ASP kids (2nd through 7th grade) to come to camp (at 10AM)!

We’re a little bit exhausted, but mostly thankful we get to be here and excited for what’s coming.

Keep us in your prayers, of course! At this point what we need prayer for is just some good rest and to make sure we’re prepared for camp.

We’ll try to update every few days; the internet is a little finicky. But know that we’re very safe here and already having a blast with the Academy kids and the staff. God is so good to us!!

Sending much love from the Southern Hemisphere,
-Erica & The Team

PS: Please feel free to pass this email along to anyone else you know who might want to be updated! I don’t think we ended up getting a full list from every student before we left.