Land! Land! It's South Africa ;-D Yay!

After Sailing for 17 days, we have just arrived in Durban, South Africa!

I’m so excited to be here. J We got in this morning after the pilot boarded our ship by helicopter! Quite exciting. It was so refreshing to see the first sights of the coast line. Land! Yay!Durban looks beautiful. This is the 3^rd largest port in the southern hemisphere. As we came into port it reminded me of a big city in FL. Palm trees, big buildings, it looks just like home. J I can’t wait to be able to run around on land. ;-p I feel like a little kid that’s been cooped up too long. We are just waiting on things to get all finished up with immigration before we are allowed to set foot on land. Please pray that God will pave the way and things will fall into place smoothly and quickly.

Tomorrow we will be loading up trucks and caravanning about 2 hours up to ApplesBosch, the campus we will be living on for the next 6 months. It is an un-used college campus, with open spaces, that I’m sure we will all enjoy after living on a ship for over a year. :-D As soon as we get off the ship, the technical crew remaining, and other workers from the shipyard will begin work in earnest to refit the ship and making all the changes and improvements needed.

I still have some packing to finish up before tomorrow morning, and I’m very excited about all the changes happening. I think I will continue working in crew services (dining room or galley) for then next 2 weeks or so at Applesbosch (or wherever they tell me I’m working ;-p), then we will start work with the dental clinic again and I’ll go back to my job as sterilizer. I’m so excited to see everything unfold here. I know God has a plan and I’m excited to be a part of it. I’ll write more once our internet and phone services get set up in Applesbosch, which could be over a week or so. I hope you are all well! Enjoy a few of the pictures below that I took this morning as we came into port as well as some pictures of the fun we had on the sail.

I enjoyed going up on deck 7 some mornings to enjoy God's creation and spend some time with Him. :)

During the sail we plan some fun activities to keep everyone from going crazy ;-p hehe

This was our team for the game day. Jeff and Megan Howard and their kids Max and Emma. Love this family. They have been such a blessing to me!

We also had a pirate day, where everyone dressed up and they had a treasure hunt and some other stuff for the kids. this is me with Emma and Max again :)

Obviously some sort of throwing game. ;-p I think it was one where you had to throw these little empty cookie boxes as far as you could. More difficult than you'd imagine ;-p lol

This just looks dangerous :-p

We had a carnival with lots of games and other fun things. Hahah so much fun. It's the Murr man!

The carnival also did stick-on tattoos! me and Becca decided to model ours :-p

And we got to make magnetic picture frames!

This is the dock in Durban! The view looking to the front of the ship.

This is the port looking to the back of the ship.

the dock right below our ship! :)

Those people are our advance team, who have been there for months sorting out details and waiting for their big white ship to arrive. This is always a fun reunion :)

Me, Heather, and Becca on deck 8 watching as we came into port! We're here!! WooHoo! Me and Becca took turns bubbling, "I'm so excited!" at random times with little dances of excitement :) hehe

Oh ya! I've already seen a Cheetah! ahahahhaa We were all laughing about this as we came into port.

We also saw our first piece of South African abstract art.... lol hahah we weren't exactly sure what it was, but that sounds nicer than "gigantic pile of junk"

Isn't it beautiful! :)

We're here!

just coming in.

The coastline getting closer! Yay South Africa!

There's the coastline of Durban, South Africa! Land! Woohoo! God is so good. What an adventure! :)