I'm Alive!

I am alive.

Isn’t that good to hear? I think so; in fact I am glad to hear it myself.

We arrived in Tchad on Tuesday evening and my body was really confused as to what time it was and where I was. My luggage didn’t arrive so we decided to stay Wednesday night as well. On Wednesday we went to get our visa stuff taken care of. It was really funny because we were sitting there and I hear a phone ring, but it was my ring in the states. I thought I had turned it off and left it in my suitcase at the mission compound we were staying at. It turns out I did, and the man who works at the gov office has the same ring. Cell phones are huge here. They can text, surf the web if they want and they can call people. Amazing. So here I thought I wouldn’t hear “my ring” for a whole year and I hear it more than I thought.

My luggage came Wednesday night thankfully! And we left the mission compound Thursday morning. Crazy trip from N’djamena to Kelo, then on to Bere. CRAZY!!! We sat and waited for the ‘bus’ to fill up with people for about two hours. IT was actually a van turned bus. When it finally did we were definitely in confined quarters! There were four people on each bench and there were four rows of benches. I’m glad we got there early and got the front row. The funny thing is in the front row there is really another row in front of it that faces you. So in that row there were two men who sat there. We were all very close! We had trouble at a few places because the guards wanted to see our passports and visas then they were going to make us pay. But Sara, who picked us up, knew better and was amazing. She ignored them when they told her to get out because she knew better. We even gave them the number with a stamp to the man at the visa office. So we are all sitting in the hot van waiting for them to finish what ever it was they were doing with our papers. Finally the bus driver gave the guards money to get our papers back. We didn’t care because we had given them copies! Ha. I think it was funny the bus drive bought them because we had to pay extra for our two suitcases. So after a long time of sitting on a wood bench with a small pad we stopped to let the Muslim bus driver pray. Then we hop back in. I am not sure where along the way but we stopped and picked up another person!!! So we had 22 people in total in our bus!! Yikes.

We finally arrived at the hospital here in Bere late Thursday night. I say late because the sun had gone down and when the sun goes down people go to bed.

Well we hadn’t gotten email up till now because of lack of time and I am sorry it took me so long. Know that I love you all WAY more than I could ever say. More later.

Pray specifically for Liz and me.