Across the Atlantic we go

Last week, Jason and I along with 7 others took off on a mission trip to Dakar, Senegal in Africa.  This was our 2nd trip there - our first being 7 years pre kids.  We were pretty excited that God allowed us to be able to make this trip.  Lots of things had to fall into place in order for us to go - money, renew passports, renew shots, where the kids would stay, and Jason's work.  So blessed that God worked it all out.  Thankful for my parents and great friends who stepped in to help keep the boys while we were gone.  It made it much easier to know they were being well taken care of while we were across the ocean.

There were 4 students and 5 adults - 2 of the students would be in our upcoming class and the other 2 were leaving.

 We flew out on a Saturday afternoon to JFK and after a 5 hour layover there we were off on our 7.5 hour flight over the Atlantic to Senegal.  After 1 movie, a couple of meals and a couple hours of sleep, we landed.  My biggest fear (even though I knew God was in control) was that my luggage would not make it or it would get lost at customs.  The big joke among us was my luggage because the last time we went my luggage got left in customs and by the time we realized we didn't have it and made it back to the airport - the luggage was nowhere to be found.  I survived that trip with none of my clothes so I felt God would take care of me during this one.

When we landed, all 9 of us piled into a little van, with 11 bags and carryon luggage.  Yeah, it was tight, but this was our transportation for the week.

Here are a few of the sights we saw on our way to where we were staying.

This is one of their forms of transportation - Repedes.  There are times when there are lots of people hanging on the back.  Quite funny to see.

Our living conditions for the week were at Grand Yoff Baptiste Center, which is the same place we stayed 7 years ago.  This is a great place, there is running water (even though we don't drink it), beds, and we can run the air in our rooms at night.

Here's the main common area between the 2 rooms.  We spent a lot of our time here.  There were fans but it still got pretty warm.

Once we got settled into our new home for the week, we were off to the church who would be helping us with translators.  We then headed over to where one of our camps would be held to check out the situation.

Thankfully we were able to call it a night pretty early that night since we didn't get much sleep during the flight.