Trip Home (computer died in Gabon sorry)

Here's the team with Tim and Meredith in the center and the interns on the ends with us at the Compound. We really loved them all so thanks to Sarah, Melissa and Chris. Chris was on our flights to JFK. Good time.

The last alone time with God in Africa

Chris the intern doing card tricks with the girls on the Atlantic leg of the flight

In the Cinci airport at almost midnight. You can see about 8 of the 20 teens. Some others were riding the luggage carousel

I hope you weren't worried that there were no post but the computer went down and I had no way to get on. Thursday we finished all we could on the Wall for CFTAC. You should be proud of the teens because they stayed till there was no more they could do. We had made a bit of a game of getting the cinder blocks down the steep hill. We set up sections that you would take a block to and pass it off to the next person about 20 feet down the hill. Michael Whipple started running his part of the hill with the bricks and I was next so I ran my section then too and It felt good after a while. Finishing up all the concrete and setting blocks in the trenches we finished at 4:30. The Rougier teens prayer with our teens and there were tears shed. Then we got cleaned up as fast as we could, went to the beach to say goodbye to that side of the Atlantic and encourage one another in a job well done. Finally heading off to a Pizza Place. African Pizza is different and pepperoni is peppers.





Friday morning most of us females were up by 8:30. Tim and Meredith made us a big breakfast of pancakes, yum. Then we had a debriefing by Tim and off to the souvenir market. We came back, showered, packed and pastor John Jacques and his wife mama Janine came over with an African dinner for us, then presented us certificate of appreciation for what we did for the church to have an put up to remind us to pray for them and honor our labors. It was a nice ending t the time we spent in Gabon ...... well until the airport.....





Our flight was scheduled for 12:25 AM take off. We arrived at the Airport at 9 PM to find out that Royal Air Morac had been on strike for 5 days, but that we would fly this night. As it took us 45 minutes to get into the door to check in it was hectic but then came the real trial. They were taking on average 8 minutes too process each person.. That for our group alone would be 2 hours and there were a hundred people ahead of us. Our final person got checked in at 12:15 then flew thru customs making it to the gate to find as the rest of us had already .... no plane was there. On a fllight with Air France just 3 hours before us the other Intern went home, Sarah and on her flight were people from Survivor. I found the Hotel they had been staying at. So our plane arrived at 2:30. As we were getting checked in ans loading the plane, one of the workers looked at me an asked if I was on Survivor. Is that a sign for the future,umm... Well, we departed at 3:30, 3 hours late, only to find out we had an unexpected stop on an Island about 40 minutes north of Gabon in the Atlantic called Malabo. We arrived in Casablanca at 10 AM for our 10:45 flight but somehow that flight was miraculously change to 11:45 so we had a little breathing room to get thru. They open every carry on bag, pull everything out and well, that can be embarrassing. Made that flight though and the headed to JFK. We had a 2 hour layover at JFK but had to reclaim our luggage and go thru customs then recheck them. We hit a few snags there, then ran to the next terminal to catch our 5:10 flight which 1/3 of us were running from one terminal to the other at 4:50 only to find out for the good the flight was delayed till 7:50. Some breathing room then. Then delayed till 8:30 and finally took off at 9:30. So a 3 hour delay started our flights, then a 1 hour delay saved us, kind of only to put us behind for JFK, but God is so Good that JFK was freakin 4 hours behind. Got to love all this. Finally at 12:30 we were taken to a hotel in Cinci where we hope to get 8 hours sleep, debrief, head home and we all want Mr Freeze. We really missed Ice Cream in Gabon. So join us at around 5 PM I would say at the one in Sylvania. We would love to share our stories.