At 3:30 Thursday morning, a team of twenty-five individuals began their trip to Malawi, Africa. While in Africa, we plan to assist two churches at their VBS’s and a conference. To start off, the team held a meeting and was prayed over by Pastor Ritch. We then loaded onto two busses and rode three and a half hours to O’Hare Airport (thank you to our generous drivers).

Check-in at the airport went smoothly for all involved. We had enough time to grab some breakfast before loading onto the plane. The flight was about fourteen hours long, and we all made it! We entered African airspace at 8:20 pm Illinois time and 4:20 am Ethiopian time. The time change took some adjusting to, so most of the team slept on the flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Lilongwe, Malawi. We were blessed with some great flights.

Once arriving in Lilongwe, we did face some initial struggles. One suitcase was lost, but, luckily, it only contained donation items. We also had a problem leaving the airport because they were not happy about some of our paperwork. Newton talked to them for us, and the Lord provided us with an exit.

We loaded our bags onto the back of a truck and piled into a bus. We met with Kondi and some other friends on our drive over to Newton’s house. When there, we met family members and held a quick meeting debriefing about our week.

Going forward, we have some prayer requests. We pray that jet lag doesn’t affect us too strongly if at all, we pray that the luggage is found, and we pray that we are ultimately a help to the churches and people of Malawi.