June 19 Greetings from South Africa

Sawubona!
We greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Tracy did a fantastic job filling you all in on our journey to Esikhawini. It was a long one. But today, we began to experience first hand why we are here, and that has refocused our attention from ourselves to those we have come to serve.
We started the day with an amazing breakfast prepared by our chefs extraordinaire Shelly, Richard, and Robyn. It was almost too good. Sharon, Ian, and Shelly then headed into town with Mercy to purchase all the groceries and supplies that 22 people need to survive for a few days at least. The rest of the crew headed over to the church across the street to begin the tedious but necessary task of counting and sorting and dosing out the thousands of meds that were so generously donated to our trip. To give you an example of the number of meds we're working with, we had a total of 116,000 Ibuprofen. We had far more Benedryl, vitamins, Acetaminophen, and others.
The team got right to it and worked hard until well after 7 p.m. By God's grace, and with a little humor from Kristi, Ian and Adam, we not only counted out enough meds to get us through our first clinic, but we even had a little fun in the process. Megan O. and Adam handled our children's vitamins, RevRob and Sarah focused on vitamins, Megan V, Robyn and Pat counted thousands of Ibuprofen, Kristi, Katie and Melissa handled our Benedryl, John and Alex not only counted but perfectly organized our Tums, Ian, Cheryl and Richard worked on adult vitamins and Tracy organized our cough and cold meds. It was a full team effort and a great time to get to know each other a little better.
A little side note – we lost nine bags during our travels over here. Mostly they were meds and a few other medical essentials. So far, one has been found and returned. According to British Airways, the others remain trapped in an underground tunnel on a conveyor belt that broke down. Several thousand bags are trapped there and they are working to find ours. But a little extra prayer for those bags would be greatly appreciated. Again, in God's great plan, we are confident that we have all we need for tomorrow, even without those bags.
During our time packing, we were able to reconnect with some old friends. One of our dear friends, Sabelo, just lost his father this past week and the funeral was this past weekend. We were able to pray with him and for him and share in the grief of his loss and the joy of his now eternal life with our brother in Christ. We heard about the strike that is affecting everyone in South Africa as the nurses and teachers have not been working for the past three weeks. And we know that God has us here at this time, in this place, for a specific purpose. We are excited and eager to serve – to be His hands and feet in these few days.
We left the church this evening under a blanket of the most amazing stars and walked back to the Mafus for a delicious dinner prepared by Alex, Katie, Shelly, Richard. We even had chocolate cake – a Shelly specialty. :) After a little team meeting about tomorrow – our first clinic – we were off to pack, hang out and hopefully get a little sleep for what will be a very long day.
On behalf of the team, thank you all, so much for your prayers and support that have brought us this far. We ask that you continue to lift us all up as we head to the mountain for our first clinic. We are anxious and excited and ready to do what we believe God has called us here to do. Please pray for us energy, peace, graciousness, joy and love. We hope to be Jesus to the people we meet tomorrow and know that it will take strength and power beyond our own. We also hope to have a relaxing and team building time at Hluhluwe (the game park) on Thursday so we can come back ready and refreshed for our clinics on Saturday and next week.
May God bless you all! We will be in touch as often as we can but, we'll be at the game park until Friday afternoon (our time) so, it will probably be after that.
In Him,
Sarah