Not According to Plan

One thing that Will and I learned very quickly with our time living in Africa is that things do not usually go as planned. In fact, when things do go exactly as planned, it's a very surprising day.

Will and I are on our first break away from South Sudan since moving there in October. We flew out yesterday. To fly in and out of South Sudan, we fly with a ministry that brings missionaries to remote locations. We are incredibly grateful for this ministry because it allows us to minister in Mundri without having to take extremely long, bumpy and dangerous car rides into the country. We were told to call the office on Thursday morning at 9:00am in order to find out when the plane would be coming. This is how we find out the time each time we are flying out and the plane usually comes anywhere from 11am-3pm (but remember, there are not always "usuals" in Africa).

So, we were prepared to make the phone call at 9:00 to find out the arrival time of the plane. However, Shawn received a phone call at 8:45am saying that the plane would be there in 15 minutes!! The major problem with this is that we live about 30 minutes from the airstrip! We all immediately starting running around like crazy in order to finish packing, grab something to eat, and load up the car. Five minutes after Shawn received the phone call, we heard the plane flying overhead!! We now had negative time to get to the airstrip!

On the way to the airstrip, we had to slow down and get to the side of the road a few because the military were escorting several governors into Mundri at that exact same moment (of course, right?!). Regardless, we got there as quickly as possible and were in the air by 9:25am.

We typically make several stops when we ride these small planes. We stop in several locations to pick up different people and then always have to stop in Arua, Uganda to go through customs and get our Ugandan VISAS. This time, we had to wait almost 4 hours in Arua so that they could pick up other people and have them meet up with us before going on. While sitting at the tiny restaurant in Aura for 4 hours, it made me giggle to think about how rushed we were just several hours earlier.

We finally arrived to our guest house around 7:00pm. It was so nice to arrive to a clean room, a flushing toilet, warm water and good food! We are very excited about this break in Uganda and are looking forward to resting and eating well. Even though things do not always go according to plan here, they always seem to work out some way or the other. We are grateful for this life that we live and grateful for a God who "works all things for His good".