Day 1

We’re here! Krista and I synchronized our first step back onto African soil perfectly onto the tarmac at Entebbe International Airport today to celebrate that we had finally made it to our destination. After a one hour flight to Houston with a short layover and a 14 hour and 55 minute flight to Dubai and a short ride to the Millenium Hotel for a sleepless night (for me at least due to jet lag) and a short shopping spree to a humongous mall, a meal at midnight at the hotel and a shuttle back to the Airport at Dubai very early the next morning to board a plane whose gate was changed at the last minute sending us on a mile hike just to board busses and drive around the airport for 30 minutes finally ending up at the outdoors boarding tower only to find out that one of the tires on the Boeing 777 200-R luxury liner was low…so it was another delay while they aired the tire up and then onward…with one minor detour (I failed to see on the itinerary) which was to land at Ethiopia to let off some passengers and sit on the tarmac for another hour after which we took off and made the last leg of our journey to Entebbe (another 4 hours). Whew!!! Is anybody keeping track?...that’s a lot of hang time.

We WERE glad we got to experience Dubai but the heat was unbelievable…San Antonio in July times at least 3! It made us appreciate what our men and women in uniform have endured in Iraq and Afghanistan…and we were dressed for the occasion and had almost no weight to carry on our backs. One cool thing we did was to have our Sunday morning worship service sitting in a circle on the floor at the gate. To put this in perspective remember that we were doing this in an Arab country where we were surrounded by mosques. The very first room we came to after leaving the plane was the Islamic prayer room complete with curtains and prayer rugs.

The Reunion at Entebbe was amazing…we flew through customs and were amazed that every single one of our 28 giant checked bags arrived with us…this despite the fact that I took a chance and had them checked all the way through from Houston to Entebbe so that we wouldn’t have to pick them up and store them in Dubai.

Pastor Enock was elated to see us along with his beautiful wife Judith and his sweet little girl Vickie, his middle daughter Deborah and his son Eric. We hugged and hugged before grabbing everything and meeting our dedicated minibus for the week with our new driver and friend Yesmin. On the way to Adonai House#5 Pastor and Enock and I caught up on the latest great news at Luzira Community Church and he informed me that he had booked me to preach on the radio later that evening. It was unbelievable to be walking through the market with complete goats skinned and hanging in the windows and suddenly walk into a radio studio. Pastor Enock asked me to share the message I preached at another location two years ago regarding the Ethiopian Eunich of Acts chapter 8. It was an anointed time with me preaching in English and Pastor Enock interpreting in Lugandan. It was especially meaningful to end my message by sharing the fact that I had been in Ethiopia that very morning where the gospel is spreading. Because Philip the Evangelist/Apostle was faithful the gospel came to Africa.