It's now Saturday and we were up at 5am to leave for Kruger National Park.  It was worth getting up as we've seen some elephants CLOSE UP.  More of that in a moment.

We arrived at ASM (African School of Missions) at 5.30pm local time on Thursday after a long drive of 350km or so from Johannesburg.  Having had a stop-over in Dubai for 4 hours or so, then another long flight from there, we were all pretty shattered.  A delicious meal awaited us, which was unexpected as we had already eaten earlier in the day.

Yesterday - Friday - we were up fairly early to be at a prayer meeting in Masoyi village Hands-at-Work base (K2).  A simply lead prayer meeting and a mini preach was for me the first "reality check".  To be in such a place where people had absolutely nothing, but were prepared to give what little they did have serving others was quite moving, and tears were not far away.  We met some children in the creche and whilst it was great to see these little smiley faces, it brought home the reality of the situation when we were told most of them were HIV positive (1 to three years old!) :-(

We moved on to the other creche, Lula, and more happy smiling faces, full of mischief.  This was the "soft landing" Mark spoke of!

So to today... we're in the middle of Kruger (arrived at 5.40am) and we're having breakfast (and blogging), whilst the power is on!

It's an amazing country, vast, yet strangely familiar in some ways.  It's now coming up to 10am and we'll be off again soon.  If I can get a reliable connection nearer base I'll upload some more pictures!