Bits and Bobs

We just spent a week packing, moving stuff into storage and cleaning our house. It was a very big job. Most nights, we went to bed after midnight. The last day, we were up for 22 hours. It was hard, but we made it with God's help and a few well-timed, helping hands.

On Sunday, Massey Presbyterian Church presented us with Woolly, a sheep puppet which is meant to be the 'ambassador' from our church's children. It will be coming with us to 'see what life is like in Uganda' (and get lots of photos with the children in Africa, etc. to send back to church!). Then the pastor prayed for us to send us off.

We are now 'homeless', with all our worldly possessions (aside from those we are taking with us) locked away in a storage facility. We are staying at Jordan's parents' house until we fly off on Friday afternoon.

Here's one of the turkeys we are currently living with!

Nearly there!

We are finishing up at work, finalising arrangements with Watoto, and getting ready to pack up our house!

So, things are heating up for us now with under 4 weeks to go. So far we have received about 65% of the financial pledges made. For those of you who have made a pledge which is still coming, thank you again for your gift. If you could organise a payment in the next week, that would be greatly appreciated.

We look forward to updating you when our intrepid journey begins!

Solidification

We have bookings!! After many long months of generic planning and uncertainty (and three straight hours at the travel agent), we finally have bookings! Oh happiness! =)

Our travel plans, so far, are thus:

We fly out of Auckland on the 12th of August and will be in Uganda for just over three months. It turned out that the cheapest flights were Emirates both ways (yay!). The total airplane time is 53 hours and 10 minutes. We can watch 20 movies!! Or sleep. Or we can simply sit there, knowing we are making all of Julie's siblings green with envy.

One of the layovers is Dubai, and we are planning on using some of Jordan's holiday pay to explore the city for three days. We are getting pretty excited about the all the things we can do there. We have never ever been to such a wealthy city and we're not quite sure whether Dubai or Uganda will be more of a shock to us. =P Ah well, it's all an adventure.