Tuesday, our first evening in Africa, we landed almost an hour early at 6:12 pm and breezed right through baggage claim, passport control and customs. The flight from Atlanta was barely 14 hours, so the whole trip, including our layover in Atlanta was only 19 hours. We were both pleasantly surprised at how comfortable we were and how fast the time went... not nearly as difficult as we had projected.
Elder and Sister Heaton, who we are replacing, met us at the international terminal in a kombi (minivan) owned by the Area, that was just big enough for the four of us and our 4 checked bags and 4 carry-ons. They drove us to our (now their) flat at Duke's Court and showed us around. It is much larger and nicer than we anticipated. It will do just fine. Then they took us across the hall to the Barton's 2-bedroom apartment, where we spent the night. Elder and Sister Barton are great! He is the Area Medical Advisor, and they were very helpful getting us settled and will take care of our luggage (all but one bag and one carry-on) the next two weeks while we are traveling. The accommodations were very nice!
Martha woke up at 2:00 am and Bob was awake by 2:30, just as our hosts had predicted, and we were both wide awake. We talked for awhile, then lay in bed, mostly awake, until 6:00, when we got up, showered and dressed.
The Bartons had breakfast for us, cereal and toast, and we left at 8:30 with the Heatons for the office next to the temple on Jubilee Road. We spent the morning touring the area offices and meeting everyone and had our picture taken in front of the temple.
The first thing we did was interrupt the Area Presidency meeting. Elder Cook, the Area President, and his counselors, Elders Ellis and Hamilton of the Seventy seemed genuinely excited to have us here and we're very kind. They seemed to know all about us. Elder Cook told Martha he had some ideas of the ways she could best contribute and told her she had been discussed in the last two presidency meetings. The Executive Secretary, Elder Jones and Director of Temporal Affairs, Elder Frischnecht, we're also in the meeting. They made us both feel very welcome and needed.
Among the office workers we met, one was one of Bob's Cape Town missionaries, one was the wife of one of his missionaries, one was the mother of one of his missionaries, one was the wife of a mission president he served with, one was the daughter of a former Cape Town mission president from Port Elizabeth who also served with his wife as MTC president and temple president in Johannesburg while Bob was mission president, and on and on. Lots of connections. And Martha was hugged and welcomed royally by everyone, especially the sisters in Public Affairs who both want her to start working on projects with them immediately.
We got our church lds.org email addresses established and got a SIM card from IT for Bob's iPhone, then headed to the airport. But Bob's phone wasn't able to be activated for 24 hours.
While at the Johannesburg airport, walking to Gate A4 for our flight to Ethiopia, we happened upon three young African missionaries in their suits and name tags who looked very handsome but also very lost and bewildered.
They were all 3 from Mozambique and had somehow missed their connecting flight to São Paulo, Brazil and had no clue what to do and were told they had to have money to reschedule their flights. They were on their way to the MTC there because they were going to Portuguese speaking missions in Brazil.
The Joburg MTC is English-only and the Ghana MTC is English and French. The colonial language in Mozambique, Angola and the Cape Verde Islands is Portuguese.
Luckily, Elder Heaton had given us his business card with his phone number, and we had just gotten Martha's phone service activated at Vodacom in Killarney Mall (the SIM card and 100 minutes of calls cost us $10 US), so we called Elder Heaton from Martha's phone and gave him the three elders' names and told him the situation. He got right on it, called the travel department, who got them on the next flight out, and sent someone to accompany them and pay any fees with a credit card.
We landed a half-hour early at Addis Ababa (ADD-is AAH-buh-bah) the capital of Ethiopia, at 8:20 (5-hour flight and we lost an hour), but we had to wait on the plane a half-hour because the jetway and the bus to the terminal weren't there to meet us. We were quite tired. After 19 hours of flying the day before, we had flown another 2500 miles (like from L.A. to New York). Finally, the jetway appeared and we took the bus to the terminal. It was significantly cooler in Addis than Joburg, maybe because we had crossed the equator again and were back in winter.
As we approached passport control, suddenly the line backed up and stopped. Then we realized they were merging the whole crowd into two lines, where 2 Ethiopian officials in white lab coats and face masks took everyone's' temperatures, checking for fevers, we guess, because of the Ebola virus. It took almost another hour to wait in line for our visas ($50 apiece), go through passport control, baggage claim and customs.
It was past 9:30 before we exited the terminal and met Bob's sister Joyce and her husband Bob at the end of the ramp. They were just one week away from finishing their mission and returning to Arizona. We visited with Bob & Joyce at the hotel until after 11:00 in our room, a very nicely appointed hotel room, nice bed and great pillows. We both woke up at 4:55 (3:55 South Africa time). Martha thought it was 5:55 because her iPhone was still an hour behind when we went to bed the night before, but it somehow caught up to Ethiopia time overnight.
Before the call to prayer for Muslims, an eerie middle eastern chant, was amplified across the city at 5:30, we had already been entertained by barking and howling dogs and roosters, and we were wide awake and ready for our Ethiopian adventure.
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