The Great Migration

April 30, 2012 finally arrived and we are off to South Africa.  As much as we are looking forward to starting our mission, we are not anxious to endure the long flights to get there.   

We fly from SLC to Dallas which is about 2 ½  hours with a 6 hour layover, then a 9 ½ hour flight to London,  7 hour layover then another 10 ½ hour flight to Cape Town South Africa.  We left Salt Lake City at 12:30 pm on Monday,  April 30 and arrived on May 2 at about 8 am in Cape Town.   Then I thought about the pioneers and decided this is really nothing compared to what they endured. 

Exciting note—while we were sitting waiting for our flight to Dallas, who should walk by but Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Elder Quentin L. Cook, (from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles) and Sister Cook.  

Sister Holland was with them, but a ways back talking with some other people. They had just flown in from Brazil having been on an assignment there.  We, as well as another missionary waiting, were able to shake their hands and visit for a few minutes.  We found out that Elder Holland is the apostle over Africa and he talked a little with us about Cape Town, since that is where we are going.  A moment to be remembered!

Our flight to London seemed long. It was an overnight flight, but sleeping was hard and intermittent.  Since Elizabeth had been to London a couple of times , she felt, since we would be there for 7 hours, that we could take a train into London and see a couple of sights.  She had given us details on how to do that and wished us well.  However, when we arrived, there were a lot of corridors and directions to go and we finally ended up at a security screening station which we had to go through to get to our next flight.  Lines!!!  Lots of People!!!  As we were doing this we thought, there is no way. We weren’t going through this again!!  We weren’t leaving the airport.  NO WAY!!  It took us well over an hour to go through the security screening station, we had two carry on and two personal items that would have to be drag around with us as there are no places to check your bags in the airport. So we waited in the airport till we could head off to South Africa.

Our plane took off around 7:30 pm.  On this flight we had seats in upgraded economy, which meant a little more legroom.  That was nice.  We arrived in Cape Town May 2, @ 8am South Africa time. After a short 40 1/2 hour trip we arrived in fairly good shape but not all together with our luggage. The airline it seems left one of our bags in London. Only one missing suitcase, not bad for our first international travel experience. Upon arriving in Cape Town, we again had to go through customs. One of the things they asked us was if we had in our luggage food of any kind.  We had a couple of things, which we told them about.  They were going to open up our luggage and go through it when one of the security guards noticed our missionary name tags. He asked what we were going to be doing in the country.  We told them we were missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and were going to be serving a mission in South Africa. They talked to each other for a while, smiling and nodding their heads, then wished us well and sent us on our way with no bag check.  One of many examples we experienced of being treated special because we were serving the Lord.