Hailey, Maddie, & Syd on top of their hotel in Dubai during a dust storm
Here's the group email from their group organizer:
We are here! All safe, happy, healthy in our "manor house" in Waithaka. The kids are all downstairs having their swahili lesson. They have been amazing and we have truly felt so blessed in every step. Matt and Sara arrived safely last night and connected to get their ride out to the house. Our group flights were delayed by 2 hours from LAX, which made for a 18.5 hour flight, arriving at the Dubai hotel at 4 a.m. Silly me, I thought the kids would want to sleep, but there were all night card games, early morning swims and roof top viewing. The weather report in Dubai was 113 degrees and "dust", we had never seen "dust" listed as a weather condition, but indeed, the city was covered in it, thick dust blocked most of our view. At 4: 30 a.m., we were awakened by a city wide broadcast from the prayer towers to come to prayers. The tower blasts went off again at 5 a.m., I don't know if that was to wake up anyone who had fallen back asleep, or if they have prayers at both those times. We had a great breakfast buffet at the hotel and made it to the airport in plenty of time this morning. It was a 45 minute walk in the airport to our terminal which would have been fine, but we all had so much carry on baggage. Your kids all jumped in and helped each other carry bags, then I discovered the magic of luggage carts and scurried through the airport passing them out to the kids along the way. My 3 main concerns were 1. getting through the first check point with our evisas. Sure enough, then stopped our first 16 year old and said the evisas were required for anyone born in 1999 or earlier, regardless of their current age. This would have applied to 10 of our group. Surprisingly, when I went and pled our case, they waved us through, no big deal.....miracle #1!
miracle #2 Our group was not stopped or questioned about the contents of our suitcases, we never even had to show the letter
miracle #3 They fit our group of 30 passengers, and 78 suitcases/backpacks, into a 20 passenger bus to transport us to our home! AND we saw a girraffe and a Giant Ostrich off the side of the road along the way!
I challenged the kids this morning to all sit next to someone new, get to know them, and introduce them to the group. They loved it, and already are all bonding. As far as I can tell, everyone is feeling connected, happy, healthy, and VERY VERY TIRED. It is quite cold here, @50 degrees, which is good because it means NO MOSQUITOs. Rebecca Olsen is giving our devotional tonight, tomorrow morning Izzo, our program leader here, said he is coming to do a morning "prayer" with us for an hour, so we are interested to see what that is. After that we will do our orientation and get to work!
We have Wifi, so you will probably be hearing from your kids. I will do my best to send a daily update.
Thanks again for your prayers and entrusting your kids to us,
Mindy
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