Umbilical cord has been cut!

We are finally on our own!  Elder and Sister Bullock left this morning for Blantyre and I guess it is time to sink or swim. I has been wonderful to have them with us since last Thursday when we arrived here in Lilongwe, but we knew this day would eventually come and we would be on our own. We have learned much and kind of know our way around town, can shop, find the chapels, the Elder's apartments, we have the phone numbers of all the Elders, and some of the members.  All the mission #'s are in our phones, and we even know how to use them. (Almost).
We'll have to backtrack a bunch and catch everything up. WOW!!! It seems like years since we left home!
Our travel here went fairly smoothly even though it seemed like we were trying to get across the universe not just the world. On Monday night we flew from Dallas to London and I think that was the worst leg even if it wasn't the longest. There just is no way to get comfortable enough to sleep in economy in the back of an airplane. I actually got more than Elder Prete, I don't know if he got more than a few snatches. We were lucky enough to have an empty seat next to us even though the flight was pretty full. When we got to Heathrow in London we just found a quiet corner and stretched out as best we could and caught 40 winks. All day we kept watching the board to find out the gate we were supposed to leave from that evening, (the flight was listed all day and we were braced to run) but about 20 minutes before we were supposed to board it still wasn't up. Yikes! As you can well imagine, we were more than half an hour late leaving for Johannesburg. We were braced for another endless night in steerage but, much to our relief, we were only in 3rd class not 5th. We had way more leg room, our seats reclined a degree more, we had leg and foot rests and we were on the side not in the center section. Tender mercies!!! Can't say it was the best night's sleep but so much better than the night before.

In Johannesburg they had arranged for us to stay overnight in a hotel across from the hotel till our flight on Thursday morning. You'll see from the pictures that we got to go to the temple. We have to admit it was very hard to stay awake but so sweet to be there. It is a very small temple and there were just 11 or 12 of us in the session. We were so glad we got to go. It will probably be a couple of years before we get to go again.

Next morning we flew out for Lilongwe. Going through security in the Johannesburg airport was kind of funny. Keep in mind that we have now been through Calgary, Salt Lake, Dallas and London airports and, well, they found a little pair of children's scissors and our hole punch. The scissors they confiscated but the hole punch, once we finally found it in one of the myriad pockets in our computer bag, they let us keep. As we were waiting in line to board (the bus to take us to the runway to get on the plane, that is) there was a white couple ahead of us and we noticed a Canadian flag on their luggage too so we chatted with them. They are from Calgary and work with a medical group that operate 2 clinics here. On our flight we sat with an interesting fellow too. He is a white guy from England and he owns a water bottling company, the largest in Malawi, and he just happens to have 2 brothers who are members of the church. What are the chances of that!!! We weren't quite clear if he too was baptized at one time or not. Anyway, he lives here with his Canadian wife and two teenaged children. He was very very nice and told us lots of things about the country and the city. It was an extremely interesting flight.

And now we're here.
Even though we're not caught up I'm going to end here and start again on a new post.
Love you!!!

Elder & Sister Prete