Last E-mail

Hello Everyone! Well, this is our final email as we will leave the computer here in Lilongwe...First, we feel like we are fully recovered - minus a few bathroom issues here and there. Thanks for your prayers! We really feel like they have helped. For the last couple of days, we have been traveling and relaxing. We traveled to Lake Malawi and stayed at a little resort by the name of Carolina. It was not necessarily what we in the U.S. would deem a resort, but it was a luxury for us. The lake was beautiful and reminded us of home, staring across Lake Michigan. We met some other Americans at the resort. They were on a two month stint with Children of the Nations. Most of them were college students. We really enjoyed getting the chance to talk with a few Americans again and share our experiences with each other. They were encouraging to us in many ways. Our trip to and from the lake was another test of our patience. We traveled with Emmanuel in the Toyota LandCruiser. It is a fairly old vehicle but from what we have heard always reliable. However, we think we bring bad luck to SOM vehicles because we once again broke down. This time it was a tire but instead an overheating engine. We had to stop about every ten minutes to let the vehicle cool down and add water (we guess they don't use coolant here) to the engine. Nevertheless, water is not always a readily accessible commodity on the roads of Malawi, so there were a few times when we waited 30 or more minutes while someone went searching for water. We were impressed, however, at how many people stop to help you when you break down here in Malawi. There was one time that we had a crowd of twenty standing around watching us. We aren't sure if we were just a comical sight or what, but they were a big help in the end. After about 11 hours of car travel (when it should have taken 5), we made it back to Lilongwe. We are staying at St. John's again, and we are thankful because we think we got the luxury room at St. John's (compared to what we had last time). We are enjoying our last few days here and are trying to nurse our stomachs back to health before we travel. We fly out tomorrow around 1:20pm. We fly to Nairobi first and then on to Amsterdam. We will spend a few days in the Netherlands, checking out Nate's mother country, and then will head back to Holland, MI. We can hardly believe that our time is coming to an end, but we want to say thank you to all of you. Thank you for reading these emails, for praying for us, and for supporting us in so many tangible ways. We are so grateful for the wonderful support team we have had back in the U.S. We look forward to sharing more with you when we return. Check the blog later for some pictures! Blessings,Nate and Bekah