It was another cool morning with a low temperature of 59F.

Klaus and his family arrived back in Swaziland yesterday evening from two months of support raising in Germany.  They are taking the day to get their home organized after being away.

With most of the other technical staff from Singing Pines off on vacation, Tobi was the only one left to take us to the transmitting site.  He had a Field Council meeting first thing in town, so Mark and I had to wait for that to finish to caught our ride with Tobi.

We arrived at the site in time for lunch.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Samuel Masilela still working with the outside workers.  Samuel is the only person left with TWR Swaziland that has been serving here for more than 40 years.  We had expected him to retire over a year ago.

This is a photo from 1974 is of the Swazi workers that helped with construction of the transmitter site buildings and antennas. The young man closest to the camera, wearing the orange shirt, is Samuel Masilela who is still working at the TWR Swaziland site in October 2014.  The foreman, Titus Thele (standing) led Samuel to faith in Christ in those early days.

The afternoon was spent catching up on the status of things at the transmitter site since we left from our last trip in July 2013.

About an hour before departure at the end of the day, the first transmitter coming on the air for evening broadcasts was tripping off with arcs being sensed by an optical arc detector.  Eventually, the problem was visually isolated to an arcing VHF capacitor.  This was replaced with one that I had just brought in my baggage from Elkhart.  The problem was rectifieded and we left for the weekend.

We were scheduled to have supper with Tobi and his family at 6 pm, but with the transmitter issues this had to be delayed until Tobi could get us back.  The main course, German noodles with chicken and gravy, was very good.  We had a good evening with Tobi, Britta and their two young boys.

The high temperature today was 72 F.  We hadn’t expect it to be so cool in Swaziland in the spring.

As we left for the 8am staff meeting in the office this morning, the temperature was 59 F. Afterwards the meeting we were able to obtain some local currency for use in Swaziland.

Staff meeting is held almost every week, but today was the one, or two, day per month that site personnel have the rest of the day off after the meeting to handle personal business.  This allowed us to show Mark around the town of Manzini for the day, stopping at one of the local cafes for a quick lunch.

The view of the back of Mkhaya Bella, the place in which we are staying while in Swaziland.

Jean brought us a shepherd’s pie casserole, with side dishes, for our supper.  Their family is also heading to South Africa for vacation for a few days.

The temperature reached a high of 72 F today and another lightning storm came through this evening cooling us off more.  Once again, the power stayed on and a small amount of rain fell.  Swaziland could definitely use more rain before the spring planting season.

We all managed to sleep well, woke up about 8 am, made our own breakfast in the lodge kitchen and obtained some local currency (~R11 (rands) equals $1).

The Toyota Corolla that we are using — note the steering wheel on the right-hand side.

Stavropoulos’ have let us use their Toyota Corolla, which was being stored in the garage at the office, while they are serving at TWR in Benin (West Africa).  We loaded our bags into the car for the drive to Swaziland and spent our first rands for snack items at the bakery next to the TWR office before finding our way onto the dual carriageway (freeway).

About half of the road going to Swaziland ais now freeway.  Most of the way, including a lot of the two lane roads, the speed limit is 120 kph (75 mph).  We usually held our speed to around 100 kph (62 mph), as there are so many pedestrians and really slow vehicles on the roads.

Although all the controls on the Toyota Corolla are the same as on our Toyota Echo, they are on the opposite side of the steering wheel, since the driver sits on the right-hand side of the car.  So for several days instead of signaling for a turn, the windscreen (windshield) wipers would go before realizing our mistake!

About half way to Swaziland is a great ‘oasis’ called ALZU Petroport — http://www.alzupetroport.co.za/ — , which has a petrol (gas) station, food court and grocery store.  We stopped here for a rest stop and to pick up something for lunch.

View from the ‘loo’ at ALZU! (View while standing in the mens’ room — Virginia says there is a similar view from the sinks in the ladies’ room!).  There are rhino, buffalo, zebra and ostrich here.

We fairly quickly cleared immigration twice at the Swaziland border — once to leave South Africa and again to enter Swaziland.

Since we arrived fairly early in the afternoon, we decided to stop at the Ngwenga Glass Factory — http://www.ngwenyaglass.co.sz/ — only a couple miles past the border gate.  This is the first time that we have seen the glass factory in full production.  The furnaces were fired up, with around 30 people making various glass products and zipping around the factory floor with red hot glass on the end of metal rods.  We marveled that no one got burned with all the scurrying past each other in close quarters, nor with no one wearing gloves as they manipulated the metal rods with red hot glass on the end.  We spent almost two hours there, mostly watching the various products being made.

We arrived at the TWR missionary compound, Singing Pines, just before sunset and were given the keys to the guest house, Mkhaya Bella (translation — Forest Bell Bush). www.plantbook.co.za/plantindex/138-Mackaya-bella

Front view of the two bedroom Mkhaya Bella — note the clothes drier in the left foreground and the tall pines at the top center and top right of the photo — hence the name Singing Pines (produced by frequent winds) for the compound.

Ingrid brought a main dish of lasagna, plus side dishes, for our supper.  Since school is out for a long weekend, their family was busy packing up for a vacation in South Africa.

The Swaziland weather welcomed us with a typical spring lightening storm and accompanying booming thunder just after dark.  Fortunately, the power stayed on.  The temperatures are much cooler than anticipated — maybe the upper 60s F.  We were told last week that it had been in the mid 90s F.

Our flight arrived in Amsterdam almost two hours late. Fortunately, our original layover was to have been a little over 3 hours, so just made it to the departure gate in time for the security checks began. (In Amsterdam, security checks are done at each gate rather than at the entrance to each concourse.)

Ready to leave the gate in Amsterdam

Our flight for Johannesburg left at about 11 am. The only time we could see the ground below was a view of the Sahara desert – sand for hundreds of miles around!

We arrived at the Johannesburg airport right on schedule at 9:15 pm and made it through immigration in record time. There was some type of camera in the immigration line that was used  for screening for ebola. We had to take off our glasses for that. We picked up all our bags and passed through the customs area even more quickly – no one was even there to check baggage!

Gottfried and Neal we there to met us after we went through customs. They had driven the mission Toyota Condor which had plenty of room for both us and our luggage. Mark got his first experience of riding in a vehicle on the left side of the road, although we think he was too tired to notice.  Within 15 minutes, we were at the TWR office in Kempton Park and settling into two rooms of the lodge for visitors located on part of the second floor.  After about 36 hours with little sleep, we were fast asleep a few seconds after our heads hit the pillow!

We drove to Chicago to catch our first KLM flight to Amsterdam departing at 4:10 pm . Allan accompanied us (Virginia, Mark and me) to drive our car back to Elkhart. The amazing thing was that all seven of our suitcases just fit into the trunk of little Toyota Echo!

The flight from Chicago to Amsterdam was on one of KLM’s Boeing 747s.

We passed through security quite easily and quickly.  We boarded the plane on time, only to sit for two hours at the gate while a mechanical problem was corrected. We were told that it was one of the air conditioning systems and that one of the engine housings had to opened to fix it.

Finally, we were on our way a little over two hours late!