Jono's News

Well I left Asuncion at midday Saturday and flew to Santiago, Chile. I was on the same flight as a girl that Frank and Jo knew who is going to NZ for the year. We both had about 8 hours in Santiago so we booked into the Lan Chile lounge, watched a DVD, wandered the airport and generally just chilled out.

I then flew to Miami. I arrived about 5:30 Sunday morning and after stowing my luggage in sage storage jumped on a bus to head downtown Miami. Now in my mind Florida is warm all the year round. I have my T-shirt and shorts on, but I started to get worried when more people got on the bus and were all dressed in jackets, beanies and gloves.

I got downtown and there was a cold wind ripping through me, the place is empty as its about 7 am on Sunday morning.

Then I saw a big sign saying Central Baptist Church, I thought, I'd love to go to a Southern Baptist Church with a Black Choir and everything, I'll go see what time the services are and maybe it will be a bit warmer anyhow.

As I'm reading the Billboard, a guy walks past and says "You can get a nice warm cup of coffee just round here, follow me". So I follow him and found myself in the queue of homeless people lining up for coffee and donuts, he then said I could get a shower and exchange my clothes for clean warm ones - I'VE BEEN MISTAKEN FOR A HOMELESS PERSON!!

Oh well, I play along, and next he says to come next door for church because if you stay for church they give you lunch afterwards (at about 9:30am).

So I stayed. Church was great and God ministered to me. The sermon was about the God Who Sees and the text was the story of Hagar being kicked out by Sarah.

After that I lined up for lunch and got my slop on a plate and then sat with Eddie Murphy and Morgan Freeman for lunch! Well it was two black guys, the older with the greying beard who said in a deep slow voice, "you can call me Dido", he didn't see much, that was Morgan Freeman. Eddie Murphy didn't give me his name but he had the little moustache the protruding lips and he never shut up, he was calling out to everyone and trying to crack jokes. I was inwardly laughing at my situation.

After most of them had gone I went up to the guy who was sorta running the outreach and gave him $20 bucks and talked about their outreach.

From the homeless project to misso in Ukraine in less than a week, our God is a miracle worker!!

Then I went to Bayside and bought a brand spanking new Minolta Dimage 7hi (digital camera) that took quite some time. Now I have to learn to use it. It has lots of bells and whistles. (I left my old camera in Paraguay with Jo as her one broke down about a year ago)

Then I flew to London, had a couple hours and flew to Kiev, I slept the whole way from London to Kiev, I didn't feel too well and was dead tired.

I arrived in Kiev to find that my luggage didn't make it. Who knows where it is, I'm following the procedures to get it back but really hope that it makes it.

So I left the Kiev airport at about zero degrees in T-shirt and shorts. Man you can go for about 2 minutes and then it starts to kill, your whole body starts to feel cold as if you have been standing in the walk in freezer for too long.

Well when I get to work out my digital camera I'll have some photos to share with you

More later