As many of you have heard, we were supposed to fly out on April 23rd for the States to be back for my son’s wedding and to also raise extra support for Camp Rhino. Unfortunately, because of the lockdown, our tickets were canceled. We originally decided we were just going to wait it out and hope to fly out in May, but it looks like South Africa may be shut down longer than that. Some are saying it will be shut down until July and some are even saying it will be longer.

With that possibility, we have decided to go ahead and fly out on Friday while there is still an option. The American Embassy is offering a charted flight for all Americans, and it’s the last flight out of South Africa. That will put us back in the States on Saturday.

With the thoughts of being locked down here for a couple of months and then going to the States for a couple of months afterward, we decided it would be best for the ministry just to go back now. Our hopes are that we’ll only be back in the States until July and then back to South Africa after the lockdown is over. That should only put us away from our churches for 3 months versus 5 months if we waited for the lockdown to be over to leave.

Please be praying for the ministries here. We are not allowed to have services, but we are trying to do an outreach that will allow us to reach out to our communities. We have raised money to purchase 2 kg bags of rice, that we can attach a church invitation to along with a Gospel tract to leave at peoples’ doors. Our pastors want to try to continue reaching out despite not being able to interact with people face to face.

There will still be 12 people staying at Camp Rhino that our Pastors, Khona Nohamba and Mvumelwano Johnson, will be overseeing. We have 4 teenagers from our church along with 2 interns and 2 full-time maintenance workers that will be staying on campus.

Also please be praying for our extra expenses. We lost the original tickets and are not sure if we will get our money back. We purchased the tickets through Travelocity, and right now they are saying we will only get an airline credit versus a refund. The flights through the embassy also cost a lot more than normal. For my family of 5, it’s going to cost us about $8000 to get back to the States. Pray we can get our money back, instead of an airline credit, and also pray we can get the other paid off as soon as possible.