June 5th to June 23rd
Last fall, I decided that it would probably be a good idea for the twins to spend some time on a Humanitarian trip the following summer. Lelu went to Peru a few years ago with HEFY and so we looked at the trips they had to offer. We decided to steer clear of South America because of Zika and (mostly TT) decided on Mozambique, Africa. I also involved Chase’s mom in the planning for him to go too. I’ll be honest with you…I didn’t even know what part of Africa Mozambique was in. There’s a hierarchy based on age to signing up for these trips, and my kids are the youngest allowed. As I read through it, I found out if I signed up to be a parent volunteer I’d get one kid in for sure. The dates we picked were also going to be over my 50th birthday and I thought – YES I would much rather be focused on working hard and helping others than realizing my life is most likely half over (because I plan to live to exactly 100). I picked TT as my one kid since there were a lot more spots open to girls. That was a bad idea. Sadly, the girl’s spots filled up immediately and we were out of luck. Ari sat on the waiting list hoping someone would drop out but no one did.
TT and I got our shots, applied for our Visas, took our yellow fever pills (I recommend getting the injection instead), I went to one training, talked to the trip guides on the phone one time and blindly packed up and got on a plane to go across the globe not really knowing what to expect. We all met up in LA. 18 kids, one male and one female trip guide, one mom and one dad. Here’s our most awesome group meeting up at LAX.
We climbed onto a Virgin Atlantic 787 with cool purple disco lights headed for London first. If you fly coach, I highly recommend choosing an exit row. There is so much more room. 
ELEVEN HOURS LATER – Hangin out in the Heathrow airport getting to know each other. There were kids from Utah, California, Las Vegas, Montana and Texas. We had two kids leaving on missions both for the Philippines this summer and they didn’t know each other before. The tall guy is “the dad” who got nicknamed “uncle Matt”, he was from the Ogden area. His wife’s name is Kristin, spelled the same way. Two of the girls got mission calls while we there and both of them to different parts of California. I loved all the coincidences – it tells me there are no coincidences just reassurances we were all where we should be.
ANOTHER ELEVEN HOURS LATER – we arrived in Johannesburg
And climbed onto a bus for another three hours..
I have over 100 photos that I’ve narrowed it down to and I’m very tempted to put them all on my blog. The kids all turn over their phones to the trip leaders at the airport and were officially on a digital detox. Therefore, I was in charge of updating the instagram page every day so I took a lot of photos. Everyone else took photos too and we shared on a google drive, so I ended up downloading a bunch more and adding to my own,` I have over 600 photos of this trip, so only 100 is a big sacrifice. This will add a few more pages to my printed book and I feel bad if my kids and posterity get too bored with a trip that just included me and TT, so …….I’m just going to apologize now to my future grandkids and my kids that didn’t go with us.
We spent 3 days in South Africa having fun before heading up to Mozambique to begin working.
First, we visited with a local tribe, who fed us fried worms. They live very primitively with a chief and their families in huts and don’t speak much English, only their tribal language.
mmmmm don’t those worms look tasty? 
WELCOME TO AFRICA…..this sign was inside the village fence.
Our day started every morning with scripture study and then a small discussion about what we read, breakfast and then off to our adventures in South Africa. This was in the yard at our little hotel place. 
This is Josh and Kaylie – our amazing trip guides. Josh served his mission in Mozambique and Kaylee speaks Portuguese (the language of Mozambique) and lives in Portugal. Our trip was the FIRST EVER to Mozambique with HEFY. These two were truly inspiring and cool people to spend so much time with. 
We went to Kruger National Park to see the native animals and then the next morning on a sunrise safari. 
This was our bus that we spent a lot of hours on getting to know each other. 
It’s winter in Africa and South Africa was very chilly especially at night. 
TRULY A SUNRISE SAFARI. We got up very early in the morning and climbed into jeeps to see if we could spot some awesome animals. 
TT’s favorite was the ostrich – I do not really know why – I think he wanted to ride one?
These are called impalas – like the car – and they were everywhere. A lot of good food for “the many cats” who must have been too well fed to show themselves. It made me a little sad since I really wanted to see a lion, but we saw some super cool creatures.
Just some creepy vultures hanging out in a creepy tree
Baby elephant
I love this photo
And this one..
Pumba?
These monkeys were all over the lunch place we stopped and were very mischievous little things. If your back was turned they’d steal anything from you. TT had his camera hooked on his wrist sitting at a table and one tried to steal it from him. A few of them actually chased Chase. Adorable little naughty monkeys though.
I couldn’t get over these birds, seriously! They kind of look like evil villains in a birdy super-hero movie.
Giraffes are just so incredible to watch.
After the safari ..the very same day we headed over to suit up for “gecko-ing” down the Sabie river. This included jumping off a 30 foot cliff into possible hippo and crocodile infested water. We had two guides that went ahead of us actually checking for hippos and crocs. Plus we rode in the back of these trucks on the highway and then four-wheeled it down to the river. Our guides told us later that HEFY insurance doesn’t allow any cliff jumping over 9 feet …..um being the first trip ever we got to be the guinea pigs…..the next four groups did not jump off a 30 foot cliff. And much to TT’s absolute shock and assurances to everyone around him that I would never jump (since he thinks I am a big chicken) I jumped off of that cliff! I have video to prove it. Three people in our group could not bring themselves to make the leap and had to scramble down boulders to get to where the rest of us were. I may have earned some street cred that I might not be all that he thinks that I am.
This was the second jump on the river..I am honestly surprised no one got hurt, there were boulders and rapids and waterfalls and many wrong ways to go into whirlpools (I had to be saved from nearly entering every one of them) This is me jumping
That is TT jumping in the photo above. He loved this adventure!! I lived through this adventure in order to tell about it. I’m actually being pushed off this rock into those rapids
The next day we climbed back on our bus and drove eight hours to Mozambique. I think we all caught up on our sleep on that bus ride.