finally here!

WE MADE IT! I am typing this up as I lay in bed, about to recover from my journey and nap. The windows are (permanently) open and I can smell the smoke from the common practice of someone burning their trash as it is blown into my room. The last couple of days were somewhat of a blur, but I will hit the highlights!

On Saturday, I arrived at the airport accompanied by Dad, Melanie, and Amanda; and we lugged my 175 lbs of luggage up to the check in desk. Once my bags were checked, we sat down and were then joined by none other than Travis! He drove all the way from Sky Ranch with a cold to come see me off to Zambia! :) After about an hour of killing time, it was finally time for me to head through security and meet up with Cynthia and her kids! I said my goodbyes and went through security without a hitch! 30 minutes later, we were in line to board our plane. The flight was pretty uneventful.. watched a few movies and got about an hour of sleep, but that was about it.

Sunday morning in London, we arrived and went straight to our hotel room for our layover. I roomed with Claire, Cynthia’s oldest daughter, and we took showers and slept for about 5 hours or so. At around 4, we all met back up and went through the London security and then on to the Giraffe, a restaurant inside the airport. I ate nothing there, but instead waited to order my last Starbucks drink for the next two months. Finally, around 7, we boarded our flight to Lusaka.

On the flight, I (again) got very little sleep! However, as we began our descent into Zambia, we were greeted by the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. I know I said the same thing last year, but the sunrise I saw this morning blew that one out of the water. I could distinctly see every single color of the rainbow in that sunrise, they were these perfect ribbons of color just sitting on top of one another. It was incredible! When I saw it, a verse from the song, “You’re Beautiful” by Phil Wickham popped into my head and I was floored by the beauty of it all. The verse says, “I see your face in every sunrise, the colors of the morning are inside your eyes. The world awakens in the light of the dawn, it’s all proclaiming who you are, you’re beautiful.” The sunrise represented a tiny piece of just how beautiful our God is, and it blew me away. God is so beautiful, and so are the ways in which He works. It just really fueled the joy in my heart for what He’s going to do over the next eight weeks and got me so excited and expectant. I know my words aren’t at all doing it justice, but that sunrise was a beautiful representation of God’s heart and plans to come.

Anyway, I’m finally here and am so excited! It’s going to be a long, tough summer, but I know I’m going to get to see the Lord move in incredible ways and that will make it all worth it. I’m about to crash and take a nap, so that’s all for now.