an abbreviated and yet still too detailed account of my trip

Hullo friends!

I don’t have a whole whole lot to say, first because I’m really tired and make very little sense anyway, and second because I have yet to get a good start on unpacking. My room is A MESS.

But I wanted to update you on life!

So…Tuesday: went to Clinton, hung out with Aly, Liz, and Ammie. Saw lots of other awesome people we love. It was excellent.

Wednesday: slept late, had lunch with our families, and went to the airport! Thankfully Jan Harper is amazing and met us there with things we needed, and then basically got us through the gates. Things were just kinda crazy there, but after roughly 2 hours of working on it, we got checked in! Then we went back to board and found out our plane was delayed around an hour. Which made it highly likely we would miss our next flight, which was the last one out of DFW to London that night, which would make us miss our flight to Joburg, which would basically ruin our lives. Thankfully, friends prayed, God is good, and we made it! Everything worked out! Yay! So we made it onto the flight to DFW, and the flight to London, and after a restless night on the plane, we arrived in London-Heathrow tired and yucky and confused…but wait…that actually happened on

Thursday! : arrived at Heathrow, brushed our teeth, found a happy, semi-quite place with comfy chairs, and took a nap.  Then we ate bagels and bought 2 of those neck pillow thingies to ensure that our next all-nighter flight was a little easier on us. Then we sat and stared until we could get on the plane. So we flew all night, took some Dramamine, got a little more sleep, and somewhere around 6:30 am on Friday we arrived in Joburg. Which is like 11:30 pm Mississippi time.

Friday! Arrived in Johannesburg when the sun was just beginning to turn the horizon the most fantastic shades of pink, orange, and purple. It was absolutely gorgeous. My first African sunrise!  We then met up with Katie, who is now living with us, and ate a muffin. And brushed our teeth again. And then we just sat and stared. OH! and we met this church group from Montgomery, AL who know Jeremy Kyser and the whole thing was just hillarious.  They flew to Lilongwe with us. Speaking of flying...this is when the exhaustion began to overtake me. So by the time we got on the plane around 10:00 am here, I was struggling to function. I was asleep before take off and woke up just in time to land and fill out the immigration card. Seriously…I can’t remember the last time I was that tired.

So, a bit later, we landed in Lilongwe, where Kellen Hiroto helped us through baggage claim and customs stuff, then led us out to meet his wife Becca as well as the famous Jill Kyser! Yay!!! Excitement was very present, and very understated, due to the fact that I was only like 60% awake. Bus ride to campus was an adventure. There is basically no fuel in Malawi so they had to siphon fuel into the bus from other cars to be able to come pick us up. So the driver (Noah, I think) would randomly turn off the bus so we could just coast down the hills. LOVE it! The country is really beautiful, even in the middle of the dry season, where things are much browner than green. But I like it.  The landscape is just really different than what you’d see back home. But really alike in some ways (like all the brown grass…)  Anywho…we arrived at campus and there were some amazing ABC students cleaning our house for us, and we got to start unpacking and shower and stuff. And meet lots of people. And then they fed us dinner tonight. And we met lots more people. And clearly I’m getting tired and need to stop. But later you should remind me to tell you about Aly locking herself in the bathroom.

Congrats if you made it through this! Miss you folks already, but can’t wait for what God has in store here. More news from Malawi soon! Love ya!