Safe and sound and extra sweaty..

Hello to friends and family!!!
I am here in Abengorou, Ivory Coast. I arrived yesterday evening in Abidjan and we spent the night there and then spent the morning and early afternoon running errands in the city before we headed north to Abengorou which is where I am now. I arrived without any problems and with all my luggage, praise the Lord. The trip was long and somewhat lonely but overall not too bad. My airport switch in Paris was not that big of a deal and besides waiting in a huge line to check in my luggage, everything was fine. Much to my dissapointment I was not able to spot the Eiffel tower either. Anyway, I arrived in Abidjan and have never been so happy to see a white man's face as I was when I saw Dr. Bledsoe waiting for me. We had dinner and then went to their guest house in Abidjan and spent the night. This morning (I woke up at four am and couldnt go back to sleep) we woke up and went into town. Dr. Bledsoe had to go to the bank and run some other errands. Casey (another intern who arrived the same time as I did) and I waited in the car for him most of the day. It was there that Casey and I quickly learned that Ivory Coast is a very, very, very humid place. The sweating started early this morning and is finally subsiding now that I am sitting under a fan and have had a cold shower. Anyway, there is much more that I could say about my first day in the Ivory Coast but I will spare all the details for more face to face conversations. I just wanted to let everyone know that I have arrived safely. I am staying with a missionary lady who is not much older than I am and she has four other girl interns with her now. So needless to say I will not have to worry about being lonely. Tomorrow should be a good day. I will keep you all posted on my time here and the new things I discover everyday.
Peace!!!!

I should be sleeping...

It is 12:40am. I should be asleep right now, but the anxiousness in my heart keeps me awake. Tomorrow I am leaving for the Ivory Coast. The purpose of this blog is for friends and family to keep up to date with what is going on with me during my time there. But tonight I felt the need to voice my thoughts out into the blogging world. I have a hundred different emotions surging through me right now. I am scared but excited, anxious but at peace and nervous but confident. I am a walking contradiction right now it seems. I am scared about being lonely, about traveling by myself to a place that is completely unfamiliar. I am scared that what I witness there will be too much that I wont have the words to know what to say or the emotions to know how to express. I am scared about being uncomfortable but at the same time excited about being uncomfortable, for it is in our discomfort, I believe, that we learn the greatest lessons. All of these feelings I realize could be me just being over dramatic. It wouldnt be the first time. But I cant help but think that this trip will be a life changing one. Maybe it wont, maybe it will. I dont know. I do know that I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to go. I have no idea what I will end up doing or seeing, or who I will meet. I do know that for whatever reason, God in all his sovereignty has allowed me to go there at this time. His purposes are not clear. But I am going... I guess for now that is enough for me to know, to understand. That he has a purpose I do know for sure. I pray only that I will be his vessel in whatever way he chooses to use me. Tomorrow.. I will embark fears and hopes all tangled up inside me with the prayer that when I return I will not be the same but changed... Changed, I pray, into more of the image of the Jesus Christ. Because, in my heart of hearts, that is what I truly desire.