Pre Zambia

Hello friends!

When people ask me how my week has been, the words that come to mind are “crazy” “emotional” “life changing” or “surreal”. In the past ten days I have said goodbye to my friends and family in Canada, said hello to a new group of people during my training in Akron Pennsylvania, waited in the philly airport for 8+ hours, and traipsed around London England during our day lay over. But now as I sit on my last flight to Lusaka Zambia and watch the airplane symbol on the Flight Tracker in front of me fly across the Mediterranean Sea, I can’t help but think to myself “is this really happening?!”

When me and Tiffany (my other Zambian SALTer) let out squeals from our seats (that was probably not appretiated by our fellow passengers…) as we rose from North American soil, we were hit with the reality that after months and months of preparation, THIS was the moment we had been waiting for. And the crazy thing was we actually felt at peace with it.

Maybe its because we haven’t grasped fully what we are getting ourselves into yet, or maybe its because we have prepared so much that our hearts have been ready for this on this new lifestyle for a while. Either way, we are both blessed with a sense of peace as we head into new territory.

I feel like my life in the past couple months has been consumed by preparations for this year, so you can imagine the sense of relief I feel to soon have an accurate picture of my mind of what living in Zambian culture is like- one that is a lot more real to me than the images I have created in my mind. One that has people and stories attached to them. One with raw emotions and personality to them.

I feel so blessed to have the week of training that I had last week. Although it was mentally and physically exhausting, I come out of it with a better grasp of the highs and lows that I can expect next year. It affirmed my passion for working together as a global community, with SALTers (going to international counties) and IVEPers (from international countries coming to Canada) creating unity that surpasses race, age, background or experience, and found beauty in cross cultural experience. Some of my favorite memories from that week were the chances I had to pray, sing, dance, and be in community with people from around the world. There was something very unifying about that.

Prayers will be needed as I step foot onto Zambian soil, and begin to embark on this new adventure!