You may not have realized it, but the road to Zambia leads through Boone, NC, or at least it does for me. I spent the past three days in North Carolina visiting with some of the members of Samaritan's Purse who are helping me get overseas, but unfortunately the Holiday Inn's evil empire prevented me from telling you about it while there. So now that I'm back in the freedom of the west (this is Clayton, NM) I can get you up to speed, on the many things I've learned, like what OCC stands for at SP (a good 15 minutes spent on deciphering acronyms) and how best to butcher an elephant for the meat if you have to (use an axe, although you're still not allowed to hunt them anymore in Zambia, so I doubt this will come up). I did have the opportunity to meet with Dr. Jim Foulkes, who was out at Mukinge for more years than I can possibly count, and had a great dinner with him and his wife.
For the way home, I got a copy of Sword and the Scalpel, a biography of Bob Foster, the missionary that started the hospital. The book takes an overwhelmingly rosy view of the missionary life, but I was struck by a line that his sister says early in the book: 'It seems like my life has been full of goodbyes.' Almost exactly the same thing was said by one of the missionaries in Rwanda when we were leaving as well, and I was struck by how transient so many of the relationships that you make are overseas, as people get transferred in and out, you move on to other things, or circumstances change. Another book recommended to me by one of my old residency classmates, The Dressing Station, ends with the author basically isolated and alone and moving back to England to have a more normal life after he'd travelled the world with all of these great adventures.
This is all to say, not that I'm dreading going overseas, quite the contrary, but that I'm grateful for all the friends and support that I have already. If you're reading this blog, you're probably already near and dear to my heart, and I thank God for all of you. And I can't wait for all the people that I'm going to meet along the way in Africa, too!
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