6 days and counting...

I feel as though I can finally breath, even if it is only for a few days. The end of the semester was hectic and stressful but now that it is over my life is slightly less stressful and I can concentrate on South Africa and China. I say slightly less stressful because I am the kind of person who will always stress at least a little bit over what I don't know. In South Africa and China i don't know what to expect. I don't know if there are things that I should be bringing that I will forget or if there are things that I will think that I need and will bring but end up not using. I think in someways though this is just to distract myself from the fact that in less than one week I am leaving home for pretty much five weeks. That is the longest time I have ever spent away from my family. A lot of people have questioned my summers at camp as being longer but at camp I was only an hour away from home and had that option of visiting. In South Africa and China the closest I will get will be skype. Even then it's not the same, I am going to miss times like tonight when my entire family was together for dinner, with the addition of three of my brothers friends, and we spent a lot of the time laughing and having fun.

In other news a couple weeks ago my church agreed to let me have a door offering after the two services on mother's day. In the end I was able to raise about $1,250 from that offering!!! With the addition of the money that my family and friends have added to my total i have raised a total of $2,320 for Open Arms!!!! That is equivalent to over 46 food parcels! I am so blessed to have such generous people in my life. These people have all expressed joy at hearing about my opportunity to travel and the desire to hear about what I experienced when they next see me. I have even been invited to hold not one but two forums between the services at my church so that there is time to hear about each of my trips.

Regardless of my fears and anxieties, I am so excited to go and I cannot believe that I will be in Cape Town, South Africa in a matter of 7 short days!!