Our Last Full Day…

Hard to believe we’ll be leaving Africa tomorrow…  On one hand it seems like we just got here, on the other hand we’ve been longing for home for an awfully long time…  We’ve learned a lot while being here…  We’ve been a part of a lot…  We are grateful for the things that we’ve seen and the things that we’ve gleaned…

To Africa we have given the work of our hands, to us she has given us her heart…  As much as we’ve been a part of affecting the lives of future generations, we have been affected by the experience of just being here that much more… 

Our hearts are different than they were two weeks ago…  How can they not be after what we’ve seen and heard and observed?  As soon as you step your foot into Africa you know you’re in a different land…

We’ve learned that Nigeria is a land of contrasts…  John Fette was the first to observe this…  The stark contrast between the rainy season and the dry season…  A land with abundant oil resources, but a line two miles long to fill your gas tank…  A land of friendly greetings and conversations, but with divisions so deep that they’ll burn homes and places of worship when provoked…  Nomadic tribes with cell phones…  A democracy where corruption is expected…

Our last full day was a day of reflection…  It started out with a morning hike at a place called Cherry Hills…  We drove across town through traffic, over crazy roads, and through a gravel pit to get to our destination…  And when we got there, it looked like this:

So we set out to conquer Mt. Claustrophobius!

It was a different kind of hike…  Over boulders, squeezing through tight spaces, under gigantic rocks whose only supports were each other…  The trip was, needless to say, precarious…  Here are pictures of our trek up, around and through the rock mountain…

Once we got to the top we had some time to ponder the view, our trip, our experiences, and our thoughts…

My thoughts drifted toward expansion and contraction…  In a sense, our world has shrunk – amazing to think that on one day you can be on one continent, and on the next day you can be halfway around the world on another continent and in another culture…  But in another sense our world has greatly expanded because of the experiences we’ve shared…  I’m sure it has felt this way with any great voyage…  And I’m sure it has felt different every time…  Almost like we’ve tapped into something holy – this expansion and contraction of perspectives and journeys, of wonder and knowledge, of discovery and understanding…  It is the story of history…  It is the song of our hearts…  It is the breath of God…

After the hike back down to the bottom, we grabbed some lunch and headed back to where we’re staying…  Since I don’t think I’ve ever shown a picture of the house, here is what it looks like –

The guys met for a while, and I went to grab some more video footage…

We spent the evening enjoying another wonderful dinner…  It’s bittersweet to be writing this now, knowing that the end of a great trip is coming…  But like I said earlier, we are missing home and glad to be heading there…