A Week to Go...

Well, with a week remaining the reality of our departure rings pretty true. The last few days have been filled with dinners, speakers, hellos, goodbyes, frantic phone calls, and calming moments of solidarity. There are the normal last minute road bumps which always seem to arise, but nothing that we have not been able to overcome. We have gotten awesome donations of medicine, toys, and money which we will be able to take to the people of Nigeria. There seems to be a mix of nervousness and excitement in the air as our next week arrives. For the leaders who have been before, it will be a reunion of sorts with the people and emotions which they came to know so deeply and distinctly last summer. For others, it will be their first time their senses have experienced anything like this: the tastes of new and very different meals, the sight of small huts and crowded open air markets, those smells of humid air mixed with gasoline, that indescribable feeling deep in the heart.