Bid farewell to my parents and sisters earlier :') Now waiting to catch the long flight to Johannesburg!!! It's strange to think how long I've been waiting for this day to come, but now that it's here, I myself am not quite 'there' yet. In the midst of it all though, I am so, SO thankful to God for every opportunity and for taking me this far. Crazy days ahead!

That was a post I made before I took off. Now after nearly forty hours of travel, transit - through Perth and Johannesburg - and talking with different people along the way, I am finally here! For real, it's unreal.

While on the long flights, I had the opportunity to really reflect and pray and journal about what's been going on in my life recently, all the strange coincidences  that really aren't coincidences at all - because they so specifically match the prayers I've been praying and the opportunities I've been seeking!

Through all this, I thank God. For His grace, his mercy, his counsel, his direction, his acceptance, his strength, and most transformative and unchanging of all, his love.

As I bumped along the dusty, pothole-riddled roads to the missions guesthouse in northern Harare, I felt captivated by the strangeness of everything. It was exactly as I expected, but a tad worse and then at some points a tad better. So I feel sucked into this vortex of strange feelings that aren't really feelings. Maybe it is just my mind and eyes taking in the sights and sounds and smells of a world so unlike my own. Maybe it's because I feel so tired that I can't grasp everything at once and yet make sense of it all. I feel overwhelmed by the simplicity - but it's also like being stuck in some time warp. I have to stop comparing what I am seeing now with what I have gotten accustomed to in Australia. Perhaps all you can do is this:  you just take it in, silently, with awe, with uncertainty, but never with fear. I know that in every single step and leg of the journey, I am not alone. God is with me. I trust that.

Anyhow, I am unbelievably exhausted now, but here's a quick cool story: on the flight from Jo'burg, I 'happened' to sit beside a lovely white Zimbabwean couple, Bruce and Sue Douglas, who soon revealed that they were living, farming, maintaining a shop and butcher as well as ministering to villagers in the rural north. For years, they've been taking their fishing boat along Lake Kariba to visit villages and build relationships with the rural folk. They shared some truly inspiring stories and invited me to stay at their farmhouse, meet their adopted kids, spend a few days round Christmastime so I can meet the people!!! Honestly, I hadn't even landed in Zim yet and I was already meeting such God-sent folk :') I'm mind-blown.

Before I crash into bed and completely zonk out, let me just end this update with a deeply thankful sigh and three equally deep and real words that make up a true  significance in my life:

God

is

good.

(Maybe let's add three more..)

So

SO

good!