Kenya tomorrow!

Well, the time has come. After a month of anticipation and preparation, I'm going back to Kenya for a three month internship with Transformed International. My plane takes off tomorrow at 6:15pm for London where I'll meet up with most of the other interns and people on the fall team for TI. We'll arrive in Nairobi, Kenya on Wednesday night. Then comes an eight hour bus ride from Nairobi to Kitale. After all the travel, I'll finally be back in the place that I found myself... where I discovered who I really am, what I love to do and who I desire to be.

I'll be honest and say that I am a little nervous. It's not something you do every day... live in a third world country in Africa for three months. I know it's what I'm meant to be doing and it's what I want to be doing, but is it ever what I thought I'd be doing? Not at all.

Six months ago, if you asked me what I'd be doing right now, on this day, I'd say that I would be freshly moved into an apartment on top of a sandwhich shop on Main Street in Kutztown. I would be starting classes tomorrow and most likely be... tired... from the night before. Six months ago, if you told me I would be spending an entire semesters worth of time in Kenya, I would have told you that I wish that could be true but that I already signed a lease for my apartment and already planned out my classes for the semester so there's no way I'll be going to Africa. The truth is though that I never saw myself living in that apartment. I couldn't imagine it in the way that my roommates were imaging it. I wasn't excited about it. A part of me that I never talked about was dreading it, fearing it, and wishing I could avoid it all together. I knew I would never be happy at Kutztown, living the way I was living.

The best thing that ever happened to me was also the worst.

It provided me with a way out. It provided me with a way back to God and ultimately back to happiness. It destroyed me. It broke me. It SAVED me.

Now here I am, six months later, packed and ready to go to Kenya for three months. Packed and ready for my life to change even more. Packed and ready for an experience of a lifetime!

The things that got me to this place were not pretty. I wandered a long time in the darkness before I could get here and it took the biggest regret of my life to launch me back into the arms of Jesus. I'm not proud of who I was or how I acted, but I am proud of who I am and what I'm now doing. I'm not the same person I was six months ago. I know that's hard for some people to understand or believe and I hope that the people I hurt can forgive me for what I did to them. I was wrong. I was foolish. I was selfish. And I'm so glad to be as far away from my old life as possible.

So... now it's time to stop procrastinating and get some last minute things done!

I'll be keeping up with my blog while I'm in Kenya so keep checking back for updates!! :)