just four months...

To be in Africa is to realize a love for the earth- to look around you, to see elephants being elephants and wildebeest being wildebeest, and think, this used to be the world. The people who live here have such enormous respect for the purity of their environment- and they'll show it to you with such passion, such pride.
-Alan & Harriet Lewis, Overseas Adventure Travel

Four months from today I will set my feet down on African soil... after travelling further from home than I have ever been. Four months. And I don't mind admitting that my excitement has a bit fear rippling through it. Even though I have seen it in pictures and heard countless tales... I can't imagine that anything can actually prepare me for the magnitude. Because you never really know. But I want to experience it. Every bit of it. I want to see the sights and meet the people and I want to be unafraid. And so it is added to my prayers, along safety and good health for the journey (and leading up to it!)
Honestly... excitement and fear are not the only things I feel. I feel... a little guilty and spoiled. Because this is not a mission trip, it is a vacation. And although the travel company gives back so much through the Grand Circle Foundation, this really is a safari. When I read stories of others who are going strictly to lend their hands... that wave passes over me. And then I tell myself to get over it. Because I know that we will give in our own way. We will pack our suitcases as full as we are allowed, and come back with little more than a few souvenirs and memory cards full of photos. And full hearts brimming with memories that will last a lifetime.