It Was a Very Good Year

Laughter. Antics. Eating. Discoveries. Cleaning out. Contemplating. Beauty. Baking. Fun. Journaling. Hiking. Memories. Trying new things. Mangos. Finishing tasks. Pictures. Shenanigans. Cats. Family. I've been trying squish everything I possibly can into my last few golden days here in crazy Cameroon. I've never been so torn between two places and two lives, unless of course you count the day I left America to come here. I wish I could go to the States with the Jacksons for three weeks, then come right back with them to spend the summer here! (Haha but I'm afraid if I did that, my dear family would kill me.) I know for sure that I will come back – this place has left too deep a mark in my heart to forget – but I wish I knew when. And I wish it was soon. Of course my emotions have fluctuated drastically, as they always do; just a month ago I couldn't wait to leave. But now I know I'll be saying goodbye to people and places I've come to love, and it is just dreadful. Goodbyes are the worst, no matter where you are and where you're going.

This year has changed me, that's for sure. I'm nervous about going back a different person and having to readjust to the life I led when I was someone else. I'm comfortable here, and, strange as it may sound, it's going to be a-whole-nother (how do you even write that?) round of culture shock moving back home. I don't know what I'm going to say when people ask me how Africa was... how on earth do you sum up the most intense, different, adventuresome and life-altering ten months of your life in a few sentences? I'd love to answer any very specific questions you have, though. Just saying.

Thank you, each and every one of you, for allowing, enabling, and encouraging me to have this awesome adventure. Your prayers, gifts, letters, packages, and thoughts have all meant so much, and I really owe it to you guys. I never could have had any of this otherwise. You thought you were shipping me off to Africa, but really you were sending me on the escapade of the century, haha! Which really was just living life, but it was living it in a totally different and glorious way that has left me intangibly richer. I've almost run out of words with which to describe my experience, except to quote Frank Sinatra in that It Was A Very Good Year. So thank youuuuuuuuuu!

(Oh, and I'm apparently supposed to talk about this in front of some people at church, which will be my least favorite thing ever to do ever in the world ever ever, but to help me out, do any of you have things you'd like me to talk about? Questions about jujus, Sabba Njowra, food, Lum and Katelyn's schoolwork, Pidgin, monkeys, thunderstorms, the Luke Lessons, fitting 20+ people in the truck, anything? Pleeeeease let me know!! Otherwise I'll probably just be standing there showing pictures and mumbling inaudibly about how great it all was)

Eh mi yiddima, Cameroon! Small small catch monkey...