I grew up watching The Real World. Long before reality television took over the networks MTV kind of invented a new kind of genre. They put 10 strangers in a house together, brought in a film crew, and recorded what happened.
As our team met tonight at the airport, then dinner, then the hotel… it felt a little like the first episode of every season of The Real World. Strangers met for the first time, shared a little about life, and made small talk.
But, just like the TV show, things are about to get very real.
Tomorrow we’re spending the day at the World Vision headquarters. There we’ll learn about one another, connect with God, and get briefed on all sorts of stuff about how they operate. I’m not 100% certain what to expect but I’m envisioning it as similar to the first day of work at a new company. We’ll meet people, we’ll learn about the organization, we’ll learn more about what we’ll be doing… and a bunch of other things.
From there, it’s a team dinner, and a trip back to the airport. We have a red eye from SEA – JFK. (New York) Then a short layover before boarding another red eye flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. There we’ll have another layover before our final leg to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
Am I Excited?
I hung out with long time buddy Lars Rood for a couple hours tonight. During our conversation he asked, “Are you excited about this trip to Africa?” In truth, excited isn’t the right word. Right now, I’m exhausted. I worked a ton of hours getting ready to take this trip and I literally finished the last project at the airport. So, in some ways, I haven’t begun to process the reality that I’m about to visit a continent I’ve never been to. Of course I’m excited. Who wouldn’t be excited? But I’m not excited in an anxious kind-of-way. I’m excited in a way that knows that as soon as I land in South Africa, bleary eyed and sore from 2 days of air travel, that I’ll be really excited.
El Teamo de Awesomeness
It looks like the Famine team has put together a great team. Some of us know one another and some of us just met. But I got a feeling at dinner like some epic levels of awesome will happen. I expect to have fun, roar laughing, cry big heavy tears, and see God reveal things to each of us. And I expect that there will be bonding… that doing this trip together will create a long-lasting team in the same way that the 2010 Haiti trips did.
Logistics Notes
My plan is to blog as I go. I’ll write when I can and I’ll probably write more than I publish right away. I tend to process what I see and do quickly, so I have no doubt I’ll have bits of this trip to share right away.
But, technically speaking, I’m not 100% certain how it’s going to work. Some of the places we are staying have wifi so I will be able to post things normally. And other places we are going I am doubtful have access to either wifi or cell service. (We’ve been told that one of our hotels does not have internet access.) And, after talking to AT&T tonight, I’m not overly confident that my iPhone will get any kind of data service at all. Just know that I’ll share what I can, when I can. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all in play on this trip.
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