I'm in Sierra Leone!

I just wanted to write a journal post, saying that I made it to Freetown!! All my flight connections were smooth-- everything passed with no problem, and my teammates and I did indeed take a HELICOPTER ride late last night to get into the city!! It was pretty darn cool, and *interesting* as it was clearly an old military helicopter from somewhere. Our "flight attendant" had a lovely little speech for us which started with, "Hello gentlepeople, welcome to the helicopter." :)

My teammates are all great people - the married couple, Ben and Kristina, are from Indiapolis, but just got back from teaching in Korea for 6 months. They're young too, both are missionary kids and they are intentionally looking into full-time missions. My roommate, Stephenie, is super sweet and tons of fun to talk to and listen to! She is 29, getting married in September, and is an elementary school teacher. Get this, she just moved to Oceanside 6 months ago! And that's where she met her fiance and everything. So crazy! And then there's Chris. Chris just graduated from college in Tennessee, and he's from Virginia. He's taught in Vietnam and spent 8 weeks in northern Kenya before. He's also interested in long term missions.

Stephenie and I are staying with a Pastor Victor Zizer and his family. He and his wife, Auntie Marvel, have 3 children. Their names are Marvick, Marvin and Marvina! All combinations of the parents' names! :) The kids are really sweet and helpful and everyone is very gracious to us. Stephanie and I are sharing a room - there is a HUGE KING size bed, and then a twin, and we don't even need a sheet to sleep under cause it's so hot and humid and here!

Today we have just had a brief introduction to Freetown. We ate lunch and are about to visit the Kroo Bay children's center - a ministry that WMF works closely with. There are something like 300 children there. Tomorrow we will have our first team meeting to really start to get to know each other and discuss the plan for this first week... more later! God has really gotten me here safely, and our team is filled with really neat people. More later!


The two Stephanies outside of the Zizer's home, the place I will be staying!


The team! (Taken our last week in Freetown). It goes: Katharine, Stephanie, Ben, Kristina, Stephenie, Chris