Departure & Arrival

I made it! Let me give you a run down of how the past 48 hours have looked.

We checked into the airport 4 hours early so I’d have plenty of time to leave and go eat one last American meal.  Thanks to Dad’s “reliable” navigation system, a place called Wings and More sounded like a great last meal.  After a scenic route by the nav system we were surprised to see that Wings and More had closed.  With time of the essence now, we were forced to eat at Tony’s Seafood and BBQ in a near by strip center...now if that doesn’t sounds like a good meal to go out on, I don’t know what does.  Much to our surprise though, Tony and his staff ended up knowing a things or two about seafood and BBQ     

After finishing up at the restaurant we went back to the airport for the final goodbye.  Although al of use were very sad, everyone handled their composure better than I expected.   

Fast forward 24 hours and we landed in Abjua, Nigeria...finally, welcome to Africa. Going through customs at the airports went better than expected although I was quite intimidated when four dark skin muscular customs agents with automatic rifles swarmed me from different angles.  What do I do...can you imagine? You're tired, not thinking straight, nervous, all alone in a new place you feel all sorts of emotions and you don't know what these men are going to do. In a deep african voice they ask you:

“What are you doing in Nigeria!” 

“How long are you going to be here!” 

“What are in these boxes!”   

I answered all there questions with flying colors until the head guard ask me how many Bibles were in my bag.  For some reason I straight up lied to him and said “one...I believe.”  I had no idea why I just did that because I clearly knew I had packed 3 in Austin. 

“All this stuff and only one bible?” he said as he responded with a puzzled look.  At this moment my stomach turned and heart may have even skipped a beat.  My emotions flashed back to my teenage years when I was often caught in a lie.  

“Well...maybe two” Great, now if he searches my bag he’s clearly going to see that I lied twice.  After a nervous pause the soldier smiled at me and said that he went to a Christian church and gave me the green light to move on.  Thanks/forgive me Lord :)

After the intense encounter with soldiers to my relief, my driver was waiting for me to take me to the guest house where it was time to a good nights rest.

The next morning we left for a 4 hour trip to Jos.  Half way there we had to stop to refuel which gave me the first opportunity to really see a little of Nigeria.  The local station seemed to be the place to be with almost 50 people there and only one car getting gas.  I quickly became an attraction to about 10 to 12 kids as they surrounded the front and passenger side of our car and just stared at me.  I smiled, waved and said “hello” but got no response.  At this point I concludes that they didn’t speak english.  You can image how awkward things got as the silence continued for three or four minutes.  Finally as we were pulling off one of the older boys shouted in broken English from the back of the group “what’s up my brother?”  Simply shocked that he spoke English I responded with a good ol’ white person “hello.

The driver dropped me off at my new home for the next 18 months.  There I met some other missionaries I'll be working with.  We all had dinner together and spent a few hours chatting.  I wanted to get to know them so I put off unpacking until after dinner. This turned out to be a little mistake since right after dinner we lost electricity.  Plus I left my bedroom light on during dinner which has attached a group bugs to hangout on my bed.  So I got on the computer hoping the power would come back on but it’s not looking good.  

Well I guess I’ve procrastinated long enough, time to go deal with the bugs... lesson learned the hard way.  I’ll upload picture of my place in the next few days.