Embarking

Greetings,

I have just said goodbye to mom, dad, Kolby and Tim in the terminal area of the Quad Cities airport. Made it through security fine and since this airport is really small I have also made it to my gate. Since everyone whom I have spoken with in the last few days has asked me how I feel and told me to be safe I thought I would share my thoughts with you.

I am slightly nervous, but, praise God, it is not in a worrying sense. I think that this is the same nearly indescribable
feeling that I get when I am heading into something unknown. Not worry, not anxiety, not fear, not sadness, but rather a state of wonder that I am actually leaving and trying to imagine things that my mind cannot possibly think
of on it's own. I have no idea what will happen, what meeting the other two people on my team will look like, or even fathoming that this afternoon I will be in New York. It's actually in Queens, New York, which is a place that I have heard of in Law and Order, but never really thought that I would go there.

I am looking forward to meeting Rae because we have talked so much in the past six months that it feels like we should know
each others faces now, but we have never met. It's very strange to think of that, because we have talked about very deep and hard things, and only now are we going to meet. Aimee, my roomie who leaves for east Asia today, and I have been counting this day down for months. Now that it is here it is odd. Maybe this particular day, because it is the official departure date, was built up too much for all the splendor that airport concourses have to offer.

I believe I am going to spend a little time with Jesus now, but I thought it important to record the Iowa departure log. With any measure of luck there will be a New York log as well.