grace.kindness.peace.disruption.pain.processing.rinse.repeat.have a nice day.

This past weekend was one for the annals of your friend here. I was utterly humbled on Friday evening when about fifty people gathered to pray for me. Several people drove in from out of town, including a professor and good friend from college, my parents, a friend from my church back home, and my old roommate Pete who now lives in Arizona. We began and ended the evening with good food and conversation. The middle was wonderful filling of moving prayer. I am not eloquent enough to describe my gratitude and other emotions for the special night. I can only offer a simple "thank you." You have made me feel very loved. Thank you.

The fun continued into Saturday when we got together with my Mom's side of our family for lunch. It was a great time to catch up and see some faces that I hadn't in a long, long time.

Here are some pictures of the events (click on the picture to get into the album). If you were at one of these events and have other pictures, please email them to me.

Saturday evening ended in some country line dancing. Let's just say that it's a good thing that I didn't get hurt. And sorry, there are no pictures. Please use your imagination.

Time that is. Seven days from now I'll be scrunched between a large Frenchman and a window on a jet plane over the Atlantic. It won't be the first time … at least in reference to the Frenchman. I once flew back over the Atlantic sitting next to a 300-pound Frenchman and his eight year-old daughter. She was cute. He wasn't so cute. I'm not small either. This perfect marriage of West meets old West (as in Europe) was only enriched by the fact that my seat's headphones did not work. I watched the very gloomy, dark movie Dark City and made up my own words. I turned it into a love story. What can I say; I'm a hopeless romantic.

But I digress (that's for you Wally). Anyway, it is true that I'll be traveling within the week. I'm going to take my first anti-malaria pill now ….

There it is. The deed is done. The type of anti-malaria medicine I've been prescribed has some fairly common side effects including "vivid dreams" (oh yes, I quote) and hallucinations. Please stay tuned to see if I am common.

I feel like I didn't get much done today, but this is a flat out lie. I probably feel this way because my desk is still messy. Much that was not done when I woke up is not in a complete status … whether that be truly finished, indefinitely postponed, or deemed unworthy of my time. I'm happy to say that most things fell into the first category. Sadly, my taxes did not fall into any of the three categories seeing that my TurboTax program got an attitude around 9 in the p.m. After a couple reinstalls, I'm back in action and ready to get back the money that the proverbial man has been holding for me all year.

I had lunch with my many of my old team members today from the small pharmaceutical company that has granted me a leave. It was great to see them and catch up a bit. I enjoyed talking about "business" for a little while, though I quickly realized that I missed the people more than I missed the work. So far my unemployed status feels mostly like a vacation – as if I should be headed back to work tomorrow. I'm sure that once I hit the ground in Sierra Leone that the vacation feeling will have stayed safely back in the States.

Welp, that's about all I should put in tonight. I need to get to bed and see what this medicine can do to me.