Everything's bigger in Texas

It has now been a month since I got on what felt like the world's tiniest plane to Tyler, Texas, met some pretty spectacular new faces and started off my adventure with Mercy Ships.

The month has been filled with intensive all-day classes, lots of laughter, more than a couple tears, approximately 569 fire ant bites and luckily only one snake sighting.

Last weekend, our On Boarding class took a trip to Tyler State Park for a silent retreat, where we spent the day praying, reading our Bible and taking time away from the normal distractions to just spend time with God. At first, it was honestly really hard to not start thinking about my to-do list ... or how hot it was ... or, let's be real, how tempting it would be to take a nap. But after awhile, I felt God basically tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me how often I can kill an afternoon just aimlessly scrolling through social media or deeply entrenched in my Netflix queue. So why was it suddenly so difficult to instead spend those hours hanging out with Jesus?

Once I was able to focus, it was a really refreshing day praying over my new team and for the next year in Cameroon - ending with a huge thunderstorm that had us all running back to the vans, soaked and muddy and laughing.

In other news, this past Tuesday was July 4. If you're thinking that's just the day sandwiched in between July 3 and 5, you've never been in Texas for Independence Day. I've been in the States to celebrate before, but I've never seen so many flags, bald eagles, or US-of-A clothing as I did this past week. It was glorious. Our class comes from all across the world, but we all celebrated with taco trucks, Catch Phrase and fireworks. Even the Brits had a good time.

Now that I've had some time to reflect on the past month, I realise how strange and almost anticlimactic it felt to pack up my entire life, leave home and still have five weeks in the same country. But July 19 is rapidly approaching and it feels so good to be counting down in days instead of weeks and months. Last week, we were able to Skype one of our team's media liaisons, who is currently on the advance team in Cameroon helping to get everything ready for the ship's arrival. As much fun as the past month has been, I can't wait to finally be on the Africa Mercy, meeting patients, settling into ship life and starting my dream job. These next 10 days are going to make me restless in the best possible way - kinda like a prolonged Christmas eve and birthday eve in one.

Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who's been praying, keeping in touch and checking in. I love hearing from you guys. And thank you to everyone who prayed for our Comms team - I'm so happy to share that we have found another photographer and videographer and now have a fully staffed team. They're all amazing, adventurous souls and it's an understatement to say that I have a really good feeling about this next year.