It begins on a Monday in January. A beautiful 63 degrees in Atlanta, Georgia. My squad and I load onto a shuttle to head to the airport. We hang out for a while, piling our bags into a crevice between escalators to keep out of the way, go through security, find food and wifi, and make our first flight to the NY/NJ airport.

From there we go through security a second time, send some last minute emails, and board our flight to Abidjan somewhere around midnight.

10 hours later, we land in Abidjan.

Local time, 2 pm.

After landing, we went through security and loaded our packs into the the cutest old blue bus. As we walked out of the airport into the humid Africa air, we looked around at each other with giddy excitement. We are in AFRICA. Many of you know this about me already, but this is my first time out of the country (and I am extremely excited).

Last night we stayed in a hostel in Abidjan (I was surprised to find wifi, AC you can rent for something around $1 an hour, and a shower) and this morning we are leaving at 5 am for a 10 hour bus ride to our ministry location.

I want to say thank you so much to every single one of you for your prayers and support and for making it so that I can be here.

Please pray protection and unity over my team and that we would connect well with our ministry and make a big impact.

Stay tuned for updates whenever I next have access to wifi.

I can't wait to see what's next.

Much Love,

Hattie

couple more pictures for you: 

My team at the airport, and another picture of the cutest bus I've ever seen