Final sunsets

Can't believe a month has passed and my time is up! It has been such an amazing, inspiring experience. I am already wanting to come back. I wanted to do a last little entry about how we were able to spend our last day here, I feel like it gives a good snapshot of what this entire experience has been like, a little crazy but so perfect.

So rewind to when we were flying from Johannesburg to Livingstone one month ago. Grace, one of the girls I flew with from BYU, was sitting next to a man on the plane, talking with him and learning more about Livingstone from this man who lived there. We talked with him throughout the flight and by the end, he invited us all to come out to the village he lives in and help him serve 80 or so of the kids there dinner. We got down his phone number  and the name of the village but it ended up not being very realistic at all to contact him. We had pretty much forgotten about this interchange until last Sunday. I was making a sandwich in the kitchen at the hostel we are staying at when this man, Christian, walks up to me. It took me a minute to recognize him and piece it all together but eventually I knew who he was. Miraculously he was walking down the street, where the backpacking lodge is and saw Grace outside talking to a family from one of the villages. He recognized her and came to find us and set up a time for us to go out with him to Mandia.

We were able to go with him today and spend our last few hours in Zambia before we leave tomorrow morning in the back of a truck, and playing games with the children and serving them dinner as well. I couldn't ask for a better way to spend my last night. It was the perfect combination of play, adventure, and service. I was so impressed by Christian, he is from Europe originally  but has lived in Livingstone for quite some time now. He doesn't work but rather is supported by friends and family who donated to projects he has started but also to his living expenses.

As we were driving home tonight (Mandia is almost an hour away) I had some time to just reflect and think as I was staring at the sunset and then the stars by the end of our drive home in the back of this man's pickup truck and just appreciating how magnificent this world is. I am so happy to know that all things will be made right one day, that brings me such peace when I look at  world of inequality and see no quick and easy solutions to the problem. We each have so much to be grateful for, and if it doesn't seem so, we need to look differently.

It has truly been an opportunity of a lifetime to see what life is like here and how the health situation can be improved. I feel like I have such a better grasp of what impact looks like when working with a non profit to bring about international development. I hope that this will help me to be used for good moving forward.