It was hard leaving Freetown. I´ll hopefully get some more time and space to think about it, but it´s been hard to say so many goodbyes all at once. Bye to friends from Sierra Leone. Bye to my friends on the servant team. Bye to WMF friends: Faye, Cami, and Joe and Mindy. Bye to Pastor Zizer, Auntie/Momma Marvel, Marvick, Marvin, and Marvina. The crazy part ( I was telling the servant team ) is that we may never see some of these folks again. Even with my servant team friends, things will just be different. We all live far away from each other.

I started to get really emotional when we left the Zizer´s house on Friday to go to into town with all of our bags. I ended up giving Marvel ( my African Mom ) a second hug on the way out. Marvina was waving, and Marvin buried his head into mom´s side as we drove away from the house. I started to feel the tears welling up inside of me as I knew that I might never see these friends again. I pushed them back, thinking that I´d have more tears to shed as today would be full of goodbyes. Sometimes I think it´s stupid to quench those feelings because I know they´ll come out someway or another.

The rest of the day continued to be smiles, laughs, some more pictures, some more pictures (Faye, that one´s for you – sorry we took so long to leave! ) and some more welling up inside. The youth at Lighthouse sang a song to us ( about how leaving makes us cry ), and then folks took time time to say their goodbyes individually. Each person on the servant team had a chance to share a bit too, and it felt kind of like the campfire at the end of summer camp where everyone cries. Haha. I ended up welling up and saying some sort of jibberish in Krio about how I´m grateful for each person and how God´s blessed me to spend life with you. It´s hard to communicate when I´m a mess like that. I think the tears and snot speak louder than any words that I can muster up, especially in another language.

Then there was goodbye to WMF staffers, then goodbye to Faye at the Lungi airport, and then goodbye to my teammates at the Gatwick airport. I´ll miss a lot of how life was in Freetown, and I think that will kind of get sorted out once I´m back in California. I have to remind myself to breathe in, breathe out, and hope.

I´m grateful that the well went deep. At the end of the trip, I was blessed to cry because I feel like the tears that welled up inside of me spoke of my own sadness to leave people and a place that I´ve grown to love.