Well, I'm almost there.

After a full day of packing and running around on Sunday Nick and I left late in the night (well, about 8 or 9pm) to go to Chatanooga. His parents are going to take us to the Atlanta air port at 1 a.m. (today/tommorrow, whatever the next 1 a.m. is). From there after much deliberation and luggage examination (and probably a fun filled time of taking off our steel-toed hiking boots at the metal detector to prove that we aren't terrorists...) we will depart for Miami. From Miami we will fly in to Belize City, and from Belize City we will take a small jungle plane into Punta Gorda. From Punta Gorda we will ride a bus to a rinky dink village, where we will live in a hut for 3 months.

Saying goodbye to my parents was hard. My mom started crying and said "It is the hardest thing I have ever had to do...to let you go." That made me cry. Just tears. No sobs. But wow, I would have thought marrying me off would have been harder than this. I guess the unknown makes it frightening. She said if I need to come home, then go. My dad was sad too. My brother was jokey. We had kind of already said goodbye at like 6pm because he had left to go to his church. So the 9pm departure was just like "Goodbye, already!!!". I cried like a baby when we pulled out of the driveway, until we got to the interstate (about 8 blocks). Nick was trying to talk to me but I was in the mood for ponderous silence...

My parents are pretty supportive. Some of my friends think they have a heart for missions, but their parents are so adamant about not wanting them to leave the country, its kind of ridiculous. Hey, if they don't want you to serve God, maybe they should have thought of that when they took you to Sunday School in your youth!!! Perhaps...

This will be the last entry for a long while. We are supposed to return on April 29th. In Punta Gorda there is a so called 'internet cafe', which is actually a computer is someone's house, and you can use the internet if you pay $2.00 for every 15 minutes you are on. So I don't think I will be hip to the diary land, I will probably just check my e-mail when I can. Because that feels like a gyp! Oh gosh, I just realize now that 'gyp' is probably a derrivitive of 'gypsy', thereby making it a racial comment kind of like calling someone stingy a Jew!!! Oh no! I suck! Be warned! I leave this sentance in the diary for educational purposes!

Micheal said that in Belize you can walk down the street in Punta Gorda and not see anyone, but hear "Go home, white man!" comming from the darkened stores. What is up with that? He said there are alot of Rastafarians. They believe that the devil is the white man's God. I actually read that on their doctrinal statement, or whatever you would call it. It is one of the pillars of their religion.

Hopefull I don't get stoned (with rocks, not wacky weed). I love you guys! (well, probably not all of you, but my friends who regularly read this...)

I'll see you later.

Love

candice

Monday, Jan. 14, 2002 at 12:01 PM