the one month mark

 Exactly 4 weeks from this posting, I will be boarding onto an airplane with 100+ potential seatmates to spend eight hours hurtling through the skies in a metal tube to land in London for 11 hours to then board another metal tube with hopefully fewer potential seatmates to fly nine hours to land in a sunny, hot, diesel-smelling, accent-laden new culture. 

At the airport, I'll buy a visa for $50, then walk out to meet the folks whom I'll be living and working with for the next year...and I've never met them previously. I'll exchange American dollars for Ugandan shillings, buy a cell phone and SIM card, sit in Kampala traffic, and drive several hours to my new home, where I will be filtering water to drink, living with sometimes consistent electricity, and learning a new language. Oh, did I mention that I'm also learning a new job? I've never been a full-time teacher.

This is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done.

But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' ... For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  
                                                                                     --2 Cor. 12: 9a, 10

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.
                                                                                                            --James 1.12

This is my comfort in my affliction,
  that your promise gives me life. ...
It is good for me that I was afflicted,
  that I might learn your statutes.
The law of your mouth is better to me
   than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
                                            --Psalm 119.50, 71-72

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

      so great is his steadfast love to those who fear him.

                                   --Psalm 103.11