goodbye

Leaving. I knew it would be a sad day. I had no idea it would be this sad. The last two years were the most challenging, difficult, and intense years of my life. To leave the ones who were there through all the hard, exciting, and heart-breaking experiences...words cannot describe the loss we feel.

Our month of goodbyes in pictures. We said goodbye to those who we became good friends during our first few months of language learning.  We give these folks credit for keeping us alive when we first arrived.

We said goodbye to the operating room and surgical nursing staff at a lovely farewell dinner.

We said goodbye to M, who is a lovely friend and helped keep us fed by cooking beans and rice, tortillas, and bread for us.

We enjoyed an early Thanksgiving dinner with the entire compound.

we said goodbye in church (Luke spoke in Hausa...which was kindly translated into "better" Hausa that everyone could understand). :)

we (thankfully) said goodbye to Luke's beard :)

The schoolkids had a farewell party for us and gave us lovely custom tie-dyed pillowcases

we will miss you Buddy :(

Finally, a bunch of people (including most of the operating room staff) came to the airstrip to say final goodbyes. Many tears were shed.

As you can see, there were so many goodbyes to so many people we have come to know and love.
And, this isn't everyone. There were many more good byes with many more people, but you get the idea.  It has been one of the saddest months of our lives. But we are also excited to get home and see our families and see our friends that have been praying for us and supporting us these two long years and to tell them of the great adventures that we have had. Mixed emotions, Argh!!!!

we'll miss you, too, Martin