Arrival in Lagos -- Ben Light

What time is it?  What day is it?

I’ll be honest -- things are a little bit mixed up for me now that we’re on the ground in Lagos.

Caleb and I left Seattle Tuesday afternoon at 2:30 PST, we landed in Atlanta at 11:30 EST that night, hurriedly caught our flight to Lagos and tucked in for the 12 hours to Nigeria.

The pilot ran it a little hot and got us to Lagos in 11. We landed at 4:00 in the afternoon in Lagos with the time change, only having woken up a couple hours prior to landing. My body didn’t know whether it was time for coffee or something stronger. I opted for orange juice. We cleared immigration and customs without hassle -- and only short one of our bags, that should be delivered later tomorrow evening.

Oludare and his wife, Tohung met us at the airport with Dare’s brother-in-law Paul, warm greetings and introductions were had and Dare’s sister Ronke joined us later for dinner.



After polishing off a plate of Jollof Rice and Beef, with a Malta and enjoying the dinner conversation we said our goodbyes for the evening and Caleb and I headed for a walk around Lagos. After scoping out the neighborhood a bit we returned to the hotel and found a soccer game on in the lounge below our room. Turns out it was an Olympic match, Germany vs. Nigeria.

So here I sit in the lounge downstairs from our room with all the locals rooting on the Nigerian soccer team against the Germans in Rio -- hooting and hollering with every Nigerian attack on goal. My body can’t figure out if it's 8:30pm or if it’s 12:30 in the afternoon, and frankly, who cares? Here we are.

It’s hard to believe, but we’re here. Halfway around the world.



West Africa.

I’m looking forward to getting the camp going and meeting even more of the brethren in this area. So far, if those we’ve met to this point, both in the church and those that are not in the church are any indication, it’s going to be a wonderful time.