Next Summer...hmmm

Ok, so a big discussion around the Overmon house has been where are we going to go for our big trip. Big trip i.e. - last hoorah before Micah and I live separately for medical school except for the weekends.

We finally found a trip with Intrepid Travel for an Active Turkey vacation complete with exploring, kayaking, mountain biking, hiking - all right up our alley. I'm a runner, Micah's a biker, together - we are super active people. Well, except for this weekend. I have some kind of weird virus, but I am finally going to get to run again tomorrow.

Anyway, after deciding we would go there, it just didn't sit well. We have both always felt called to missions, but we've never had to chance to go anywhere. I told him that it wasn't feeling right, and that really what I wanted to do was serve in Africa - where my heart has always been. In fact, African women immigrants are who I directly want to work with when I become a doctor. I intend to specialize in gyn surgery and heal female genital mutilation difficulties. We talked about it extensively, and he said if that is where my heart is it doesn't make any sense in spending a lot of money to go anywhere else. So now, we are praying. I think we are going to spend two weeks in Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan or Kenya. I'm leaning towards Uganda. We're going to see where God leads us, but I'm feeling led to do work at an orphanage. Although it sounds cliche, there is no way to describe how incredibly high the orphan numbers are in Uganda especially. I know we're going to do this, but now it is a matter of where. We are both adamant we volunteer at a Christian orphanage, so we're going to start praying and looking into them. I also want to build my own trip not travel with an organization. I don't want to pay their overhead when I can manage my own travel for the trip myself.

I'm excited about it! We'll see where this goes, but this is the first step towards what we eventually want to do. I intend to start a nonprofit clinic in Atlanta for immigrant women needing GYN surgery here, but I also want to set up a partner clinic in Africa for them there. Although this is an unrelated area, I want to go over and experience and learn more about the culture. I also know for sure Micah and I are going to be adopting at some point, so I'd like to work in that environment. We'll see what happens!