Upcountry Living

Finally "home"! We made it to Ganta on Thursday evening and were welcomed with a big dinner by our new neighbors/coworkers! Our home is part of a compound adjacent to a leprosy and TB rehab community. We refer to it simply as "rehab" and is run by Italian nuns. The sisters are just precious and we really couldn't ask for better landlords!

Friday, we unpacked our bags and headed into town to get our bearing this involved setting up a bank account and having lunch (jolla rice- basically rice, onions, beans, chicken and lots of spice!). Upon our return to rehab the sisters showed us our first snake by their front door, a dead (chopped in half by the guard) baby green mamba! Yowzers- no thank you- this is the part where Kyle and I go and stuff anything we can find underneath our doors so that we don't have an unwelcomed visitors. We can deal with the lizards on the walls- they eat bugs and won't kill us- but not green mambas on our floors!

Saturday we came to the Equip office and helped out for a few hours. Afterwards we continued into town for our introduction to the open air market. Clothes, rice, produce and the very distrubing bush meat section. Imagine charred animal (chimpanzee arms, deer legs, etc..) parts rotting in the heat. Needless to say I won't be buying a lot from that section...

Sunday we went to church in the nearby village- the leprosy and TB rehab village. Unbeknownst to us it was mission Sunday and we got to go through the village talking with folks and encouraging them to come to church the next Sunday. It was a good way to learn about the community which is right at our back door. This is our "Jerusalem" so please pray that we would be intentional with this isolated community.

We've been able to talk with our family via our cellphones and we have a surprisingly clear connection and good signal! The bonus is that it is only between 5-10 cents a minutes! So don't be surprised if you get a phone call from us one day! It is an incredible blessing to hear familar voices!

Today we start "work". Kyle has a mountain of work ahead of him. He is working on a proposal due at the end of the month for charity water that would given the Equip Liberia's WATSAN (water and sanitation) dept. $150,000 to work with! I'm going to be working on a maternal health project called "Mama Kits" that is meant to improve the rate of women giving birth in the clinics. We've got our hands full!

Weekly Prayer Needs:

Pray that we would continue to get settled in and that we would continue to improve our grasp of the culture and dialect- our Liberian friends are speaking English but it certainly doesn't sound like it sometimes.

Pray that we would be intentional in encouraging the other expats (non-Liberians) towards the Gospel.