Three Months In

This week hails the three month mark for us. As of the end of this coming week we will have officially been in country for 3 whole months. We feel like we hardly have time to catch our breath these days and we’re amazed at how quickly three months has passed.

Last week flew by and then we had the weekend to recuperate. The refugee crisis continues, but we feel as if maybe things are shaking out a bit as far our EQUIP Liberia’s role in the situation. At least this is what we hope. Kyle made a trip out to the site that will eventually be the refugee camp. He is sighting potential well sites using some fancy equipment on loan from another NGO. That provided a good break for Kyle from meetings and desk work!

I’ve (Jessica) been hard at work distributing “Mama Kits”. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this project before, but it is a project that I am responsible for here. We provide a kit, with essential post-partum and baby items, at each of our clinics that encourage rural women to come in and have their babies in their local medical facilities with trained midwives. This past week I continued to pack and send out kits to our clinics in order to increase the rates of women giving birth in our facilities. I don’t pack these bags on my own, oh no! I recruit help!

My friends (from left to right) Vivien, Martilene, and little Amy helped me pack roughly 100 kits. The kits are on the floor behind them in the picture!

Weird Alert:

Sorry to interrupt the regularly scheduled Monday update, but something important and of global significance has come up. On the road back from Saclepea the other day we stopped at a village market along the roadside. Continuously in the hunt for good fruit and butter pear (avocado, remember from the “Name that Fruit”?) we felt this was a good idea. We hop out of the car and begin to peruse the stacks of fresh pineapple. When what to our wondering eyes should appear? Stacks of dried, dead bats! Yes, bats, not the wooden thing you hit a baseball with, the creepy bird/rat animal. They eat them some places in the bush. FREAKY! I didn’t get a picture because unfortunately my camera was in the bottom of  my backpack and my backpack was behind a seat…sorry to be anticlimactic and void of a photo. FREAKY nonetheless!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog…already in progress…

As we enter in to the fourth month of being here we are trusting that God is going to continue to stretch us. Kyle is ready to begin digging more wells before dry season ends! His WATSAN team has done impressive work in the past two months and they have much work ahead of them, but God has blessed EQUIP Liberia with the funding to continue to expand water and sanitation projects across all of the communities we work in. Pray for Kyle as he trains his team to go into these communities and provide the gift of water.

Over the next month I will be planning trainings on managing victims of sexual violence in the clinic setting and reproductive health. These are week long trainings for certified midwives and the heads of our clinics. Pray that all will go smoothly and that the Lord will provide opportunity in these trainings for hope and healing for many.

We have 9 months stretching our before us, but we know that isn’t that long in reality. It will fly by in a blink and before we know it we will be hopping a plane back across the Atlantic, shaking our heads at the year behind us.  Pray that we will live right here in the moment. This moment of all that God has given us here in Liberia.

Weekly Prayer Needs:

Pray for our health and energy! We’ve been really blessed with good health thus far, but long days equal exhaustion!

Pray for Kyle as he is pulled in 100 different directions.

Pray for us as we work to find time for one another during super busy weeks.

Pray for us as we work to enter fully into the ministry opportunities we have before us.