Sunday, November 5, 2006

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This morning Elijah, our driver, was unavailable until after church so we did not have a ride to church this morning.  Jeremiah called him at 1:00pm to see if he was on his way and the pastor had just started his sermon.  It was 3:00pm when Elijah made it to the house.  So from the time we awoke (Dave beat me up this morning by 5 minutes and wanted everyone to know) until we left for the ELWA compound at about 3:30pm we simply used the Lord’s Day to rest and recover.  We talked, studied and journalled.  Dave and Gayla spent a lot of time talking about each church’s college ministry and who had the greatest college students.  They also talked a lot about their children and the trials and triumphs they have progressed through.

For breakfast we had our usual scrambled eggs and bread.  The bread is wonderfully fresh (baked by local people) and the hot tea makes me wonder why I drink coffee at home.  By the way, David was up earlier than me because I worked on the website changes last night until midnight (I just wanted everyone to know).  Lunch was a spiced rice with meat mixture and it was very good.  Gertrude always makes way too much for us.

Gayla is the official picture taker for the trip and Shadrach is concerned that she’s not getting good enough pictures from the front seat of the truck (she made a comment jokingly that she should be riding in the back taking pictures).  So we looked down from the porch and Jeremiah and Shadrach were cleaning out the back of the truck and had put a bench seat from the back of the van into the truck, facing backwards up against the cab.  Gertrude heard about it and thought Gayla would be too hot back there in the sun so she sat up front until it cooled off some.  Elijah drove us through town to see the various governmental buildings and other sites.  In the middle of town Gayla and I moved to the back of the truck so she could get some clear shots of the city.  We rode the rest of the way to ELWA’s compound like that and it was pretty funny watching her try to keep her hair in place and not bounce off the seats when we hit the inevitable pothole.  The ELWA compound was interesting especially with all the people at their beach on a Sunday afternoon.  I had never seen so many people there before.   We met with the head of the ELWA ministry, James Kesselly, and dropped off some items sent over by Libby Muchmore.  I also have another item for another gentleman that will be delivered at the conference.  While there Dave made contact with a key EQUIP leader in Monrovia and we have an appointment to see him tomorrow morning.  I spotted some young ladies at the Samaritan’s Purse house and invited them to the conference.  It turned out that they were interns for the summer and will be traveling back on the same flight with us on Sunday.  They’ve been here since July living in the bush and doing various training assignments.  You find neat people everywhere.  As we were standing there talking to the SP ladies (one was from North Carolina and the other from New Jersey) Lincoln Brownell, president of the Baptist Seminary, drove up behind us with a van load of folks from Virginia and Maryland over to visit the country.  They were interested in doing work with orphans so we struck up a conversation right away.  We also discussed our container which is still stuck in the port and Lincoln suggested that we meet with Mrs. Elfreda Tamba of the finance ministry to see if she could help speed things up.  We will be on her doorstep tomorrow morning.

After we left ELWA we stopped by the Carver School to see Eric (I met him at the Good Governance Commission meeting on my last visit) as Shadrach’s mother had asked that he help someone over there.  Gayla and I had fun playing with a little boy that lived there.  He discovered the rear bumper of the truck was shiny and spent several minutes making faces to himself in the “mirror”.

We left Carver and headed home.  The traffic was moving much better on the way home but there were thousands of people out along the roads.  How hundreds keep from getting run over each night defies logic.  Just before arriving home we stop at the internet café where I’m providing this update.  It’s Gayla’s fault that this is taking so long as she made me redo the website to have the pictures placed on a different page by day for those on slow internet connections and/or who didn’t want to keep looking through the same pictures prior to getting to the new ones.

I’ll post some of the hundreds of pictures that Gayla took tomorrow as we have time.  The meetings with a few key people and getting the container out of the port are our priorities.  Please pray that we will find grace with the governmental leaders who control this container.

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