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Day’s Journal
Today has been a strange
day. I have stayed at the Norman
compound due to transportation problems but have asked Robert to contact
his friend who we rented a car from during the November trip and ask about
giving me transportation starting Monday morning. I really didn’t want to spend money on
separate transportation but feel that it’s starting to impact my
effectiveness.
Christine and Laurence left
early this morning to attend the funeral of a cousin of Christine’s. So Alvina and I spent the morning on the
porch as she reviewed some legal documents for the Department of Public Works
and I wrote portions of our monthly newsletter. Mainly though we just talked about
Liberia. Alvina is Laurence and
Christine’s niece. She’s a few years
younger than me but looks at least 20 years younger. (I am hopelessly lost when it comes to
determining a Liberian’s age.) She
spent almost all of her life in Germany and the United States and returned
to Liberia only last year. It’s
strange but she has very quickly moved into the Liberian way of speaking
(fast, dropping syllables, keeping me confused, etc.) and has, per her own
admission, never lost her love for Liberian food. She graduated from Loyola Law School and serves
as counsel for the Minister of Public Works.
Even though Alvina has
returned to her Liberian roots very easily, she is constantly on a mission
to get some accountability and basic business skills into the people who
work for the department she serves.
Basic skills like budgeting, comparing actual results to budgeted
amounts, basic usage of spreadsheets, word processing, accounting programs,
etc. are just not there and it creates huge problems in making this critical
department effective.
I’ve had a desire for quite
some time to put together a program of basic administrative training for
the various departments of the Liberian government. Currently the need is for simple training
such as using Microsoft Word, Excel and Access. (I also would like to see us do website
development training for non-governmental folks but that’s another
subject.) The Liberian government
would welcome the help with open arms and it would be a very practical way
to serve them. Building upon that
training would be budgeting, basic accounting and practical office
administration (filing methods, proper internal and external communication,
etc.) My experience tells me that
the Liberian people are equal in intellect with everyone else in the world
but they have missed out on many years of practical training. I believe if given the basic tools and
training they will more quickly solve some of the pressing problems that
beset them.
It would be a great blessing
if God would press into someone’s heart to take on such a ministry
effort. With the new property and
the possibility of adding a second story to each building it would be quite
natural for one of the upstairs areas to be a training room facility. There would be much else to do such in
connection with a project like this.
Given the nature of the project it would likely be to have it
funded. These are just thoughts but
God may have someone in mind that would see this or find out about it
through the referral of someone else.
I spoke with Robert and the
truck is finished being painted and has been moved to the ELWA compound awaiting
the completion of the registration and insurance. They also used it to pull the other
stranded dump truck (across from the Equip lot – the truck we might manage
as well) to ELWA where they have the parts to fix it. So a couple of good things happened
today.
We remain focused on getting
the refrigerated container moved to the Equip lot along with the 2
generators and other equipment. The
electrician was by yesterday and is preparing for the wiring. The well is still a couple of days behind
schedule but moving forward. Robert’s
surveyor is to review the documents by the man selling the 2 lots on
Airport Road to ensure that they are legal and enforceable.
The generator has not been on
all day so I’ve been working on battery power. It ran out earlier this afternoon so I
spent some time thinking through the balance of the week. All of a sudden time seems short. I guess that’s a good sign. (Of course I also took a short nap as
well.)
As dark was approaching I
came back over to the porch to visit with Alvina and be in a little cooler
spot. Not long afterwards Uncle D
(Christine’s uncle Daniel Tolbert that we met yesterday) came by following
one of the two family funerals that were held today. He’s such a dignified and calm
gentleman. Sitting and talking with
him sheds more light onto how important family is to a Liberian. He stayed about an hour but Christine and
Laurence were not back so he had to go home to take some medicine.
I’m going to finish up for
now and get this uploaded. It’s a
warm evening but the generator’s finally on so we have fans to cool us.
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Day’s Journal
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