Arrived!

It seems like forever ago that we left Ohio [two months??] and yet, what we signed up for is just now getting started. We arrived on board yesterday and all day long I had this overwhelming sense of homecoming. God completely took away any fear I had. We are home. God DID mean for us to come here. Yesterday was just one more day of confirmation.

But first, to back up a bit since I have been deprived of social media communication for two whole weeks. First world problem. BE PREPARED FOR A LONG UPDATE.

Our flight was absolutely perfect. When we arrived in Pointe Noire, our whole team just said, “Wow. TONS of people must have been praying for us.” I have never been on a more easy flight. We made all our connections, had just enough time between flights to eat something but not so long that we were bored out of our minds, we had no problem with luggage at all, we went through customs in record time in Pointe Noire and--get this--ALL of the team’s luggage was FIRST on the baggage claim carousel and nothing was stolen. I’m still kind of in shock.

Oh, and we happened to be in the DC airport the same time as Adam! 

On the plane in Dulles, saying goodbye to the USA! 

So if you were praying, a huge million thank yous! 

Three Mercy Ships trucks picked us and our luggage up at the airport. We sent some stuff straight to the ship and packed the rest of it with us to go to our field service. We drove for about a half hour to the hotel where we would call home for the next two weeks. 

I am also still in shock that I took a bucket bath after traveling for 30+ hours. Thankfully, our gateway group has some pretty talented people in it. One of those people is the 2nd engineer on the ship and he took it upon himself to fix the hotel’s water pump and generator so that we could have running water as long as the generator was running. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful for a cold shower. After that, the hotel ran the generator from around 4 pm to 7 am so we could have running water and a fan at night. That made a big difference.

Our room.

The food was also fantastic! They hired a chef just for us and he did a really good job. Our team leader told him that the most important part of any field service was the food and he definitely rose to the challenge. We had omelets and baguettes for breakfast every morning as well as lots of tea (the Brits rubbed off on everyone I think) and Nescafe. We never once ate rice and sauce for dinner--we had fish, spaghetti, popcorn fried chicken, grilled chicken, etc... really, really yummy. For lunches we got our own bread for sandwiches. 

Enjoying breakfast.

Before I get into what we did, I do want to really quickly tell you who all was on our team. We had a class of 18 back in Texas but only 13 of those people came on field service. Our whole class was WONDERFUL and we were really sad to say goodbye to those who stayed behind--they will be working at the base in Texas so we know we’ll see them at some point and correspond over email/Facebook but it was really sad to part ways! Just so you know who I talk about when I refer to our team, I’ll briefly let you know who all came with us. There were 14 of us total:

STEFAN--team leader from Germany who works at the IOC.

PIETER--team leader from South Africa who also works at the IOC. 

ALLY & AMY--IT and ICU nurse from the UK. 

KJ--head receptionist from Seattle. 

BUC--dental supply from Montana. 

MARY--engineering store[wo]man from California. 

DEREK--carpenter from Ontario.

SERENETY--Sales staff from Ch*na. 

CARLOS--second engineer from Portugal. 

MAREN--pediatric nurse from Germany.

LEWANNA--ward nurse from Victoria.

And 13 & and 14 are yours truly. 

One of many prayer times at the work site.

Ally using a chair as a drum while we sang. :) 

Our project was to fix up an orphanage. Madame Francoise is a woman in Pointe Noire who knew God was calling her to take care of orphans. She started out with just one child staying in her house with her and now has 22 children! She upgraded to a bigger building and is upgrading again. Our job was to fix up the newest location for the kids. She wanted 7 bunk beds made, gutters installed, and some art work done in the bedrooms. There were two buildings--a big dorm with a dining room and kitchen, and a smaller building where Madame will live and use as an office. 

Our first day of work was Monday, October 28. A lot of stuff needed to be found/bought in town so there wasn’t a lot to do for most people and that was a bit discouraging for the first day. But Madame came and we figured out from her what sort of art work she wanted done on the walls. We tried to be realistic in what we would be able to do but at that point, we didn’t even know what kind paint we would have to use! 

On Tuesday morning though, we were ready to go right at 8:00. We pretty much split into three groups for the whole time: the girls handled the painting, half of the guys worked on putting up gutters and the other half worked on bunk beds. 

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we got a LOT of painting done. Amy was our artist and she outlined a political map of Africa, as well as made a stencil so that we could paint big Africa silhouettes in other rooms as well. She also outlined a huge world map with the help of a projector and then freehanded a sea scene in a different room. Lewanna and Mary got to work making the outlines for all fifty African flags--which was a bit daunting, I’m sure! They got a system going and made them all look even (which is a challenge when neither the floor nor the ceiling are straight) and geometrically proportionate. Then they made a color code for each flag so that when they were done, any of us could pick up a jar of paint and start painting wherever--it was like a REALLY big paint-by-numbers! [Incidentally, it’s probably the only paint-by-numbers I’ve ever finished.] KJ wrote the alphabet really big around a little girls’ room and I’m still not entirely sure how she did that freehand and made it all look even and neat. 

KJ and I also wrote out French verses in all the rooms--the name of the orphanage is “Orphelinat Amour de Diew” which means “God’s Love Orphanage” so we picked out verses that talked about God’s love. One reason that I love other languages is that a verse can hit you in a different way. One of those verses for me was Numbers 6:24, a familiar passage: “May the Lord bless you and keep you.” In French it says, “Que l’Eternel te benisse, et qu’il te garde!” which translates to: “May the Eternal bless you and guard you!” A big problem in Pointe Noire is prostitution and we had a strong sense that we needed to pray for safety for the girls that would live in that room. We wanted to give them a verse to remind them that their Heavenly Father guards them. 

Serenety and Maren did TONS of painting--both of them have really steady hands so they did a lot of outlining, painting over our pencilled verses, and tiny little bits of flags that were hard to see.

Jordan designed a bunk bed on paper and after getting all the wood on Monday, he, Ally, and Buc set to work on Tuesday making the first one. They set up a little tent outside where they could saw and sand out of the sun and then assembled the beds inside. Those guys worked HARD and made a great team. Jordan cut all the wood, him and Buc planed and sanded, and then Ally (with the help of random people) assembled the boards into bunk beds! They turned out 7 VERY sturdy bunk beds. Madame wanted us to paint them but the wood was too wet so she will have them painted later.

The finished project!

Stefan, Pieter, and Derek put up 70 meters (76.5 yards) of gutters and set up ten 55 gallon barrels to collect the water.They had to figure out what scaffolding to use and ended up using the Land Cruiser--it was just the right height and mobile to boot! Those guys were wiped out each day--they were installing right at the level of the tole on the roof (I think the English word is tin but I’m really not sure) so the sun was reflecting right in their faces all day and it was HOT. On our very last night, it POURED and before we left for the ship, the guys went out to the work site to see how the gutters had worked. All ten barrels were full or had overflown so they were quite excited!

Sorry this is the only picture I have of the gutter. I’ll have to get one from the official photographers. :) 

That first Wednesday, Madame came to see our work. Let’s just say that she did not react as we thought she would react. I was translating for her and she came across as ungrateful. She visited just before lunch time so we decided to take an early lunch to debrief a bit. I was so proud of our group; KJ suggested that we pray for our attitudes before getting back to work. I’ll admit that I grumpily agreed we needed to pray but I certainly didn’t feel like extending Madame any grace. That prayer time turned out to be one of my high lights. I kind of thought one or two people would pray something really generic like “Lord help our attitudes” but I should have known better. It hit me during that prayer that my sense of accomplishment did not depend on Madame’s gratefulness. Last week I served Madame in that I did what she asked, but I ultimately served to give God glory, regardless of how much praise I got. I was really touched that people prayed for me as well as the translator, and that I wouldn’t allow my discouragement to affect my relationship with Madame. I can honestly say that Satan tried to hit our group really hard. We could have gotten incredibly negative towards Madame or quit working so hard or not tried our best on our projects. But that afternoon I did not hear one negative word about the experience. It turned out to be a fun afternoon and I saw first hand that a group of people praying is the best arsenal to have when Satan comes out to play. 

The rest of the time was like that--we worked hard but were not discouraged and we absolutely saturated that work site with prayer. 

The good news is that Madame came back to visit the next week and was in a much better mood. I'm not sure if she was just having a bad day the previous week but she complimented all our work and seemed very happy with what we had done! Big answer to prayer. 

I wrote before we left that I was really looking forward to our field service because I knew we would grow even closer to our team. So true--my only sad moments yesterday were when I realized that I have to share all these wonderful people with the rest of the crew on board. We all had so much fun together. We laughed about the stuff that drove us crazy and every night most of us played the funnest card game ever--Bang! We’ll definitely be buying a set when we get back. 

KJ, Mary, and Lewanna are happy to be going to the beach on our last day! :) 

Washing laundry. I am so thankful for washers and dryers. 

One of our many games of Bang! 

Fun at the beach! 

And then, finally, Friday the 8th arrived. We woke up early to pack up our stuff, ate breakfast, and then sat to wait to get picked up. It took over an hour to get to the ship because of traffic. Driving up was so surreal and checking in even more so! We filled out some paperwork and got all our bags and were led to our room. As soon as we opened the door, this huge sense of JOY hit me. I know we’re where God has placed us. We ate lunch and unpacked a bit and then went on our tour. The tour was really fun although there’s no way I will remember where everything is. Surely there’s an app for that?! The tour was also very surreal. I kept thinking, “The last time I was here was with Mom and Dad and we sat right there!” But we were in Conakry so it seems completely different and yet exactly the same. 

After the tour we unpacked some more. We ate dinner with some people from our group (it’s SO nice to already know 12 other people!). Then our group had a prayer time together. We’ve been meeting together multiple times a day to pray and debrief for the last 2 months that it just seemed like the natural thing to do. We talked about emotions we’re feeling and laughed and cried and prayed. I’m so grateful for these friends. 

One quick picture of our room but I probably won’t post much more of it until we get our stuff on the container--it should arrive early December sometime. 

Home sweet home! 

THANK YOU for bearing with this and getting to the end. There’s many more stories to share but we’ll save those for another time. I did want everyone to know how much we enjoyed our field service though.

Que l'Eternel te benisse et que il te garde!