Sunday February 18th

Today, being a Sunday, it was a day I was able to serve 2 different churches. In the morning I traveled with Emmanuel, Titus and Mother Betty to the New Yekepa Church. This is into the hills just past Yekepa itself. It is in a beautiful setting and many of the congregants do not speak English, at least the American English that I would be speaking. To remedy this I Mother Betty translated into Mano, the tribal language from the area. I thought it was to be in Gio, another tribal language, but I was wrong. Either way it was a language I did not know and most likely is a language I’ll never know. Bobbi was able to share her testimony last time we were here with the same circumstances. I only had one sermon worked on so I shared the notes I took on a previous Pastor Buckley sermon from last year. Another great reason to take notes. Along with this I shared my testimony as well. They are very gracious people there and I could tell many of the congregants can speak English now, but there are some of the older ones who still talk in the tribal tongue.

A few of them traveled back to Redeemer Baptist to hear me again, this time with me speaking English. I cannot even tell you the surreal feeling of standing in a building in the middle of the foothills of Liberia speaking to this congregation through the use of an interpreter. God is amazing in the opportunities he places in our lives.

We finished with enough time to travel back the 20-30 minutes drive to Redeemer in order to make it for their 11:00 a.m. worship service. I really enjoy the people that I’ve come to know over the years at this church. They are so welcoming and genuinely happy to see me return. One sad note was one of the Elders, Ezekiel Kopea lost his wife Esther this past October. Jenny really hit it off with her when she visited, so much that Jenny wrote her a letter of greeting that I carried over in 2016. It broke my heart when Ezekiel brought the letter in today to show me that he still keeps it. We never know what an act of kindness or caring for someone means to others. Thank you Jenny for writing that letter 2 years ago. It meant a lot to both Ezekiel and Esther and it still brings Ezekiel pleasure to know that a woman from the states cared enough to write a note to his wife.

After church we came back to Mother Betty’s Home where we had both GB and squash soup for our rice as a meal with fresh pineapple for desert. The other day I purchased 3 good size pineapples for less than $1. They are in season now and I enjoy every time they cut one or 2 up for our meal. I forgot to mention yesterday the nurse, Caroline, heard that I eat GB and FUFU. She wanted to give me a gift so she brought enough FUFU for Emmanuel, Titus and myself to swallow a great breakfast this morning. You’ll have to look that up on YouTube to see how the Liberians eat this. It really is good.

After lunch I had a great time sitting with the children of the orphanage and talking. I know the others that have been here can vividly remember times like that. The kids just enjoy hanging out. Later in the afternoon I took a walk around Camp Four with Mother Wintee, Kathryn (Moses’s wife) and a few of the girls from the orphanage. Wintee and Kathryn wanted to invite many of the local women to the Women of Purpose classes that will be starting in early March. I was an expected eye catcher as I could hear the children in the community yelling ‘white man’ as they came up to shake my hand or wave at me. A couple of the children hid behind others because I looked ‘different’. This made the girls of the orphanage laugh. We had a great time.

We decided to wait to leave her e until tomorrow. We will be meeting someone tomorrow before heading out to Saclapea. We plan on spending the night there visiting Angie and her family. We will travel back to Monrovia on Tuesday sometime. I don’t know if I’ll have any cell coverage so I may not be able to update my blog until Tuesday night. I’ll have to wait and see.

Although my official duties of speaking and teaching are over I look forward to any other relationship building that occurs in this next week in Liberia.

I have a trip to Red Light planned yet. This will be on motorbike taxis. I had to have Jenny send Emmanuel a permission slip telling him Jenny allows me to travel by motorbike. Emmanuel said he promised Jenny he’d take care of me and that the motorbikes aren’t as safe as he wants. Of course I see grade school children and even infants riding these motorbikes so I’ve been giving Emmanuel a hard time over these ‘rules’. We’ve had fun joking about many things.

I may add pictures to this post if I find the cell coverage better sometime. It is 7:30 p.m. now and it is always slow now.