CBC Clinic day

What a different experience being in Yekepa over being in Monrovia. First of all, last night was the first night I did not use a fan willingly while I slept. Of course LEC sometimes made that choice for us in Monrovia. The weather is so much more mild here. I did not sleep as well, but that was due more to the new location and knowing I wanted to wake up for morning devotional time with the kids in the orphanage and not wanting to oversleep since they meet at 6:00 a.m. I did not have any problem waking up and that makes me more tired this evening.

Once we had morning devotions Mother Wintee made us oatmeal for breakfast. They are taking such good care of me. I made one mistake today. I forgot to take my malaria med this morning so tonight just before my shower I took it…without having supper. I should know better as one time in 2018 I took my meds without breakfast and ended up throwing up. Well, I knew we were eating supper after my shower so I thought I’d have time. As I write this, after eating a light supper, I am still nursing an upset stomach for the first time on my trip. I pray the light supper settles it down. I’ll be fine, either way, just uncomfortable for awhile. I won’t be able to upload any pictures tonight since the cell coverage is quite spotty. I’m hoping to at least post this.

Back to the day…our first stop after breakfast was the Randall Godfrey School to visit each class. In every classroom I was warmly greeted with many remembering me from last year. Most of the orphans here at Betty Jonah Orphanage attend there. I recognized many of the children, but as happens each visit many have moved on and a few are added. When I first thought of the orphanage in 2012 I thought the children being here signified their parents had died and they were orphaned. Most of the children here are a result of parents not being able to feed and support their kids. That’s why many move on as they reunite with family members later on. Many of the children under Emmanuel’s care in Monrovia and also Titus’s care are similar situations where they step up and take care of these children when the parents aren’t able. Some are extended family and some are through contacts they have with families in need. That is how the connection works at the orphanage as well. One thing I’ve learned is that Emmanuel, I think, has a challenge from someone to see if he can stump me as in each classroom we visited he would tell the students that Dr. Robin (yes I’m still an honorary Liberian Dr., at least according to Emmanuel) will tell you this or that. One class I might be asked to tell about my family or my country or my job and in one class he even had me sing I’ll Fly Away for the kids. I have to admit I kept up with all his requests so far, but he gets challenging. We visited a lady after the school visit that just lost her husband and Emmanuel told her I was there to pray for her and my mind went blank when I was praying so I couldn’t say her name. God knows who I was praying for at that time. Her name is Ma Dahn if you think of her pray for her as the funeral is on Saturday. I am humbled by the appreciation of the people for our visit and I am also humbled when I think how I lack visiting skills back home. I say that now with the intent to let CBC know that I hope to continue to grow in this area. When I do visit you may not want to steer the conversation to Liberia unless you have time as I tend to want to share every story of every experience. I’m working on that too…not being overbearing. I have a lot to work on. 🤓

Also regarding the song, I’ll Fly Away, the video that Jenny took of the CBC congregation singing this on my last Sunday back home is a hit. I have showed that video most to others as they love to see Country Bible Church singing to them. One thing I’ll hear most every time I show the video to a small group is, ‘I see Papa Mike!’ They are so excited to see someone they know at the church. We may not always appreciate how our presence affects others. Papa Mike, you are loved. Almost as much as Mother Jenny, but you’ll have to work harder to pass her up. Jenny’s compassion for others doesn’t go unnoticed and they always ask about her. One girl here at the orphanage, Eunice, came out to talk to me and it was to ask about Mother Jenny. I am starting to get a complex. That’s it, Jenny will just have to come back with me next time. I even had one girl here ask me about my brother, Kelvin (that’s how they hear my pronunciation). She said I talked about him last year so she wanted to know how he was doing. A smart bunch of kids here.

After the school visit and the visit to the grieving widow, Ma Dahn, we came back to the orphanage to get the stuff for the clinic. (I just realized the clinic visit was still before noon and this blog is getting long). Well, I gathered everything I brought for the clinic and we headed over to see Moses and Caroline. Thanks for everyone’s generosity to allow blood pressure cuff, thermometers, glucose tester and strips and the many other supplies that I carried along to be presented to the clinic. They were very gracious and wanted to try the glucose or sugar test on Emmanuel. He declined to let them saying he had eaten breakfast already and the reading would be higher when the truth is he hates needles. We laughed at that and Moses tested Caroline’s blood and it worked well. They then graciously presented me, as the ambassador from CBC, with a robe and a hat that matches which they said signifies a chief or royalty. I don’t know about that, but I did enjoy teasing Emmanuel who always states that he is the ‘Chairman for life’ over everything. I reminded him that a chief is above a chairman. He didn’t agree so that debate will be ongoing. We had a great visit with Moses and Caroline. Of course I have pictures of all these things, but with the limited cell coverage you’ll have to see the pictures when I return.

We ran a couple of errands and came back to have lunch. Oh, I need to back up a little here. Moses, the head nurse at the clinic, is engaged to be married and he told us that his fiancé, Love (yes her given name), was bringing us some GB so we could swallow. I’ve mentioned GB before, but in Nimba County that is the dish the county is known for. Of course we could not or would not refuse. I was interested in meeting Moses’s ‘Love’ anyway. Before Love came with the GB we sat down to…eat lunch. Emmanuel informed me that it is normal to eat rice first and then swallow GB. So, that is what we did. We had our lunch and then Love arrived and we all swallowed some GB. As we were eating our second lunch I asked Love how she met Moses. I found out that she first met Moses as a patient to the clinic. We all laughed at how God brought them together. Wintee was teasing her about this too and we had a great visit. By the way she makes good GB and I just told Moses as he walked by before heading to bed to thank her for that when he sees her.

After eating such a heavy lunch we felt like sleeping a little, but we all found something to do. The kids started walking back from school so I got to visit with many of them as they went about their afternoon. One girl, Eunice, who asked me about Mother Jenny, was carrying a large can of sweetened condensed milk. I asked her what she was going to do with that. Now I like sweetened condensed milk. That is a favorite ingredient for bars back home. I was curious what she was going to do. She said she was making some milk candy. She said they put it in a pot over the fire and it thickens and turns color where they then form them into cookie shaped and they cool to form a hard candy. It sounded good, but what wouldn’t with that much sweet to it. I wasn’t sure, however, when I was speaking with Helena and she was cleaning some ginger, scraping the outer skin from the ginger. I asked what it was for and she told me it was for the milk candy. I kept saying, ‘Ginger, you put ginger in there?’ And making a face. She just laughed and said it’s good. I told her I really wanted a piece when they were finished. It wasn’t too long later that I walked upon them and the finished product was cooling in a container with many cookie shaped pieces all set for sale. They sell them for $10 LD each (about 6 cents) to the kids at school. Most everyone sells something to earn some money. Money is difficult to come by so they are all entrepreneurs. I was surprised, as I’m not a huge fan of ginger, that with the toasted milk flavor they were pretty good.

I was also surprised by a visitor here that many know from back at CBC. Jennifer Roff stopped by to see me once she heard I was in town. Her and Jay and 4 of their kids live up here in Yekepa now. She works at a local clinic herself and was on the way home and stopped by to see me. We had a good time catching up and I plan to see their family tomorrow sometime. That will be nice.

This evening at the Wednesday church service I was able to present to the Redeemer Baptist Church about our desire to set up a board of sorts to help in the ministry outreach of the clinic. It was a very good meeting with plans to move forward with email being a primary contact for the board. I was especially excited to have 3 of Betty Jonah Orphanage’s own, Justin, Milton and Alvin all interested in being part of the board. They are all 3 seniors at ABC University and will be graduating in December. Milton already is a Pastor of New Yekepa Baptist church, Justin is an older senior hoping to become a Pastor and Alvin is graduating in education with Emmanuel hoping to groom him as a future principal of the Randall Godfrey School. They all seemed to understand the ministry outreach CBC is striving for and I love the youth being willing to serve as they have a heart for spreading the Gospel. I plan to write up a more formal report for back home after we set things up. I will try to have a discussion with these guys before I leave, but if not I like the fact that they want to communicate via email. Phone calls with Liberian dialect are difficult as they struggle with my American dialect. I believe we will be much more effective if most of our communication is done this way. We also had Pastor Ezekiel of Redeemer Baptist interested as he understood the need for the local church to be involved. The 3 younger guys are also part of the leadership at Redeemer. The fact is the community knows them and their churches. We also discussed follow up with the patients to try and get them into a good church nearest them. If they are members of another church we still want to follow up to make sure they understand the clinic is a ministry and all care about their souls as much as their bodies. I’m excited for this direction. Pray along as we set things up to see how God can use them as people who live in the same community as the patients.

All in all it was a good day. By the way, my stomach is feeling better as this took almost 2 hours to write tonight. God bless.