I Can Only Imagine

Today was a cooler day for Monrovia and that was a welcome break. I woke up early and laid in bed listening to thunder outside and I thought what a good day to just relax a little. I listened to a podcast for an hour or so and then just drifted off back to sleep, waking up at 8:30. What a great start to the day. Getting up I went outside to work on my sermon some more as the sounds of a morning in Liberia surrounded me. I’m becoming accustomed to these sounds as if they are part of the pattern of my life. Each morning I hear the creak of the hand pump, the sweeping sound of the yard broom, the whine of a motorbike as it passes on the road and of course the pesky roosters that continually remind us the day has begun. These are peaceful sounds that will always be in my mind while I’m here and I’ll recall with fondness once I get back home. There is also the happy greetings from friends, neighbors and even those I’ve never seen before. They’ll greet me with a ‘Mornie-O’. At least that is the phonetic sound I hear. They will add the ‘O’ to the end words and also cut off the end of these words ending up with ‘mornie-O’ sound.

After my failed movie night on the big screen at the orphanage, I used today to also make sure I planned better so we didn’t end up with the movie night on the tiny screen again. I connected the computer to my phone hotspot and downloaded the Amazon prime app and went to my account and started to download the ‘Ten Commandments’ movie. That took about 30 minutes to download, but at least it would be on Emmanuel’s laptop. After discussing we decided to download a different movie for tonight since the 3 hour and 40 minute movie would be too long starting later at night. We decided on the movie ‘I Can Only Imagine’ about the song. Emmanuel has seen it, but I kind of pushed for this. I asked everyone else around and nobody had even heard the song so I wondered if I chose a good one or not. As it turned out it they loved it.

Here is the message I sent to Jenny right after we finished. ‘Just finished watching I Can Only Imagine. I had tears in my eyes and goosebumps as they all clapped and cheered after he sang. It was a beautiful moment.’ They loved the story and the song brought up great discussions later.

Overall it was a great day and I’ve just got a little bit of final prep to do in the morning. I want to review it and button it up better. I don’t have as many pictures today since we just stayed around home. I’ll let you know how our worship day goes tomorrow.