Community walk(s)

We are really settling in to Liberian life. We got up this morning to a breakfast of oatmeal and bread with peanut butter. And of course our Nestles coffee mix.

I should say, we are in the 2nd floor of Emmanuel’s guest house and we eat on the upper porch for each meal. As we were finishing up breakfast I noticed a lady walking towards Emmanuel’s home. That’s never surprising since people come and go all day. This woman came right to the house and was ushered upstairs to greet us. I did not recognize her, but she remembered me. She reminded me that during my last visit I stopped in to see her along with Emmanuel. She told us that when we visited she was not feeling well at all and she was grateful for the visit. We prayed with her and Emmanuel followed up and she now attends regularly. Now, in May, she will be recognized as the ‘Mother of the Year’ for their church. Her name is Saturday.

After she left we met with Emmanuel to go over a schedule of sorts. We plan on remaining in Monrovia until next Monday when we’ll travel to Yekepa. That can change, but that’s the plan for now. When we finished up the schedule we asked Mother Wintee to join us where we shared gifts from the congregation and planned to hand out some of the letters (to Emmanuel’s crew). They are very appreciative of the gifts they received. We decided that tonight we would hand out their families’ letters and then watch a couple episodes of The Chosen with them.

The rest of the morning into afternoon was very quiet with the children gone to school. Incidentally, we plan to visit LCMI school tomorrow. Since it was quiet I decided to go for a walk in the community. As I walked I drew attention, but most people nearby to Emmanuel know he has white visitors from the states, so most gave me a wave or the head nod as I walked along the street. About halfway around the block I noticed one of the young men from Emmanuel’s home, Philip, sitting outside a shop. I called out to him and walked over. He was going to get a haircut from the ‘best barber in the world’ as Philip described him. I decided I needed to stay and watch. I have the before and after pictures below. During the haircut I filled in the time with local kids (whose parents can’t afford to send them to school) showing them pictures of snow, my family and finally elephants we saw in Thailand last year. They watched movies of the elephants and next thing I knew the haircut was over and Philip was ready to go. The barber did a great job.

Another satisfied customer.

Philip and I headed back as I got a text from Emmanuel saying lunch was ready. We came home and I met back up with Jenny where we ate beans and rice and fresh pineapple.

Jenny and I both rested a little in the afternoon until we decided to go for a walk. Walks can take you places you don’t plan for and they can get delayed easily. Most Liberian people are very friendly so the walk turns into a visit whenever we stop to say hello to anyone. Today was no different. We stopped many times to share names and shake hands or to meet more of the family. I have to say when the littlest kids see us sometimes they’re afraid of us. Most of the little kids never get to see a white man or woman up close.

Here are a few pictures of some of the families we met.

We even got to hold some babies and you can see by the one Jenny is holding she isn’t sure about it.

We continued our walk and met one more family. The guy didn’t want us to leave without a picture. He called all the kids over to be in a picture.

We ended the evening, handing out letters with instructions to write return letters. We got pictures of the ones writing the return letter to those that wrote. We hope to gather all before we leave. After this we watched the first two episodes of season one of ‘The Chisen’ and had snacks to hand out. Everyone had a lot of fun. We will try more episodes in the evenings as time permits. Here’s a picture of the crew as we finished for the night.