Relaxing Sunday

Waking up on our last Sunday morning with no expectations of serving in any way was nice. Philip, who is studying culinary, has been great in making our breakfast many mornings and he told us that he wanted to give us French toast today. He made a great presentation to us these past two days as you can see here.

Coming up with these western breakfasts in Liberia is quite a feat and we were so appreciative. Both days were delicious.

After breakfast we headed to Sunday school in our new African garb given to us by Emmanuel and Wintee.

We enjoyed good teaching on prayer from Jonathan Denis, the LCMI school principal and elder. Dr. David Nelson was to present the sermon today, but being a visitor I was asked to sit up front with him. Once I was up front Jonathan Denis pointed to the bulletin to his appointed task in the service and said, ‘You will do this today.’ I guess my day wasn’t completely free. We had a great worship day and we took plenty of pictures with others since this was our last Sunday. We came back to a good lunch and fresh fruit.

The afternoon was relaxing as we didn’t have any concrete plans. There were many who stopped by to greet us or say goodbye since they would not see us again. I did allow myself to be frustrated by technology as I tried to send Papa Mike a ‘ministry update’ to share back home. This short video was too large to send as I tried iMessage and Messenger. I did split the video up into two and tried that. I did a speed test on the WiFi and found the upload speed was 0.09 Mbps so I couldn’t expect much. I left my phone near the WiFi transmitter and went downstairs to visit. Evidently one of the videos went thru on one of these platforms because Mike informed me later that he was able to share during the fellowship meal after church. I guess the technology went okay, even though I get easily frustrated with that here. I had to turn on the power (solar) to get the WiFi on so I could send and this all took over an hour of trying. Jenny didn’t mind as she went to our room and turned the air on (since there was power) and rested. I shut the power down when I finished. I’m sure Jenny liked that while she was resting.

My afternoon was fun as I grilled plantains and made popcorn. Well, Princess put me to work doing these things, and we had fun visiting with many coming around.

The evening came as we had our snack of fried plantain chips, popcorn, muffins and fresh fruit and we talked until dark. They waited to turn the power on to not use up the solar, that is needed for fans and air conditioning overnight. This was turned off after I finished sending the video to Mike. We had hoped that LEC would come on, but it did not.

Around 7:00 p.m. we heard someone trying to start the generator. It seemed like a lot of work and then the engine roared to life. Even the children outside cheered when it started. All the lights came on and we were informed we could show an episode of Chosen that we discussed earlier. We were able to watch two episodes, finishing up at 10 p.m. During the videos, David checked on his flight (he was leaving on Monday) and found out that his first leg was delayed and this would cause him to miss his connecting in Accra Ghana. He quickly rescheduled to an early morning flight and plans needed to be made to transport him to the airport at 4:00 a.m. This was arranged and David packed up all his things and sat down to watch the end of the show before we all went to bed.

I was too tired to write this when going to bed so I woke up at 5:00 to write it. I wanted to send this out while the solar was still on and the WiFi was up. Just as I typed the previous paragraph the solar ran out. I’ll post this message when we have power again. This too is Liberia.