Day 11

New location tonight. We are now in Yekepa, near the Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) borders. We are staying in a guest house on the ABC University campus. The day began early as we wanted to get in the road around 6:30 as the trip takes 6+ hours, depending on your stops. Leo, Renee and I all got up and we were all packed…silly us, this is Liberia. Really, Emmanuel overslept a little bit. We did get on the road around 8:00 AM. Not too bad, really. Here we are in the back seats, while Emmanuel and Wintee sat in the front seats.

We enjoyed watching all the growth in Liberia as we travelled along the road towards Yekepa. Our plans were to meet a couple of WOP chapters along the way. First stop was Kakata, about an hour from Monrovia. There is an LCMI Church and a WOP chapter located there as well as a school connected, called Mother P. Jonah School. We stopped to greet the kids at the school, took a few pictures, and had the WOP ladies that could make it say hello and we took a few more pictures.

We left there and headed to the next chapter in Gbarnga, about 1-1/2 hours further along our way. When we arrived there the women were so happy to see Renee, as cat least one had attended the class in Monrovia the week before. Thus LCMI church and chapter is one of the poorest ones. Here’s there church. Jenny and I were able to visit them 2 years ago as well and I remembered some people.

Renee was able to speak to the ladies after they sang some songs, and Leo prayed for their church. Emmanuel mentioned, as he introduced everyone, that it looked like they needed more chairs, as they had a couple of benches and broken school desks as their pews along with the traditional plastic chairs seen in most churches, and everywhere. While walking out, Renee said they really do need chairs. As we were outside taking pictures, I went back in and counted that they could use at least 16 more. We were able to give them a gift and they purchased 20 chairs later in the day. They were very happy.

We continued on our trip with a stop in Ganta for gas (It is $3.83 a gallon). We also stopped and booked 3 rooms for our trip back which will be a full day stop in Ganta for Renee to work with the WOP chapter there.

We arrived in Yekepa just after 2:00 PM. We went to ABC University and dropped our things off, only to find out we had a meal ready for us (one waiting at the Yekepa WOP chapter as well). We hadn’t eaten all day and it was a great meal at ABC. We then went to the local chapter building and Renee got to work. They understood we already ate, so we saved it for later on. It was good then too. It was a long day and I’m going to end with a few more pictures.