Africa--part 1

I'm sure this will take me several posts, so I thought I should go ahead and get started while I have a chance. The boys are down and I found someone to clean the house this week, so now I'm just relaxin!

So, about two or so months ago we headed out to Sierra Leone. But the story really begins way before that. You see, I went to Zimbabwe in 1996 after having wanted to go to Africa for most of my life. It was a great trip and I always knew I would go back to Africa someday. So when our church started looking to make a partnership in Africa and I caught wind of it, I barged right in. Seriously, I approached our associate pastor and basically told him I was going. Well, he finally gave in and then we actually started looking at the country of Sierra Leone. In case you don't know, it is one of the very poorest countries in the world and it just came out of a 10-year civil war about 2 years ago. SO, not the most stable place to say the least. However, I really felt I was supposed to go and Scotty felt he was to go too. So, we decided to go, no matter the cost.

Speaking of cost, you know how things always end up costing more than you expected? Well, we knew how much the "trip" would cost, but when you add up all the shots we needed (times two of us) it really added up in a hurry. But God is faithful and it all worked out without any stressing. There were 9 total of us that went--3 women, 6 men. We left for London on a Wednesday morning and the two flights over went smoothly. We got to London at 6am-ish on Thursday morning and rented a few cars and got a few hotel rooms. We spent the day touring all of London we could. I can't believe how much we saw--Big Ben, Parliament, the London Eye, Spurgeon's church, Buckingham, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Westminster Abbey, and many miles on the tube. It was great, but very tiring.

You can only fly in/out of Sierra Leone on Mondays and Fridays. So on Friday morning we headed out of London for a 8 or so hour flight to Freetown. When you land in Africa it is totally amazing--truly the dark continent. I never saw ANY lights and wasn't sure when we would land until we hit the groud--not so smoothly. Once you land you go through Customs, or something like that. The whole entire airports is about the size of--well, I can't think of anything to compare it to, but it is small. So, we get our luggage and head back out on the runway to catch a helicopter ride over to the main town--over a body of water. This was our first helicopter ride and it isn't exactly what I would call and fun ride. You can't see or hear anything and we're all smashed in there like sardines. But we made it and met our hosts, Lina and Eudora. They and George (the pastor that visited our church) were with us everywhere we went. So we loaded up on a "puda puda" (public transport they rented for our stay) and headed the 3-4 miles to Goderich where we would stay. This was a true experience. Once you got out of the main Freetown area, the road became dirt and a constant series of potholes--big, deep ones--and it was the rainy season there. It took us about 45 minutes to make that 3-4 mile trip!

We stayed at a guest house and from the looks was really nice. Scotty and I had our own room and bathroom, but we found out the shower was really nothing more than a drip-seriously. We did have a fan and an AC unit, but when we turned the AC on, it almost blew everything up, so we didn't use it. There was a TV too, and CNN seemed to be the only thing that came in. Evidently everyone has to watch the same thing or something wierd like that.

While we were there we got to experience a conference with local pastors and their wives, a worship service, an orphanage, a hospital, a village setting, and much more. I guess I'll write about all that another day. This is probably enough boring stuff for one post. I will just say, that my perspective on "things" really changed--as it usually does when visiting a place like that--and our trip made a lasting mark on me. Here are a few pictures from the trip over...