Kissy Renovation Photos

Building a sound cabinet.

Balancing buckets of sand. Yes, they walk with them with no hands!

Paint crew of young ones. Some held buckets for hours on their heads so the painters could get paint.

Patient little one, hanging on.

Preparing cook area.

Kissy Renovation has gone very well, it is the first one we have worked on here with the new program. The friends have been so hardworking. Many of the young ones come and work until time to go to school. There are so many children and not enough schools. Most schools have two sessions per day, morning class or afternoon class. They often have lessons on Saturday as well.

It was amazing to see little ones helping carry heavy buckets of sand on their heads. A couple of the sisters came with little 2 year olds, they were well behaved and patient while their moms worked. These sisters came everyday of the project.

Cooking is done outside over a wood fire, the pots we had for cooking rice hold, thirty cups of rice. Each day myself and two other sisters would go to market and purchase the needed ingredients for that days cook. It was fun to learn the new markets. I am learning the names of the different fish and fruits and vegetables. I did see mackerel and catfish and sheepshead fish that we are familiar with.

We are coming into dry season now, so the Mangos are coming to market more, oranges and grapefruits are starting to get scarce as are cucumbers. Carrots are hard to find all the time, and are expensive. We have been able to find large green sweet peppers, a bit pricey but worth it to have something familiar once in a while. Pineapples are amazing, we eat them nearly everyday. We enjoy Pawpaw too. We have a garden area around our home and are hoping to get seeds to plant rhubarb, zuccini, summer squash and other familiar summer food! We have grown some onions and spinach and lettuce.

We are enjoying our travels and getting to know different missionary couples in the country as well as the special pioneers. There were 8 special pioneer couples assigned to Sierra Leone and they are in outlying congregations or groups away from the city. It is a priveledge to see them and we are continually amazed at how they persevere in hard to reach territory.

Last year we posted pictures of our field service experience in Sussex, we are so pleased to let you know that they now have a congregation there. They don't have a Kingdom Hall yet, but they have an Elder and two Servants, about 20 publishers.

Please read the lower posts, I wrote the other one earlier today before posting pictures now and it explains more of our goings on.

Take care, Lorie

photos

Lorelle working at Kissy Kingdom Hall.

Visiting group in BO, they are part of one of the two congregations in Bo, but there are so many in attendance on Sunday that the Kingdom Hall is too full. Therefore Sunday meetings are split between Kingdom Hall and this school classroom.

Internet Anyone?

Hello,

Yes, we are here! Internet has been soo bad, we didn't have any for a longggg time.

The girls keep correcting my english.... the first sentence i did wrong three times..... who knew I could get sooo mixed up!

Please forgive any typos or mixed Krio english.

We have had an exciting month. Dennis has been asked to oversee the renovation of Kingdom Halls here in Sierra Leone. We have been asked to travel and inspect every Kingdom Hall, what a marvelous task. We have been traveling all over and still have much more to see.

We have currently been to Port Loko, Makeni, Bo and Kenema, as well as to 3 of the 7 in Freetown. This weekend we are traveling to Lunsar to join the group for preaching on Saturday and then on to Makeni, Sunday we will travel to Kabala and Monday to Mabroka.

Some of the congregations meet in school rooms. It has been fun to meet so many friends. When in Bo we were able to go to a wedding. We met 2 missionary couples in Bo and 1 in Kenema. Every year they send more missionaries, the preaching work here is going wonderfully. Often while conducting a study passerbys will sit and join in. This past month two of the passerbys have become regulars at sitting in on the studies. I am glad their schedule works for them to join the existing study as my schedule is so overbooked already.

The past four weeks we have been helping with the renovation of Kissy Kingdom Hall, it has been a great joy. We thought there would be 10 to 12 volunteers a day, for the Thurs, Fri, Sat. project over four weeks, but the first day we had over 35, second day 50 and third over 65..... needless to say the cooking had to be increased! It has been great fun, I love going to the markets and bartering for dry fish, raw hot pepper, peanuts to be ground in paste for the stews and many other wonderful ingredients.

The friends have all been eager to learn new skills, and the Kingdom Hall looks amazing. We hope to finish tomorrow. Every weekend we have had the great turnout of volunteers.

On the homefront,
Our little monkey "Dexter" ran away a couple weeks ago. He was always so scared and shy, still not getting personable. We thought maybe he would do better in the bush. But the next day we heard people yelling, they were trying to stone "a monkey". Our neighbor stopped them and they tried to catch Dexter but they couldn't. He ran into the bush, so we figured he would be okay. Two days later we got a call, Dexter was home. We were working at the Kissy Kingdom Hall when Dexter decided to come home, but when he was coming through the neighborhood people started stoning him, luckily our neighbor heard and ran to his rescue. He carried him home and put him in his cage. Dexter is so thankful to be home, he is a totally changed monkey, he puts his arms in the air for scratching and pushes his belly to the cage for a belly rub. He even "talks", he is so adorable. When the little kids say come to him he puts out his hands and holds their hands.

I will try to add pictures from time to time, hopefully internet will hold up. We can no longer open emails with FW. forwards, so please if you have emailed a forward in the past and we have not answered please understand we cannot open or respond to them. Thankyou for the personal little emails and notes. It means alot even to just get a quick "Hello".

Take Care, Lorie