Monday, June 15, 2009

Getting Settled

New home front 1/2 view. The place is big and spacious, with lots of windows for breeze. It is so quiet that we can sometimes here the waves crashing at the sea.
Our new home side view from backyard garden.

Street where the kids play soccer right outside our gate.


Poda poda, minibus, loaded with friends from Sussex congregation heading back to Sussex after assembly. Experience in last post.




Little girl in the middle comes to meetings on her own, her experience is in the last post. How she walked to friends home for assembly, etc. Little girl with the hat is her neighbor that she brought to meeting with her.



Hello Friends and Family,


We are now in our new home! And we have electricity from 7 pm to 7 am. Hopefully it will continue. Water is available all the time! The Guma Water Reservoir is just over the mountain from us, therefore we are one of the first villages supplied with water, before even the city of Freetown. The water is good and clean too. We still boil it for cooking and continue to brush our teeth with bottled water and drink bottled water. But bathing and washing laundry etc is so much easier now. We even have an outdoor flush toilet and high pressure shower, great for when we come back from the beach and have sand. No more tracking sand into the house. The house has running water and plumbing to 3 full baths and 1 half bath. We also have a full size kitchen with double sinks, something rare here in Sierra Leone.

We still do our cooking outside on a coal pot. Electricity is not there during the day and our little generator cannot run the cook stove. The coal pot is more economical anyways. We also continue to do laundry by hand, we do it outside now instead of in the tub in the house. It is much easier and actually refreshing. You don't mind getting wet doing laundry when it is over 95 degrees outside. The little ones like helping, they push the laundry up and down in the sudsy water in giant bowls, like a gently cycle washing machine. Rainy season is here now so it isn't very easy to get the clothes dry, we often have clothes partially dry laying around the house to finish drying at night with the fans on. So far so good.

The kids are all excited to be in our new home. It has a great big flat yard and plenty of space to run and play. We are kitty corner to a school for kids grades 1 to 4. At recess time the kids go outside to play soccer with some of the school kids that knock on our gate and ask them to join in playing right in the dirt road in front of our house. Yes, the kids play in the street, it is a very rural African village dirt road, a few motorcycles pass in the daytime, but thats about it other than foot traffic. It is so nice and peaceful. The kids are really enjoying country living. They also like the new house, the set up is better than our last one. Lyam has his own room, DJ and Hunter share. Shelby has her own room, Lorelle and Kadence share.


Kadi and Jessica did not move with us. We miss them lots. Kadi was too used to city life and didn't want to go back to village life.

The village we live in has approximately 600 people, it has three schools so lots of the population here are children, some are sent from more rural villages to live with relatives here so they can attend school. We are the only Jehovah's Witnesses in the village. Saturday preaching was wonderful. We will probably be needing to do group studies soon.


Last week Shelby had a wonderful call on a woman and her family. She wanted to attend Sunday meeting, but there was a death in the family and she had to go to the funeral on Sunday. However she asked if her 10 year old son could come with us to the meeting. He met us Sunday morning and came to meeting. She plans to come next Sunday.


Our new little congregation has 21 publishers now, of that 21, 7 are pioneers and 2 are missionaries. It is a great little congregation. We have been averaging 54 on Sunday.

One of the new publishers is a young man about 18 years old, he was thrown out of his home, by his father, when he started to study the bible. He has found a place to live in the neighboring village and has been studying for about 10 months now. He conducts 3 bible studies, 2 of which attend Sunday meetings.


Pioneer school was amazing, it was such a refreshing and upbuilding two weeks of intensive study! One of the sisters that attended was a missionary single sister who started pioneering in 1968. This was her 3rd time attending pioneer school, plus she has gone to Gilead. What a spiritual gem! This was the second time for Dennis and I, what a true priveledge, it was so amazing. I know I already said amazing, .....but it just was! The encouragement to not be anxious and to rely on Jehovah was so wonderful.




















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