more photos, enjoy

Hunter preaching in Sussex with James from Sussex village. Ocean in the background.

Getting fresh mangos.

Brothers on Bicycles in Sussex. Little Emmy (Emerald) in front pack with her dad.

Walking territory in Sussex. Missionary sister in front, Shelby in back of group.

Sussex service group. Invitation campaign for memorial.

Sussex

Hi Friends and Family,

This past week we have been visiting Sussex congregation. It is a new little congregation of 15 publishers. Last year they had 6 publishers, with 125 at memorial. Now they are 15 publishers, one elder (missionary brother) and three ministerial servants.



The territory is mostly little rural villages on flat area around the peninsula. Some of the brothers ride bicycles. Here is Kadence with some of the service group.


Brother preaching, ocean view.

Kadence with her friend Wilecia, they are both 8 years old.

Sussex Congregation beach day after preaching. DJ learning to fly kite. Missionary sister in the foregrown, mending other kite.

Take Care, Lorie

photos, lunsar

small shop intown Lunsar, with added room on right.

brush got in the way of this photo, in village gardens in background, on right our vehicle with kids getting coconuts opened to drink the fresh coconut milk and eat the flesh.

tiny, tiny frog!

macro zoom used to take this picture, he was soooo tiny!

bread oven, maybe someday we can make pizza........mmmmmm

typical family home in Lunsar, some are single family others are room rentals with shared bathrooms. This is a newly constructed 9 room home.

Hills in Lunsar, two mining companies are looking into mining them.

sunset, heading home from Lunsar

Kadence conducting bible study.

Sunset heading into Freetown.

Here are some photos from Lunsar. Some are the drive to / from.

The little frog was so tiny! He didn't even look real, I had to use the macro setting to get his picture.

David our driver, bought a couple live chickens in Lunsar. He put them in the back of the vehicle with DJ and Kadence. One of the little kids in the vehicle kept passing gas..... wont say who..... they tried to blame it on the chickens....... after the 6th time we decided it was not the chickens as they were now fumigated. David said his chickens were truly foul...... :)

Glad the internet stayed working this evening, I tried to go on the other day but the server was down for a few days. If you sent an email and we haven't replied, please resend, as some are getting lost in cyberspace.

Take Care, Lorie

March 16, 2009

side view off Lunsar veranda, roof in far view on left is the roof of the school where we hold meetings

Community kitchen Lunsar

view from backyard, Lunsar, hills are great for day hikes

small rental in Lunsar, where we can lodge when we travel to help the outlying territory

Hi Friends and Family,

We continue to do well here, we hope to visit Lunsar more during the memorial campaign and cover all of the village territory. It is about a 2 1/2 hour drive to Lunsar but it is an enjoyable ride through the african plains. We rented three small rooms to spend the night so we can go up for Friday/Saturday and get more preaching done. There is an outdoor community kitchen as our rooms are in a small building complex of apx. 14 rented rooms. There are three outhouses and three rooms to wash with buckets of water, that the tenants all share. The yard is flat and spacious for the kids to play. The place is located just three lots down from the school where we meet for service and hold meetings on Saturdays.

This past weekend, Shelby's return visit, the young woman we gave a ride to three weeks earlier, came to the meeting and they started the Bible teach book.

Kadence and DJ's rv came again also, I went with Kadence to visit the boys father. The father said he has to work on Saturdays but is very glad his son is going to meetings. We talked to him about having a bible study, he said he would like it very much for his son to study and he would join also when possible. We are hoping to go up on Fridays so he can study in the afternoon with his son. Kadence conducted the first study with the boy this week.

Lunsar is a rural village, with a good size market for buying clothing, food provisions from local gardens, and a small provisions shop for powdered milk, soft drinks, cereals, bread etc. The area is very flat, walking to preach is easy as there are very very very few vehicles, most is foot traffic, some bicyles and some motorcycles. There are no taxis for transport, it is mostly motorcycle transport. There is a big hospital in Lunsar with xray machines, lab and pediatricians from Spain, they have a surgical ward as well. We were very surprised by the cleanlyness of the hospital when we toured. It is not easy to keep things sparkly clean in the dry dust season, but the hospital was beautiful. There is also an eye clinic in Lunsar.

I am trying to add more photos but isn't working, I will post this and try again.

Take care, Lorie

March 2009

Dennis and the girls on the service meeting. One of the bethelites from Canada sitting in front.

Hunter, Jessika (Kadi's little girl), DJ and Kadence

Hunter, preaching in Dry Season.

Don't know what happened the pictures are the wrong way.... I fixed them three times but they keep coming up this way.....

Here are some new pictures of Dexter the Monkey. He is doing great! He likes to take care of his baby doll. His wounds have healed well and today for the first time I put a collar on his waist and hooked him to a leash, he did really well. He is still leary of people some but has come a long way. His favorite foods are cucumber, rice, grapefruit and canned mushrooms. He also likes mango and pineapple. He actually doesn't like banana very much.

The little ones send a big Hello to the Jenkins kids and Giavanna, thankyou for your comments to the blog.

We had a wonderful time in Lunsar again this past Saturday. Lorelle's preaching started at a small shop, with a woman and her 7 year old son. The woman listened and said she would come to the meeting. Later in the afternoon we walked past the shop, it was locked. The woman came to the meeting, she had gone home first to change into very nice culture clothes and she brought her son too. After the meeting she asked for the study issue of the Watchtower so she could be ready for the meeting next week.

Shelby was preaching at one home and the older pa of the family called all to gather to listen, shelby had been prepared with one presentation but had to change when the pa said "Your hear to teach us Gods name" over a dozen people gathered. One of the teenage girls and her younger sister from the group came to the meeting.

Another experience Shelby had was with a group of 6 or so people, she was showing them the blessings of everlasting life, one young man said, it wouldn't be possible, because as he said "if nobody died, people would starve because there wouldn't be enough food" she had the opportunity to share the scripture at Ps. 72:16 "plenty of grain on the earth".

DJ and Kadence had a return visit on a young boy, he came to his second meeting this week.

A missionary couple came with us to Lunsar this weekend. While walking on the road the brother met a man that asked if we were Jehovah Witnesses, he said he had attended some meetings in Freetown in the past, but had had to move to Lunsar for work. He was happy to come to the meeting, after the meeting we had a good conversation. He is the area Youth Counselor he said he is going to tell all the youth they need to come to the meetings on Saturday to learn bible truths. This explained why during the meeting he had waved to two different young men walking by and had them the meeting.

We are really enjoying our expanded ministry in territory that has not been preached in in over 10 years, there had been a Kingdom Hall there years ago before the war. We have had a number of friends in our congregation here in Freetown say they would love to come work in Lunsar with us. We are happy for the support and enjoy working with different ones. Many would like to go, but transport is not easy. Having our vehicle is a wonderful blessing.

Last week we had given a young mother and her baby a ride to Freetown from Lunsar after her transport had broke down on the road. She said she would be at the meeting this week and gave us her phone number. We called the number three times when we reached Lunsar, the phone was turned off. The woman did not show at the meeting. After the meeting we decided to tour Lunsar a bit and see the local hospital. While at the hospital a woman ran up and hugged Shelby, it was Melicente the young woman, she was so happy to see us, she had been called into work unexpectedly and could not have her cell phone at work. She said she was sorry she missed the meeting and would look forward to seeing us next week.

When Dennis' brother Norman visited he met a very nice man who came to the meeting, he is continuing to study.

We heard you got 6 inches of snow in NH, hard to imagine when we had 105 register on the vehicle thermometer on Sunday afternoon after the meeting. We are into the dry season now, but we get good breezes, the kids were flying homemade kites today. Even inland in Lunsar there is a good stiff breeze off the African plains in the afternoon.

Take care, thinking of you often, Lorie

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.