Christmas...

On Christmas Day we spent the day swimming in the sea first thing and then with various American missionary friends and their families. It was lasagne for lunch and we shared the small Christmas pudding we had brought with us. They insisted on calling it figgy pudding and sang along but I don’t think it was very popular (maybe it’s an acquired taste!) We then Skyped and phoned our families which was lovely.

The weather has been uncharacteristic, it is meant to be the dry season but we had a huge tropical storm on Christmas Day evening, which brought the temperature down wonderfully (to 26°C!) The humidity is the real issue and we are getting used to it now. We know that on occasions we just have to rest in the late afternoon but mostly we are acclimatising. We seem to drink gallons. Our kidneys are writing a letter of complaint…

Just as an aside… We came across this large wall the other day painted pristine white and written in large red paint was the sentence “Only dogs peepee on this wall!” We had to giggle at that!

We went to Waterside the other day, which is a huge open air market with stalls and little shops selling everything from plastic buckets, live chickens, lapas (Liberian wrap skirts), to second hand toys, clothes and shoes. All markets are like a large jumble sale as all clothes toys and shoes are second hand. So when you hand in your old clothes etc. you know they really do get to countries like Liberia. It is rare and very expensive to find any new items here. We bought an odd collection of large saucepans and ladles for cooking Liberian “soup” (chicken stews really!), plastic containers for storing food away from ants, an ironing board (ironing is a hot but essential job to kill the mango fly larva which if not killed might burrow into your skin) and a water melon (Yum!)

Jenny has had many conversations with people in the education system and is beginning to form a picture of the needs which are considerable. She is impatient to get on but the school holiday goes on until 16th January! (That would make a few British children rather envious!) There is such a need for Education here. There are no free schools, some are very expensive and many children are not in school at all, as their parents cannot afford to send them, or in many cases they have no parents.

We have been befriended by two local Liberian girls. They live about 10minutes dirt road drive from here but they regularly visit us and seem to have adopted us as their second parents, even giving us local Bassa names. We went to visit their family and their father who has had a serious stroke and can no longer work has twice walked all the way to visit us. They had 12 children (not sure how many are their own or are adopted extended family members) but 5 died in the war!


Princess and Elizabeth and some of their family.

We had a great morning yesterday with the one of the leaders the ECUL church, Jeremiah and his wife, Annie. There is a good relationship between SIM and the Church but it needs developing. In recent times there has not been the mission personnel to take this forward. What we need now are the right people to come out and work with this young and growing church. We would like to see training in teaching, leadership, outreach and vocational opportunities to lead to sustainable development. The leaders of the church have meetings in early January and we hope and pray that they will appoint a person to be responsible for education in schools so that Jenny will have someone to work with.

For a real treat and to spend a little of our Christmas gift we went to a local hotel for the day earlier in the week. They have a lovely pool and beautiful garden area for relaxing and a wonderful beach with shaded loungers and we sat around chatting, reading and swimming all day. It was a wonderful luxurious break.

May God richly bless you in the New Year

Written in the cement of our front doorstep is “To God be the Glory”, always a good sentiment I think!

PS We have added some new photos to our photo gallery on the top right of this page...