Ministry with Lighthouse

This week has been much better, thank you so much for all your prayers and encouragement! We had a couple of days with water in which I took two wonderful showers, but now we're back to no water and I've gotten really good at soaping and rinsing myself with only one or two cups o water.
This week is also better because instead of orientation to a strange city, we're on a schedule of doing things and getting things done. We've begun our Krio lessons (Monday-Wednesdays at 1:30-2:30) and the teacher is really good. He's taught the previous Servant Teams and is really good about teaching nuances in the culutre along with the language. It's very helpful.
Also on Mon-Wed we have tutoring downtown with the teenage bys who are in the Lighthouse program. So far, I've read with Santigi, Papani, and Morris, help[ing them with their English pronounciation and words they didn't know. I've also started teaching how to make friendship bracelets from camp and the guys really like that. Erik is teaching juggling and it's amazing how fast they all pick it up.
Tonight (Thursdays) they have their actual Lighthouse meeting which is more or less a kind of youth group. They have a Bible study, small group discussion time, and worship. It's been really good getting to know they guys and a lot of them are very funny and really helpful. Theuir English is better than our Krio, but we all need work and so we help each other as much as we can.

Friday is my sabbath and I plan on celebrating it with some local chocolate bars, and reading the Lord of the Rings under a huge tree I found in a quiet place. Quiet places in Freetown are more rare than snow, basically, so it's very precious to me.

In the meantime, I feel that the phrase "getting into the swing" aptly describes the past few days. I'm not there yet, but things are getting more familiar and I understand what is going on. Your support is definitely felt and greatly needed, so I thank you so much for your prayers and the messages you have sent me.

*Also, so you know- the keyboards here are trash and so my typing is probably pretty awful. Since I'm paying for my time on the internet, I don't really have time to go back and edit, so please forgive mistakes made by sticky keys. :-)