The Best and the Worst

Yesterday I found my favorite place in Sierra Leone. It goes by the name of Charlotte Falls and it an hour outside of Freetown. Everyone was planning on going to a ritzy beach when it clouded up and those plans were shattered, so faye offered to take us to the falls- which i was definitely in for.

Our taxi driver was a whiney little man who kept trying to change the price but I was thankful for Faye's persistence in refusing to back down. We drove over Leicester Peak and beyond into the Peninsula mountains about a couple of miles, got out and hiked for maybe fifteen minutes. Being out the city and in the mountains was the best. The air! It was so fresh and green smelling, it was almost as satifying as sleep! I drank it in as we hiked through the jungle with the sound of pounding water growing ever louder. The Falls themselves were beautiful (I'm sure Erik will post pictures on his blog soon) and we spent some time slipping on the rocks and swimming in the chilly pools all while it drizzled slightly and the clouds kept the oppressive equatorial sun at bay. It was beautiful and glorious.

Coming home was mostly uneventful. We played with Remie and Saidu at Cami and Faye's then I went home for fry-fry (one of my favorite local dishes) and bed early. Thank the Lord I went to bed by 9 because the two hours of sleep I got after that were all I would get last night.

Nissi Ministry is a Pentecostal "church"* right across the street from us, a mere 15 yards from my bed. They are boisterous and in typical Sierra Leonean fashion, love to blow out speakers as the sing and preach. The lower volume levels mean nothing in this country. We can usually avoid their screeching by going out at the right times of the four services a week, but every now and then, they surprise us. Like last night at 11 PM when they began their prayer service. It lasted, non-stop, until 5:30 AM. I wish so much that I were exagerrating.
What bothered me more than the time and the volume was their message. I heard five sermons last night, interposed with wild singing, imagined demons cast out, and sporadic wailing but each of the sermons had this general message: "Believe in Jesus and He will give you cash! Use His name in the right way and you can scatter all your problems by fire! Scatter by Fire!" This last sentence was our good preacher's main point, and he made that known to us by the tried and true method or repetion and reiteration.

Needless to say, I was angry. I couldn't sleep, so I stayed awake critiquin the sermons, reading and planning to head over there to give them a pievce of my mind. I mercifully decided against it and in the morning light, I'm glad I saved my self a potentially cultural misunderstanding.

Overall, it was a very strange juxtaposition of highs and lows all in a span of ten hours. Oh Lord, what are you preparing me for now?

* For the record, I have nothing against Pentecostalism or their excited style of worship. When truly in the Spirit, I find it wonderful and amazing. I believe Discovery Church that I attended in Ireland was a fantastic example of this as was Greg Campbell our speaker at Lighthouse a few weeks ago. But I also believe that the hype has been widely hijacked by emotional manipulation schemes and the unfortunate partner of prosperity gospel. The ministry across my street fits both of these bills. If you keep me awake all night to actually worship Jesus, I can forgive you, but to shout out lies and revel in it, you've found a recipe to make me pretty angry.

General Updates

Rainy season is beginng to taper off here with less and less day-lng downpours and even a few sunny days a week. Those of you who may be envious of my experiences of the African sun may be forgiven for your foolishness. Even with SPF 30 on, it literally hurts my skin to stand in the sun for more than a minute. The malaria medicine I'm on is the main culprit of this, but honestly, being so near the equator doesn't help either. I love and miss the rain.
Tutoring is progressing well. I feel that I am getting a hang of where my students are at in their levels of reading and math and am thinking of good ways to challenge them. Though maybe not always in math. some of the older kids are doing math that I routinely failed at in high school and I realize that I need to brush up my toes a bit if I'm actually to be any help in that area. Dang math... can't ever get away from it!
Our team has been exploring a bit in our off time- the other night (before getting almost real ice cream from an expensive Lebanese restaurant) we stepped into a suburban supermarket that we had seen many times but not be in yet. It was America. Through and through. They had everything that you have at your local grocery store from Dr. Pepper to Peanut Butter M&Ms, Dove Soap, everything. And when you work out the conversion (say Le5000 for M&Ms = $1.25) prices are pretty good. But when you work out the prices according to everything else here, it's really expensive. That same small bag of M&Ms cost nearly 3/4s of a lunch for me and half a dinner. It's a bit sobering to think that "the good American stuff" isn't pricy according to home standards but it's far out of the reach of the majority of the population... and yet there are still plenty of supermarkets to supply the fabulously rich here in Sierra Leone. As much as I enjoyed that little taste from home in the supermarket, the more and more I realized how great the gap is between rich and poor here.


Also, a little note. I got a package from my mother today! Full of goodness and wonderful things from home- my parents are the best :-). But I was quizzed by the postal officals about it's contents and luckily I knew- they seemed like they would become very perturbed if I didn't. I thought it would be good to make a note that if you send me a package, don't send any surprises. Let me know what's in it so that I can tell them correctly and I don't get it taken away or fined or arrested or anything.

Did I say poverty?

I re-read one of my earlier posts about how I've got it rough here and I found myself laughing out loud. I really don't have it bad here at all.

I think what has helped is just spending time getting used to things that are not like America and also seeing the grinding poverty around me and comparing. We've learned to make our food money stretch and I've realized that I'm not using hardly any of my personal money that I brought (outside of family Christmas gifts and such).
Of course it helps that we've had consistent water supply for somehwre around two weeks and electricity for three solid days or so. Funny how I could tell you the exact amount of time the water was off, but I can't keep track of how long I've been blessed. A little backwards? Something to work on.

Keep praying that as we get more and more used to our routine that we don't make our time here routine. It's such a temptation to become complacent and stuck in a rut.

Last Tuesday, Anne was asked by Jan to accompany a boy to the hospital in hopes that a white person could help get him in. The boy (whose name probably shouldn't be published publicly) had been badly burned in an industrial accident in which molten aluminum had spilled all over both legs, from the knees down. That was over two months ago. He nearly died of malnutrition since then and now we've convinced his family to put him in a hospital. Anne told us that he looked so thin and emaciated that he hardly looked seventeen at all. After a few fiascos, they finally got him settled into a hospital nearby and we went to visit him last Wednesday and then again this morning. Each time we see him he has more life and joy in his eyes. We taught him how to play Uno today and he loved it. His family isn't bringing enough food though and his doctors want us to bring it for him, which we can't. It's a hard situation and his legs are still in terrible shape, but I'm glad we've been able to be a part of it like we have.

Ramadan ended today so it's a national holiday- should be loud parties tonight and no Krio lessons or tutoring tomorrow. Lately we've been hanging out at the girls' apartment a lot and we tought the Southerners how to play Euchre or we read together with the fan pointed at us. I've read a lot. I think I read over five hundred pages this weekend- The Kite Runner was the main culprit but it was really good and I'm excited to get into more of Cami's books.

Social Capital

Before I go on to the main subject of this post, I want to make something clear. Despite the fact that in my last post, I made a point that I'm trying to not seek my own comfort but look first to the needs of others, I'm not utterly neglecting myself or suffering unnecessarily. My mother sent me a nice email reminding me that Martin Luther as a Catholic monk used to flog himself in penance for his sin because he thought he needed to suffer more. I'm definitely gonna stay away from that. I've said I'm here to learn from suffering, but that's the suffering that's going to come naturally. I'm not seeking it out in any way.

That being said, let me tell you how easy my life is. I may be on a low budget and without electricty (which came back on briefly this morning for the first time in eleven days!) but I am rich. Super rich. Not just money, the dollars I brought with me or the support that you gave that I get weekly for food and transport.
Social capital (I'm told by people who've had classes in this sort of thing) comes from the people you know and resources that are available to you because of them. The very fact that I'm here shows an enourmous amount of social capital from you, my friends and family back home. And even though I've known no one on the continent more than 30 days, I have great wealth here now too. When I got sick and was laying in my bed with my fever, I had no idea how many people were working and talking to get the things I needed. Cami, Faye, and Steph were talking at dinner and decided I needed a malaria test. Jan and Karolina brought the test to Cami and Erik brought the test back to our place.
That's just one quick example of the resources available to me thanks to the body of Christ and the friends I've already found here. I'm not living in poverty at all. True poverty would lack that many friends and even if the friends were there, they would not be as resourceful. Thanks God!

Ailments (Physical and otherwise)

Don't worry too much, but I've already had my first malaria test.

Two days ago I came down with a raging fever and spent about 15 hours sleeping it off in bed. Cami wanted to make sure it wasn't malaria (though I've had less than a handful of bug bites since I've been here). She used this fun little do-it-yourself blood test kit and we found out within ten minutes that I do not have malaria. Praise God, huh? My fever ended up going away miraculously fast and by all rights I should really still be laid up sick in bed with some sort of flu or whatever it was. But it's gone!
The mold on the other hand, I fear is growing back faster than we can clean it away and it's just not very restful or comfortable being allergic to your own bed and home.

Other than that, I have a few other things to say: to be honest and perhaps clear up some confusion. A few days ago I posted my reasons for coming and my goals while I'm here but I wanted to note that while my goals may seem praiseworthy, I'm still quite human. As far as progress toward acheiving those goals is concerned, I feel that I've really yet to get started. I spent sometime this morning (while I was sneezing away last night's mold) realizing that the bulk of my time, thought, and actions are spent in some way or another on making myself more comfortable. Of course, this is only natural in a foreign and uncomfortable setting and is a common goal of anyone who is sick, so I may be excused a little bit, but it's hardly the attitude or actions of someone who intends to be a servant with goals like mine. I spend my days looking for the best restaurants, finding the best bargains on food, plotting ways to store up water in case it shuts off again, thinking of how to best clean the mold out of my room, reading books that are fun and comfortable... I could go on.
And the funny thing is that none of these things are actually bad in and of themselves. In fact, it would be good if I continued all of them. But, I am realizing that if I really want to acheive my goals, I need to give myself a little less focus and others a little more.
There, I don't know how to put that into a succint prayer request, but you get the idea.

The latest

This last week was a really good one and seemed to go quite fast. I'm tutoring a fun young boy named Saidu. He's 11 and acts like he's all that... basically because he is. If he weren't so full of himself, he'd be my favorite... but he's still pretty awesome. We've been working on multiplication tables and he's brilliant.
We started a Bible study with Steph and the rest of the Servant Team. We're going through Isaiah and I'm teaching this Tuesday on ch 2-6. It's such a good read in the context of what we're doing and the latest book we're reading together Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. It really makes you think about how we fit into the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and how Judah and Jerusalem were judged for their lack of justice and righteousness. Some very good things to be thinking about now.

Anyway, that's what's been up lately. We have a staff retreat tomorrow at a house up on the hill and it should be pretty good. Free lunch too! Speaking of which, let me tell you about food and how that all goes down here.
From the money that you so generously gave almost half of it went to my plane ticket. Yeah, yikes. Another huge chunk goes toward my rent. The rest (more or less is for meals). I am allowed about 60 cents for breakfast, $2 for lunch and when Mrs. Freeman doesn't cook for us a grand total of $3.10 for dinner. Don't fret too much though- I usually have a loaf of bread with either a boiled egg, cheese or a banana for brex. Lunch can be rice and sauce at a cookery (who know's what you'll get) or we might get an egg burger or a shawarma at a Lebanese restaurant, but that's splurging a bit. Mrs. Freeman cooks dinner most nights of the week and it's always rice and some sort of sauce. Cassava leaf or potatoe leaf, sometimes palm oil stew. It's always some unintelligible and spicy mess with four or five large bits of meat. Usually some sort of fish, but often a slice of beef or chicken. Oh yeah and bones are the responsiblity of the eater, not the cook. Makes me dislike the fish even more.

But there you have it- another little glimpse at the details here. Really though, Erik spends a fortune on interenet usage and blogs way more, so if you want more check his blog. Links on the left!

Reasons and Goals

Today is the first day in eight days that we have had water. Praise God that it's back! But don't worry- this is not normal. A huge water main was broken just outside the city and all of Freetown has been waterless for the past week. It's been much harder on other people, so don't feel too bad for me (though my laundry did begin to mold and I found I was allergic to it) but it's all better now. And I can use rain very efficiently.

But the real reason for this post is that as a team we wrote out reasons that we each decided to come here and then came up with personal goals for our time here. I felt that this sort of thing is something that you, my supporters financially and in prayer, should be in on. So here goes.

Reasons (for doing a Servant Team/coming to SL)

For obedience
-to follow God's commands to have mercy on the poor and preach the Good News
-to suffer with those who suffer and learn to love more completely by that

For myself
-to gain a better perspective through poverty and ministry
-to use that perspective to help decide how I want to aim the course of my life

For adventure
-to live in Africa for four months!
-travel, experience new cultures, see new things
-be challenged



Goals

To grow closer to God
-Through prayer & daily struggle (and to journal)
-In ministry (to be humble)

To grow closer to the Servant Team
-Build friendships to rely on one another
-Memorize/Bible study together
-Share and be vulnerable

To become culturally adapted
-Learn Krio
-Find my way around Freetown
-Understand (better)customs, behaviors, etc.

To change my persprective/way of thinking
-In resources/economics/class struggle
-Acceptance for people who are different
-Appreciation for my environment/setting

To learn to love better
-Through suffering/solidarity/compassion
-Long distance with those back home
-When I don't want to love