Home at long last

It was sleeting in London on Wednesday morning and that made all the difference.

It made me arrive in DC a half hour late.

Which made me two minutes late for my connection to Indy.

Which put me on a later flight that night.

Which got cancelled.

Which put me in a $500 room in the Hilton over night for free (Culture shock time!)

I flew to Chicago Thursday morning and got delayed again.

Then 21 hours later than planned and 50 (!) hours since I boarded the water taxi to the airport in Freetown, I was hugging Kelsie and my family in Indy... Finally!

I am back and still trying to figure out what to make of it.

The End

Well our last days here are really looming and I'm very excited to see everyone at home, but the bittersweetness of leaving is also setting in as we realize that we're saying goodbye. We had a farewell party for the kids we tutored on Wednesday and they prayed for us all before we left and the last Lighthouse was big series of goodbyes (but promises that we'd see each other on Saturday at Noah and Florence's wedding).

The harmattan (dry wind from the Sahara) came through and I started to get a cold but on Friday we took off to River Number Two! Cami has been to some of the best beaches in Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, California, the Caribbean, and more and she says that the beach at River No. 2 is her favorite! And with good reason- the finest, whitest sand I've seen yet and a steep slope down to the water which made for some killer waves. At low tide they'd break far out and roll perfectly in (great for body boarding) and at hide tide, they'd reach up the slope of sand, then crash back with such force that the next wave would be pushed twice as high as it normally would have been. It was awesome- I played hard and got my self beaten and battered by the waves, just the way I like it.

But I played too hard for having a fresh cold and it ended up taking it's toll that evening as I developed a very high fever that night and Cami made me stay at her house. She was very nice and helped make me comfortable but I ended up having to miss the wedding and not being able to say goodbye to everyone. It was sad.

But it came with some good memories too. The night before as my fever was raging, Joseph M. was helping out around Cami's house and she sent him to buy a bucket of water so I could shower and get my fever down. I remember watching him come up the stairs with the water balanced on his head and I realized that I had come here to (among many other things) serve him and here he was loving me right back. He's always called me "my brotha!" and as he left that night, it was much more meaningful to me after I had seen how much he wanted to help me feel better.

The fever disappeared soon and I'll be good to travel in a few days, but it's gonna be hard to say goodbye to everyone. And yet, I'm so pumped to get home!

Still trying...

(Trying in Krio means to do your best... I know it has other connotation in English)

For those of you who prayed that I would be able to continue working whole-heartedly here in Freetown up until the last day, I think our prayers are answered. Ever since we got back from the retreat, we've been very busy from planning the Christmas story skit for the Kroo Bay Christmas party, to taking part in that crazy Saturday, and squeezing everything else in these last days.

One thing that was very interesting was that Jan, in proposing his idea for what we should do in Lighthouse this week and next was that we send the boys out for evangelism and service. Since this is more or less the topic of my entire ministry proposal I've been working on for a month, I volunteered to help him, and we've been putting some things together to integrate the Christmas story into the impetus for missions. It's exciting to see my proposal taking place even before I'm done writing it and planning for things that will happen after I've left. Things like this keep me very involved and I'm glad for the chance to help out all the way to the end.

Today we're having our farewell party with the kids we tutored and Friday will be our last day playing with Remie and Saidu. Monday will be our last full day and I think Tuesday will be mostly cleaning and packing. I'm ready to be home, but not so ready that I'm not still trying here.

Thank you for all your prayers!

Final Retreat

We took our end retreat this past week to a beach resort on the peninsula, near the village of Sussex. Franco's was the name of the hotel, and Florence's the restaurant- husband and wife, Italian and Sierra Leonean respectively. It was a super nice place and very good for the topic of our retreat- going home and reverse culture shock. For the first time in three and a half months, I took a hot shower, slept in airconditioning (underneath a sheet!), was able to take a shirt off without it sticking to me, and all sorts of wonderful physical comforts (including good Italian food, fresh lobster and crab, and carpaccio. And yet we are all still ready to be home. It was a nice reminder that it's not the physical comforts of the West that we miss. Even when we had those, we still missed family, friends, and our own culture.
We had some good talks about coming home and reverse culture shock (and how it will be much worse than any other reverse culture shock we may have had before because of our interactions and living in poverty here). We did a Bible study focusing on the poor in Scripture which I felt wrapped up a lot of the things we have experienced here.
But most of our time was spent laughing, playing, eating and swimming. The restaurant is right on a tiald river that chages directions with the tide and was so much so swim in as the water came rushing in our out. As high tide gave away to low tide, it was almost dangerous getting sucked out to sea, but it was shallow enough at the shore that you could walk out. We heard that there were crocodiles up river, but we never saw any. It was a very nice beach and we were practically the only ones there.

Giving Thanks in Freetown

My Thanksgiving was interesting- it was really nice in the physical sense (that is we watched the Macy's Day Parade and football, sat on nice couches, and ate all the glorious traditional Turkey Day food you can imagine- and all in air conditioning) but it wasn't at all like Thanks giving. Just a nice party with good food. No family, no prayers, no sitting around a table, no (explicit) giving of thanks really. Don't get me wrong, we were all thankful to be there and expressed that to our generous hosts and we really enjoyed chilling with friends and having a good time but it just lacked that "holiday family feel".

On the other hand, the dessert I made (pumpkin squares) was a hit. Erin told me that it was the best one there :-)

We're going on our final retreat this week. It's to a place called Franco's which I gather is some sort of hotel near the beach. Run by an Italian guy (Franco, presumably), they've got good food and air conditioned rooms (!) and are very near the famous River No. 2 Beach. We're doing some debriefing and how to re-enter our own culture and such and we'll be back Thursday.

The New "House of Hope"

The House of Hope is what they decided to call our new building in Kingtom over Kroo Bay where we met for our first morning meeting today. I had seen it in construction, but now that it's done it's really nice. Wood floors, nice lighting, three bathrooms and an out-building that can house people. A balcony on the first floor and two smaller ones on the second (with good views of the football field and clinic in Kroo Bay). Morning worship was great because it was so quiet! No cars, and the occasional sound of a kid nearby or someone hammering something, but that was it!

It exciting but everyone has their own ideas about what to do with all the new stuff so that could get hectic. But for now it's exciting to actually have an office instead of meeting in people's living rooms.

Black Friday

Re-read my post here