Gbarnga Mission | Liberia – West Africa

After a bit of slow loading of the items we ordered yesterday at Eagle Electric, John 2 and I were on our way up to Gbarnga to meet Hawa Norris and finally get our official Gbarnga Lutheran Training Center, Inc. bank account at LBDI in downtown Gbarnga.  I slept on and off during the drive with my slumber frequently interrupted by new police checkpoints and “inspections” along the route.  I think they’ve added 3 or 4 more stops since last November.  Without going into boring – and frustrating – banking details, suffice it to say that 3 hours later we now have two checking accounts…one in US dollars and another in LD Liberian dollars. With Hawa using some of her connections and influence, we may have printed checks as early as mid-next week.

I finally arrived to a crush of Deanville children hugging me at the school around 3:30pm. What a great greeting!  And then there was the “greeting service” with Sumo, the Deanville choir, members of St. Mark’s, and miscellaneous community members. Because we’re having a celebration service on Sunday to dedicate the school opening, they’ve constructed a large shaded area with wooden poles and palms.  I sat at a special table facing the group as they prayed, offered greetings from various people (including the security guards!), thanked God for the progress, and shared songs with the choir. What a great way to return and feel loved up!

Afterwards, everyone helped unload the truck into the guesthouse. It felt like college move-in day as a line of friends carried boxes and suitcases into one of the guesthouse bedrooms for me to sift through over the next few days. I’m over at Phebe for tonight and the next few nights as I prepare our guesthouse for an extended stay (it needs a kitchen sink, propane cook stove hooked up, etc.) which I’ll start tomorrow.  Since everything was hauled out of the truck, I forgot to retrieve my newly purchased food stash so I could make dinner and breakfast so I had to stop at the market across from Phebe to get some minimal supplies (pasta, 2 eggs, rice, and a pineapple).  I’m sharing the same Guesthouse #11 with a young man, Lawrence, from South Africa who’s a microbiologist helping Phebe Hospital expand it’s lab capacity.

The biggest news I received today was when Sumo introduced me to his FIANCE!  Yes, Sumo is engaged to Amuchain Y Cooper (Amuchain is pronounced “ah-moo-SHANE”).  Here’s the happy couple…I made fun of her lack of smile but she’s been ill so we’ll let it slide.  They met while studying in school.

I’m off to bed.