Last Weekend at the Beach
the girls looking at a monkey
We went to the beach last weekend with Del and Arielle family, and there African friends
I’m catching myself a little on the emotional side this morning… but a few things are hitting me and I want to write about them. You always catch the emotional side of me, because that’s when I write… when I can feel.
Today is Sunday morning, and I feel fine and I’m not going to church (whooooops… shhhhh! 😉 I only say that, because we’re supposed to be visiting churches here in Senegal. We listened to a Sermon by our pastor this morning, and if felt SOOO Soooo soooo good to be fed! Ava and Penny were playing on the floor and Ava looked up and said “hey, is this our pastor talking?” we said “yes” and her face lit up with the feeling of familiarity like we were listening to a bit of home… and we were! During the sermon he talked about toiling for the gospel, and not doing it half heartedly, be one of the quality utensils in the drawer. He had different leaders in the church stand up, people who serve in children’s ministry, small group leaders, elders, and TJ mentally stood up in our living room as we listened because we are the Church missionaries, and this is where God has us. We felt encouraged to press on, to do what God has called us to do well. I felt encouraged to parent with integrity, to study french with audacity, to have a good attitude as we feel normalcy stripped from us to find a new “us” or better yet find out how Christ “in us” is the most important.
This Girl
I am also challenged by my passionate daughter Ava. She fights me like you wouldn’t believe, but as I continue to watch her I can see that she’s gonna fight for what she believes in with the same sort of tenacity. A couple weeks ago I came into the living room to Ava going through her children’s chronological Bible book with our friend. Ava ran up to me and said “I want “____” to know God, so I’m telling her” My heart felt full and thankful for her sweet and individual passion for God. I had to explain to her that we don’t know french well enough to tell her about God, but we can pray for her right now until we do know French well enough. And she said “well… how many words do you know? which ones do you know?” She didn’t want to take no for an answer, she wanted to find a way for our friend to know God! Just a few days after that we had a couple from our french class over for lunch, and the next day he said that our daughter really impacted him. He said while they were in the living room talking with TJ, Ava came up to TJ and said “do they know God? or do we need to tell them?” He said that her heart really blessed him. Well she blesses me too, It’s like God put the burden for the lost on her heart too, and we’re not just here in Africa to do our ministry. It’s a reminder that Ava and Penny are just as much a part of this as we are, our little teammates… our little missionaries.
language learning
A little more about normal life for us: Every morning we have french class at 8:30. We live on the 3rd floor of our apartment building, and the language center/church is on the first floor, so all we have to do to go to class is walk downstairs. Anna does school with the girls, and we usually have a break at about 10:30 so we’ll come check on the girls and get some water, and go back to class until 1:00 pm. We have a language helper, and a language coach who’s sort of in charge of the class. There are five of us in the class, us, a couple from South Africa, and another guy from Canada. We have had a couple weeks of just listening, pointing and comprehension with over 400 words rolling around in our heads. Tomorrow, we get to start speaking some of those words for the first time… yaaaay! We’re pretty excited, feels like a milestone in our french learning. Here the main meal is in the middle of the day, so I’ve been trying to do that. I get home from class and make food, if our maid is at our house then she eats with us, then the girls go to bed and I listen to my french recordings/rest. We eat a small dinner, and then it seems like what takes forever to get the girls ready for bed. Coral them, give them malarone, bathe their sticky bodies, brush their teeth, get pajama’s (underwear) on, read a bible story, pray, and tuck their mosquito nets in, even though the goal was 8:30 by this time it’s usually in between 9 and 10. And at this point, we still have to clean up the house, bathe, brush our teeth, and then listen to french recordings… on language days there really isn’t much time in the day for many extra activities because all the normal day actives seem to take a lot of time. So we usually see Del and Arielle family on the weekends because there isn’t time any other days, unless we really squeeze it in, and then something else suffers, that’s just how it is.
TJ got to go fishing with a friend
Friday we went on a double date down town to get stuff and then had some amazing coffee 🙂
Yesterday Del and Arielle family and all of us went on an adventure. We rented the mission van and drove the long way out to “lac Rose” there were lots of dirt roads, and we probably asked about 20 people if we were going the right way…. surprisingly enough most of the time we were. Penny threw up when we got there because she was car sick, so we went looking around for a dress for her, we only found one that was her size! The guy wanted like $20 for it… well heck no! So we bartered down to $4… yay us, and yay for Penny having clothes to wear!
they said the felt like pieces of drift wood
floating
When we got there we went down to the lake.. and because it’s rainy season it wan’t very pink, I guess in the dry season it has a much stronger pink hugh. It is FULL of salt and so those of us that went in would just float in the lake, like really float… it was a little crazy! When we got out of the water, there was a guy that would rinse us off with his bucket and water from the stream and then we could either pay him a little or barter for something from his collection of things… tricky!! After we had some snacks and walked around, we found a place to rest and eat some Senegalese food.
Eating Together
Next we drove up the road to check out the camel rides. I had envisioned it being really straightforward with compliant camels letting us ride them. As they were getting the camels ready a couple of them kept running away (no fences) and the guy would have to go run after them and put them in their place, and get them to sit back down. There were 6 camels and there were 6 adults with 5 kids, so we all decided TJ could take the CRAZY stubborn loud camel because we didn’t want to be near him… LOL!!
TJ off on his own with his loud crazy camel!
So we all started getting on the camels one by one, we were all feeling a little nervous to say the least. After Penny and I got on the camel, I just started laughing and couldn’t stop because I felt so nervous, my nervousness of course made Penny nervous too.
my camel buddy
Anna had Ava, she was a little nervous too.
camel buddies
Each camel was tied to the camel in front of them except for TJ’s camel, this kid was leading TJ’s camel near us, but not near enough to make our camels upset. The whole time TJ’s camel was moaning and groaning… literally didn’t stop for the entire 20 minutes we were on the ride… I could NOT stop laughing!! It was quite the experience and I’m so glad we got to do it with family, we will be laughing about that for years!!
here we are… all but TJ
We’ve been here for over a month, we’ve gotten used to some things and have been struggling with other things more. I have decided that I need to figure out how to go to market and barter for veggies, because I want more fresh vegetables… I long for that now that we’ve been eating so much bread… bread bread bread, I’m gonna get fat! So… to market I go, if any of you ever come visit me, your gonna see what I’m talking about. Yaaaa. 🙂
Sooo… little update, I went to market today. Del and Arielle met Ava and I there, and we bought fresh veggies… I’m so excited to have fresh stuff 🙂 It is just not like going to the grocery store where you can buy whatever you want for a fixed price. Everything must be a bartered for, BUT… I am feeling more confident and I think I will go alone soon…. I am making progress, that is what I must remember… I am making progress.
This is what I look like when I get back from Market… no filter….Very sweaty and Hot!
It’s hard to tell… but my clothes are pretty much soaked. Senegal Life 🙂 We LIVE here!! Craziness.
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