October 31

Update October 31, 2007

It has been forever since I’ve been able to write. Life right now is very hectic. We need help to do anything we do, so we have to be ready to go and do things when help is available.

We are in our new home. The scenery here is very pretty. We are surrounded by IMB missionaries which gives us plenty of help for now. Our missionaries in Abidjan right now live in of two compounds. We may eventually be living somewhere else, but for now we are here.

We have just begun our language learning. I’ve tried to prepare myself for how hard it will be, but when I find myself in the middle of it, it seems even harder than I thought. It doesn’t take much to completely fry my brain and then I begin to think about how long it will take to get it at this pace!

Just living takes longer here. That’s not necessarily bad, just different. To be able to make a quick meal, you have to prepare to be lazy. We have some house help now, though, and once I figure out how to communicate with her on really ANY level, she can help me with meal preparation. And there are some short cuts here that aren’t available to most of the rest of West Africa but you really have to pay for them. We also have places to go and grab a bite to eat if we want to pay for that, but we don’t speak French! J Are you beginning to see a pattern? I will be thrilled to be able to communicate some basic things one of these days!

We’ve got tentative plans to take our first real day off on Saturday. We are hoping to get to go to the beach. The funny thing is that we could very easily walk to the lagoon here from our house, but the lagoon smells, well, more than a little odd. Some might go so far as to say it smells pretty bad. So if the warnings about the pollution in it weren’t enough to keep us away, the smell probably will!!! We are told we can get to a good beach in about 30 minutes, so we plan to try that.

Please continue to pray for our Mossi people. If it was frustrating to be in the States and not being able to minister to those for whom we felt called it is so much more so here. We can even see and touch them here, but not even communicate in French let alone their heart language. I’ve got several faces etched in my memory. We just pray that the Lord will be working in their hearts. We’ve heard from many that there are Mossi in many French services.

Thanks for remembering us. We feel so far away, but you are all with us in our hearts!

I can't get our pictures to upload now. I'll try to soon.

Heather

Leaving

It's been so long since I've had a chance to post, but so much is going on. We have finished our orientation and are making the rounds to see family and friends. I've lectured the kids quite extensively on the consequence of disobedience, but just now our family is experiencing the price of obedience. Jesus told those seeking to follow him to count the cost. We trust that God's way is best and we are looking forward to the opportunity He is giving to us to join Him where He is working in West Africa.

The kids have been saying goodbye to friends, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. We have had a good time visiting with all of them. We are looking forward to a lot of new hellos in West Africa.

We have had great opportunities to speak in several churches and are enjoying getting to share our desire for the peoples of West Africa to come to Christ.

We will be traveling Wednesday and Thursday afternoon will arrive in Abidjan!

Thanks for your prayers for us.

Going HOME

We cannot believe that our time here at ILC is almost over. We've had great times and met new people. I hope that we have grown a lot in love with the Lord and the peoples of the world. Our kids have loved school here. They've cheered when we had long days so that they could stay at school longer and whined when there was no school on Saturday!

This week we've learned a lot more about the practical things about hitting our particular mission field. Some things have been great to find out, some not so wonderful (I'd rather not know the exact number and variety of poisonous snakes we have!)

We have a real address in Cote d'Ivoire so I guess we're about to start the adventure that leads us home. We'll be making a big swing through our old homes over the next couple of weeks leading up to a big trip across the pond to our new home. We'll fly out of Birmingham on October 17 and arrive on October 18 in Africa!

It feels like there is so much to do between now and then. Don't know how we'll remember it all, let alone get it all done!

Our church family is coming to our Commissioning since our related family came to appointment. We are looking forward to seeing them (and hoping they'll share some trunk room to take back some of our stuff.)

We don't have many new pictures right now. It seems that we've been doing too much boring stuff recently to have any pictures. The kids are hoping to have some grand adventure this weekend, though.

Love to all,

Heather

Washington DC trip

We had a great trip to DC, but we are worn out now. We must have walked about a million miles! We took in a lot of the sights, just didn't spend much time in any one place. Unfortunately we couldn't do any museums because there just wasn't time.

We had lunch at a little African restaurant, thus the million mile hike. I think it might have been easier to just throw ourselves in the ocean and start swimming for the actual continent. We got the chance to give a French tract to a man from Burkina Faso, so anything for our Lord is worth the effort! Hopefully we will remember to pray over the men and lady working there for weeks to come. The food was great too, though.

The big disappointment of the day was missing the Vietnam Memorial. We had just long enough to hike back past the Vietnam Memorial to the metro and we went the wrong way! We'd been dually warned that all buses were leaving at 5 and anyone missing said buses could take the train home. Not wanting to pay for the train and spend the night traveling, we opted to catch the bus and miss the memorial.

We miss you all so very much but our hearts are already getting heavy here about leaving our newly found brothers and sisters in Christ and colaborers of the gospel. We are well aware that our time here is drawing to an end. Our love to all! Heather

9-13-07

Here's just a little more of us and the things we do at ILC! Bet you don't have to wear sunglasses to your Sunday morning worship!

9-13-07

We are having another great week at ILC. It is so hard to believe that we are almost done with what seemed like an incredibly long stay when we considered it two months ago. We've learned a lot and hope to really be able to retain the knowledge and put it to use. We have less than three weeks left here.


We have shots again next week. They will be our last round of shots before we leave! The nurses here are great, but I'll be glad to say goodbye to their needles!

We will be going to Washington DC tomorrow. It will be more of a ministry trip than sightseeing, but maybe we'll be able to take in some sights while we are there.

Our electricity free weekend will be this weekend so that we can get a taste of what it might be like to have to do without it occasionally. Some of the girls here with us will be doing without it until they come back home to the states. We hope it will be a fun little exercise.

More Karis B-Day Pictures