This week was dominated by getting the 2nd wave of missionaries into their apartments and solving problems with their apartments and their supplies. Simultaneously we were moving into the old Bo couples apartment.
The couples apartment has been used as a storage location for the past two years. When they closed the mission, they brought all the furniture, appliances, and supplies from all the missionary apartments and put them in here. They then closed the missionary apartments. This apartment was kept secure so they would not lose all the stuff. It collected dust for two years. The same things was done in Kenema. They had a couples apartment that was used for storage.
When they brought in the first wave of missionaries in January, they opened two apartments for missionaries in Bo. Stuff was taken from the couples apartment to fill the new apartments. We came with the 2nd wave of new missionaries. Three more apartments were opened in Bo, and two more in Kenema. We helped move stuff out of the couples apartments into the missionary apartments. Simultaneously we were living in the couples apartment and trying to clean it up. After removing two years of dust build up this place is starting to look livable!
Here is the living room looking into the dining room. Too bad, we have no pictures showing before we emptied and cleaned. Picture this room full of ranges, refrigerators, bookshelves, boxes, ironing boards, etc. Also picture 1/4 inch of dust/sand everywhere.
Here is the kitchen looking into the dining room. Notice how high the cupboards are. Do you see the refrigerator? Of course not. It is in the dining room.
Here is the master bathroom. The shower and the sink work great. Don't flush the toilet! Half of the water from the tank goes on the floor. But the toilet works in the guest bathroom, so we use that one. It really looks pretty good after a lot of cleaning.
This is our shower. As you can see the water is turned on full force. Which is why the Africans don't bother with it. They fill up the bucket that you see under the shower and use a big dipper to pour the water over their heads. We see children taking showers this way all the time in their front yards.
Our bedroom is really pretty nice. It has a large king size bed. There is a large desk for the computer and other office stuff.
We are loving our mission. It is keeping us busy. We are trying to keep our 17 missionaries happy, healthy and working hard. We are also now beginning to work with the 3 district presidents in our cities. We want to be totally at their service with whatever the 20 branches need. We should be stable for the next 2 months, then the mission will get 27 brand new green missionaries. We will probably get at least 9 of them.
We love you all. The gospel is true and is going to all the world. Especially in West Africa.
4 comments:
Hopefully the kitchen came with a ladder, and after all the years at Powell, you should be good sleeping in a tent :)
Sounds like a lot of hard work, but I bet it is very fulfilling to help get it all up and going again.
Is there some form of air conditioning? I am guessing it is pretty hot there.
I have a sturdy wooden chair in the kitchen, that I use as a ladder, but I am only using the bottom shelf of the cupboard for my pots and pans. Everything else I brought down to the bookcase.
Sleeping in our "tent", boiling water to do dishes, and walking on sandy floors feels very much like Lake Powell. We have hot water in the bathroom but not in the kitchen.
In the first bedroom picture you can see the air conditioning unit on the wall above Paul. There is another one in the dining room and a third one in the guest bedroom. We run the generator from 6:00 pm until 8:00 am and have power to run them, the lights and the refrigerator during those hours. It is enough to keep the food in the freezer compartment frozen and the fridge cool and cool down the bedroom for sleeping. What more could you want?
So is the generator limited because of not much fuel available? Saw your picture of the line at the gas station. We always take things so much for granted here, don't we?
Do you see a lot of wildlife around where you are? Hopefully not much in your house :)
Hope Dad's ankle is feeling better.
Love seeing your posts. We always pass them on to Justin as well.
The most common wildlife is lizards. But in this apartment we don't see too many. We noticed a cat next door with a lizard in its mouth. The next most common wildlife is birds.
We do worry about running the generator all day because of the fuel. We use about 20 liters of diesel a day. The young missionaries have much smaller generators which are air cooled. They are instructed to only run them 4 hours a day. We mainly want to keep the refrigerator/freezer cold and cool off the bedroom at night. It also gives us lights in the evening.
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