Pictures from Field Service

Here are a few pictures from our field service.  This is the solar system mural, it wasn't quite finished, the planets are now labeled (in French as that is the teaching language)

 

This is an undersea mural that came out really awesome!

Here I am hanging out with two of the children that live at the deaf school.  Their family totals 8 people and live in the size of one classroom.  The youngest one, Kuba, is sitting on my lap.  She did that a lot with members of our group.

This is the school run by the Christian man.  There are a total of 3 classrooms.  During the rainy season, the kids in the classroom on the left get wet if the wind is blowing.

This is the playground area for the 60 kids that attend the school.  The buildings in the background house multiple families.  The area between the houses is what passes for the neighborhood street.

These lizards were running all over at the school.  They are very common in the residential areas.

On the Africa Mercy!!

We've been official crew of the MV Africa Mercy for about 24 hours now. . . the process getting here was a challenge!!

Because of strife within the city of Conakry, we had to change our service project to a location nearer to the ship.  We painted at a school for the deaf. The school was located within a block of the presidential palace (Guinea's equivalent of the White House) so we saw several police and military escorts.  We have a couple of very artistic people in our group who designed and painted murals on many of the walls.  Then in the second week tensions eased and we were able to move farther north in the city.  This allowed us to work at a Christian school, telling stories, doing crafts and playing with the children.  It's amazing how the children showed such joy in the face of what Westerners would describe as severe poverty. . .



On Friday we made our way to the ship.  There are pictures below of the whole ship and then one of the gangway.  When you look at the gangway picture, our cabin window is the one you see on the top of the "S" right next to the gangway net.  When we heard where our cabin was, we were worried that it would be noisy, but it is quite the opposite.  There is a fire wall on one side of us so we hear nothing from the cabin on that side and it seems the cabin on the other side is not currently occupied.  There is good sound insulation from the gangway so it was pretty quiet!!!

We are now reachable by phone.  The number to the ship is 954-538-6110.  This is a US number that works via satellite to the ship so the charges are only as if you were calling the US.  Our cabin number is 4433.  Quiet time is from 10 pm to 7 am here, so we aren't supposed to chat on our phone then (the normal sound carries a great deal!).  We are 5 hours ahead of Central time (our 10 pm is your 5 pm). 

We tried to upload more pictures from our field service but the internet connection is SO slow right now that they won't come up.  Maybe late in the evening it will be better and we can share!

Blessings,

Matt and Denise

Off to Africa . . . Again. .

There was a long drama with our flights on Wednesday, suffice it to say that United Airlines kept us in Chicago for 3 days due to flight difficulties.

The upside was that we acted like we were 20 somethings, rented a car and took a quick roadtrip to Minneapolis and saw several friends and family members. 

We are leaving Chicago tonight at 6 pm (hopefully!!!) and will get to Conakry, Guinea tomorrow about 1 pm central time (7 pm Conakry time).

Please keep our travels in your prayers. . . . we will update again after we arrive and have internet access!!

Off to Africa!!!

Well, the room is cleaned, the last load of laundry is in, the rest of the bags are packed. . . we leave tomorrow (Wednesday 3/6) at 8 am for Africa.  Total travel time is about 30 hours, should be loads of fun . . .NOT!!!

Last week was quite a bit of fun.  We got to "play" and learn firefighting, including donning all the turnout gear and going into a fire environment, then had first aid and CPR, then finally on to water survival.  We wore immersion suits and found that it is hard to do anything but float in them.  We had to get into life rafts and also get the rafts right side up when they were upside down.

Here are a couple pictures of us in our finest safety duds:

We've added a couple prayer requests, the first being for the people of Guinea as they are dealing with internal ethnic tensions, and the second for safe travel for our group of 19 going to Africa.

We may be out of touch during our field service (2 1/2 weeks) so if you don't see any internet updates from us don't worry.

During the last 5 weeks we have developed great relationships with our fellow students.  It's been amazing to study, pray, worship, laugh, and cry with these awesome people.  We will miss the closeness of our Mercy Ships "family" 20+ strong as we move into the ship community of over 400.  While we will miss the tight family unit, we look forward to the many new and exciting relationships that are waiting for us!

As always, we appreciate the support of all our friends!!!

Blessings,


Matt and Denise