Dad's trip (first two days)

So my Daddy came for 10 whole days! Yeah!


His first day here I had English class so I had the class greet him and ask him a few questions. At the end of class they brought in some brownies and had the class sing happy birthday to me!

He came for my birthday! That morning when I came down for breakfast they had the table all decorated and Meredith had made her awesome cinnamon bread! I opened gifts from here and home! Thank you! Definitely one of my best birthdays ever!

After breakfast we went on a medical caravan to a fishing village here in Libreville. Dad and I did the blood pressure and weight.

We also went for a short hike with Joseph down to the shore and saw where they smoked the fish. Dad really bonded with Joseph. Here's a picture of them at the smokehouses on the shore.

It started raining when we were down there so one of the locals picked up a piece of "tull" (roofing that they use to cover the fish when they are smoking them) and we walked part of the way back under that... the local soon found three umbrellas that they lent to us. Love this photo!

The blogs on dad's trip will be coming in installments... some of which will have some verbage from him as well. So you can get this Gabonese thing from a different perspective! Still to come... Did my dad survive the 14 hour rainy trip back from Bongolo?? What was it like to be on the other end of Operation Christmas Child?? Tune in next time to hear the rest of the story...

Ensemble

Some girls at a church we worked at this summer, gave me this fabric and I finally got it made into an ensemble!

Hope House

For those of you not on facebook, check out the pictures the Hope House kids took the other day...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=111723&id=520513703&l=8f594ffa4f
Also check out Tim & Meredith's site "Our side of the ocean" for pics from their new house! It is a HUGE house that they will be staying in temporarily till they can build one on the land they have been given.

Don't worry Leanne

So lately God has been hitting me up in a couple different ways with that Matthew 6 verses I wrote about a few weeks ago. The latest is through this book "Through Painted Deserts" by Donald Miller.

Instead of typing two pages into the computer I'm going to try to steal a few quotes to hopefully give you the jist...

"He (his friend Paul) doesn't worry about much of anything, which strikes me as a kind of miracle. ... When with Paul, one is confronted with the notion that life may be much easier than the rest of us believe it is, that most of the things we worry about are not worth worrying about, that a low bank account or unfashionable clothes won't give you cancer."

"I tend to think life is about security, that when you have a full year's rent, you can rest."

"Nobody stops to question whether they actually need the house and the car and the better job. And because of this there doesn't seem to be any peace; there isn't any serenity. We can't see the stars in Houston anymore, we can't go to the beach without stepping on a Coke bottle, we can't hike in the woods, because there aren't any more woods. We can only panic about the clothes we wear, panic about the car we drive, sit stuck in traffic and panic about whether or not the guy who cut us off respects us. ... We drive around in a trance, salivating for Starbucks while that great heaven sits above us, and that beautiful sunrise is happening in the desert, and all those mountains out West are collecting snow on the limbs of their pines, and all those leaves are changing colors out East. God, it is so beautiful, it is so quiet, it is so perfect. It makes you feel, perhaps for a second, that Paul gets it and we don't"

"And maybe when a person doesn't buy the lies anymore, when a human stops long enough to realize the stuff people say to get us to part with our money often isn't true, we can finally see the sunrise, smell the wetness in a Gulf breeze, stand in awe at a downpour no less magnificent than a twenty-thousand-foot waterfall, ten squares miles wide, wonder at the physics of a duck paddling itself across the surface of a pond, enjoy the reflection of the sun on the face of the moon, and know This is what I was made to do. This is who I was made to be, that life is being given to me as a gift, that light is a metaphor, and God is doing these things to dazzle us."

(picture by Hannah)

The other side...

If you would like to see how Leanne Night went in Whiteville, they made a video of it as well! Thank you guys it was a great night!!! Thank Sam and David and others for making it happen!

http://whitevillemac.com/index.php?s=au&nid=70247&blog_id=6534