The Trapani's in Liberia

The average family runs out of food every day. If you get money you buy more food for the next day. On a good day you have two meals. Most everyone has at least one meal a day. The menu for each meal is usually rice. If you're low on money it's just plain rice. If things are going a little better you have some sort of sauce over the rice such as a Cassava leaf sauce.   If you're a family the mother will cook the meal. If you're single then you usually go out and buy a bowl of rice at the corner restaurant. A restaurant usually means a makeshift metal roof with a couple chairs a little charcoal fire stove and a pot of rice in some sauce. Only one item. They don't use silverware to eat.  What a contrast our Thanksgiving dinner was. We had it at the mission president's house. There were 4 young missionaries, 4 senior missionaries and the mission president and his wife. We had a pretty traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The missionary leaning on the chair in this pict...

There isn't many things that they can't carry on a motorcycle. Sometimes they'll have long boards that they'll just drag on the ground behind them. I assume they're shorter when they get to their destination. Lots of times we see rebar being dragged behind a motorcycle. Lots of sparks. Sometimes instead of dragging behind they'll carry boards and pipes cross-wise so the motorcycles will fill up the entire lane.  There are not many traffic laws enforced. This is Paul Hazeltine. He was in Liberia for a couple weeks supporting a dental clinic and a farm program. He had a group of dentists who volunteered their time and paid their own way here.  They offered free dental care. Mostly they did tooth extractions and some gum surgery. Paul stayed at our apartment for about a week as he worked on the farm program. He and his wife were senior church missionaries here in Liberia about 7 years ago. He still wants to help so he's found this volunteer program he participa...

We visited a small orphanage and school by the village Gbondoi, About an hour and a half from where we live. A young man named Jesse, who is the clerk in the mission presidency had collected some money from donors in America to buy some food supplies for the orphanage. He asked us if we could transport the supplies to the village. There are about 18 children in the orphanage.  We brought 12, 50 pound bags of rice, a large bag of beans and a large container of cooking oil, along with a bundle of blouses. The children sleep on the floor of the school. Some of them sleep on mattresses and some of them just sleep on the cement floor. Jesse is working on getting them some mattresses. The village was really in the middle of nowhere and quite cut off  from what little civilization there is in the area. You could tell that by the quality of the children's toys. Everyone here is a subsistence farmer.  This is the market where we went to pick up some of the supplies. It's full of a...

This is the Weisseh family. We took them home from church today, mother, father, grandmother and five children. They also have one on a mission. He works security for the rubber plantation and cannot always afford transportation for his family to and from church. Because there are so many of them they need to rent three motorcycle taxis which costs about $4 round trip for all of them. They missed church the last three weeks because they could not afford the trip. This baby was blessed today on fast Sunday. The baby's outfit was interesting because it was about 85 degrees inside of church today. One of the schools we are working on wants benches instead of single desk chairs. They plan on putting four students on this bench. They have ordered 200 of them.   The foundation is almost done for the Wein Town public school new building. This building will have five classrooms and two offices. As soon as it's done they'll fill it up with new students which currently do not go to s...