A good week because we did not get evacuated

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 participates with.

This is Dr Moses Weidehgar.  He is over the government hospital in Grand Bassa County where we are repairing the buildings and buying some medical equipment.  He was so excited to get started that when we told him our contract was ready to be signed he came over to our apartment to speed things up.

You see a lot of this kind of stuff. I'm not sure they do any maintenance on trucks. This guy ran off a straight road.

Unusual clouds over our apartment. It got windy and then it rained but nothing too terrible.

One of the schools we're working on right now wants benches instead of desks. They can put three to four students on these benches and fit a lot more into the classrooms. Benches seem to last a lot longer than the desks because you can't move them around too much.

The National Elections Commission where they count the votes is only two blocks from our house. For the last couple of weeks it's been guarded by a lot of police and even a couple of these water cannon trucks. All this was in anticipation of the presidential runoff election that was last Tuesday. They were not expecting violence but to make sure that happened they had a pretty heavy police and military presence.

The election was remarkable. The challenger won by only a small margin and the incumbent gracefully conceded the election and told his supporters to be peaceful and cooperative with the new government. That sort of behavior is quite unusual for Africa. The majority of  African elections recently have resulted in military coupes.  If there is a coup the church evacuates all the missionaries.

The church has been very cautious with all the fulltime young missionaries. They have gathered them in from the remote areas in case an evacuation was necessary. Now it looks like things can go back to normal.

You don't see these in the store's back home. I remember as a kid going trick or treating and getting small packages of candy cigarettes. I remember them being kind of tasty. Luckily smoking is not a problem here. I think it's just too expensive even though cigarettes only cost about a dollar a pack.

Some of the food we get here is pretty good. Meat and chicken is at least as good as back home. The grapefruit and the apples seem to be better than home. The apples come from South Africa.

Overall it's been a pretty productive week. We got two contracts produced for our new projects and both of the new projects we have gotten the funding processed.  That's kind of unusual. The administrative processes here are usually painfully slow and frustrating. It's probably been the hardest part of our mission. We work so hard and then things just get lost or delayed and we have no control over the situation. 

This has been a mission of patience for us. It's been hard sometimes. But we figure there's worse things that could happen so we try and live with it. I think the Lord has helped us, but it's still difficult.  Fortunately the good experiences far outweigh the bad.