There are a lot of orphanages.

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 lot of shops along the sides and small vendors that are on the street. Eventually the vendors envelope the entire street.

I took out my cell phone to take a picture and Jesse stopped me and told me to put it back in my pocket. He said that people will come by and just rip it out of your hand and run away with it. He stood guard as I took this picture.

This guy is carrying our supplies to the truck. He has 165 pounds on his head. He did this three times.  Everything is carried on the head in this country. Kids will walk to school with their books on their head. People who sell things on the street will carry them in baskets on their head. Usually they do it hands free.


Tuesday is the runoff presidential election. It should be very close. Today they were having some large political rallies that could disrupt traffic so we decided not to go to church at our usual far away congregation but we stayed close to home. This is a new church building about 1/2 mile from our house.

The church is in an existing building that was remodeled. It's above average for quality of construction for Liberia. That being said you can see how they patched the tile floor. You see this everywhere in the country. I don't think they have a very big supply of tile in the country. There are 4 different styles and colors of tiles in this small area. It's that way throughout the building.


On Monday we had a senior missionary get together. This one is in the clubhouse in our apartment building. Usually we have them every six weeks to coincide with the young missionary transfers. Everyone usually comes in to help move the missionaries around.

The two missionary couples in the middle, the Ericsson's and the Hanks will be going home in four months and the mission president is getting worried. There are no replacements scheduled to come and take their place.  Cheryl and I are humanitarian missionaries but the rest of them are MLS or member leadership support missionaries. They are important because they provide leadership, consistency and church maturity in this country where everyone is a brand new member and still figuring out what to do. Because the church is growing so fast in Africa the need for MLS missionaries far outstrips the supply of members of the church who are able and willing to serve here.

These are really a group of hardy people. They live out in the rural villages where there are no stores and electricity is by generator only. Interesting people. The Ericsson have ten children and elder Hanks just retired as a professor of Economics at the University of Utah.

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