Mother and child nutrition program

We work in the part of the humanitarian program that provides help to those who are not members of the church. We have a counterpart here in Liberia that works on programs for members of the church. This was one of his programs that we participated in. It is a mother and child nutrition program.

Mothers with children ranging from six months to 5 years came to the church and met with government health workers who evaluated their child's growth and development for malnutrition. They then received specific counseling from other health professionals according to the needs of their children.

Our job was to first assemble gift bags that contained educational material and a large bag of nutritional supplement for the child.

 For the remaining eight hours we distributed the gift bags to the mothers who received the counseling. We were so fortunate to be working in a room that had air conditioning. We distributed about 150 bags that day. Even though the program was advertised and focused on members of the church those who showed up that were not members still received the counseling and the gift bags.

This is our project at Wein Town Public School. The new bathroom we are building is on the left and the classroom and office building is on the right. Running through the middle is a seasonal creek That gets quite large during the rainy season.  

The creek turns and then runs into the neighbor's property. The neighbor felt that since we are doing all of this construction that they no longer want the creek to run through their property so now we have to straighten it out and run it through the end of the school into the drainage creek nearby. It's not a big thing but just an example of all of the unexpected details we run into on these projects.

This is the primary meeting at the Harbel Branch that Cheryl and I meet at every other week. We decided to provide them with some music for their singing using my phone and a Bluetooth Speaker. It worked out pretty good. The lady in the front wrote the lyrics to the song on the white board. I played a recording of the music which included children singing the lyrics. Few people in the room, including the adults, have ever heard the accompanying music. They asked us if we would come back next time and do it again.

This was the sunrise view out of our window.

We usually run in the morning three times a week. We get out the door at 6:30 and run for about 6 miles. The humidity is so high that by the time we're done every inch of our clothes is drenched with sweat. We do three laps in this area because it's close to our house and the traffic isn't too bad.

The good news this week was that our project to train 170 farmers finally got funded. It's taken almost five months to get it approved, contracts developed and the funding in place.  Frustration was mixed with the good. We have a hospital project and a school project that we expected to be approved this week at the monthly approval meeting. The meeting was on Thursday and as of today Sunday they still have not told us the results of the meeting. I've sent a message and they responded by saying that it's coming soon. 

Perhaps the hardest part of this mission is the frustration of dealing with the Area office humanitarian department. They appear to be very overworked and not very organized. Everything just takes a long long time. It wouldn't be so bad except that we have to work with contractors and suppliers and the project recipients. They all have expectation and timetables that get frustrated when things go so slow. We spend most of our time resolving issues of late payments and incorrect payments.  The Lord hasn't seen fit to fix these problems but instead he's given me more patience. I still need more.