Diary of My Trip to Sierra Leone Part II

Tuesday, Oct. 28th 2008

I woke up this morning at 7 am and I wished that I was dead. You couldn’t peel my eyelids apart with a pair of pliers, so I just went back to sleep. I woke up again at 7:30 and got out of my, surprisingly, comfortable bed. And if you’re an mk or have been on the mission field don’t pretend that you don’t have pre-conceived notions of what missionary guest-housing beds feel like. Well, I felt kinda king like last night as I slept in under a mosquito net for the first time in over a decade. This wasn’t just any mosquito net it was a purple net and on a bed covered in purple sheets. This was about as close as I’ll probably ever get to my royal 4 poster bed covered in royal linens. I finally got ready and went and really didn’t do much so I decided to join the others in their apartment and I waited for them as they all got ready for the day. Oh, might I mention as well, we had electricity, something of which I was not expecting. We never had 24 hour electricity when I lived here so this was truly a surprise. We’ll see if it lasts… I hope so boy I would die of dehydration in my sleep if I didn’t have a fan at night. They are all finally ready and we went over to Hans and Isha’s for breakfast. It was a fantastic European/African style breakfast. Bread w/ toppings, cereal, oatmeal, juice, and coffee or tea. We ate and till we were full and went back to our apartments to enjoy the peace and quiet for a while before the mayhem begins.
So we got up and finally got our butts in gear and moving and left to walk down the street to the Bank Complex a place “supposedly” right down the street. Now right down the street could be anywhere from right down the street to 15 miles away so I don’t know what were in for but we will see. Well, along the way we passed a road work crew…lol…Now, I know most people right now would be thinking; the stinky smell of tar, orange cones, amazingly weird looking machines, and perfectly flat new roads but let me explain here. See we have machines for everything, but that’s not the case here. You have to “work” here and I think this goes all the way back to the biblical meaning of work, you know like the result of sin kind of work. Cause that’s what it would feel like to me, a real punishment for sin. Anyways this crew was chipping away at the pavement with pickaxes to remove it so that they could repave sometime in the future. Ill let you ponder that, but in the meantime, we made it, and it really wasn’t that far or as far as I was dreading it might be. We got there perfectly in time because as we got there Dr. Jallo pulled up in his Infinity vehicle with his personal driver and his ear drum deafening worn break pads. But non-the less a perfect vehicle for transportation, mind you a 3 seater that 4 of us had to squeeze into. Well, its Africa right, we would be doing this country injustice to not be getting “very” acquainted with each other while we were here. Well, we are heading to the office of the Minister of Social welfare, gender and children’s services. Now that’s a long professional sounding name. I mean, I work for Texas steam so what would I be labeled minister of steam, and I have no office. Geez. Well, we made it and the drive was amazing. I got to see a lot of the city and what a blessing. Guess what we had to do once we got to the minister’s office? Wait! Surprise surprise. We decided to use the time talking about what our plans would be on the trip. The room we were in was very small with no moving air and some leather. Awesome, pleather, in 95 degree weather with 95% humidity… fun fun! Well, we waited for about an hour I would guess until we were finally called back into the office for the meeting. Ok, so get this. We went back to the office/conference room and they opened the door for us to go in and it was like a fridge in there. Yes they had like 3 air conditioners running for the space. Its amazing how nice an air-conditioner feels right now. I won’t bore you with the details of the meeting but I will say that there was something that we have felt might be a leading in our purpose here on this trip. We have been introduced to the extreme intervention needed on behalf of street kids in SL. The need is a simple one, yet very complicated in method, and involves working with neglected youth, disadvantaged children, war orphans and maybe even their immediate families. Wow, we’ve only been here for a day and we all felt encouraged by this meeting and are feeling like we might actually have a purpose beginning to unfold. We are off to lunch now and guess where we are going? Lumli Beach. Wooohoooo! I only spent like 95% of my childhood on those beaches, I’m so excited. Boy, and I have to tell you, we got there and nothing had changed, well, ok that’s a lie there’s a lot of construction on the opposite side of the road from the beach and the restaurants like Patties, and the Venue and all those are not on the beach any more, but it sure looks the same. The sand is as white as ever and there is no place on earth like this where you can see rainforest covered mountains that run right into the sea and frame white palm-tree covered beaches.. Amazing! The other thing too is if you look back towards lower pipe-line and the houses there, there is a huge number of houses more than used to be there. Of course this seems to be a common new thread in Free Town. It’s amazing though how all this rebuilding gives me such a positive feeling about the position of Sierra Leone and the attitudes of its inhabitants. I can’t wait for God to reveal to me the purpose he has for me on this trip. Well we found this little restaurant down at the very end of the beach towards the Mamioko Hotel and right next to the Animal Kingdom Hotel and small amusement park that go together, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the place. Of course you can imagine to that I’m not going to order anything normal off this menu that I could get anywhere in the world. So what do I get, the groundnut stew of course, with lots of pepper. Oh, it was so good. I was sweating like a madman but I didn’t care. The pain was like a reality check to remind me of the trueness of where I was, to remind me this all wasn’t a dream but real, and I was here, eating pepper, chatting with friends, looking out at the sun setting over the Atlantic and just plain, enjoying life. It couldn’t get any better than this. Well, its back home to reflect on the meetings we’ve had today. Its been an amazingly good day, and a hot one too but I can live with that. We had so much that was said to us today that we need to have some time to meet together share our thoughts, pray and just talk through some of this stuff. God is good, and He is really preparing us for something big here, I can feel it, and I am truly excited.