A post for the Grandparents

Zach was asked to do a trumpet solo during the offertory 2 weeks ago. He did great! Enjoy! Our supervisor Cal is playing the piano.

Goings On

We have been busy with school activities and, you guessed it, language. Here is the latest: Faith turned 8 and celebrated it with 11 girls from her class. We had a "Princess Picnic" birthday party at the house. It was a lot of fun.

Zach competed in a middle school "Petites Poteaux" tournament (soccer inside a concrete court - kind of like indoor soccer played on concrete). he also went on a middle school outreach where they painted a wall of a local hospital and cleaned the trash out the ditch in front of the wall. The kids did a great job and it looks great! This weekend Zach is on the middle school retreat.

Luke competed in a handball intramurals (like ultimate frisbee with a ball) for the last two weeks. Luke playing and enjoying the handball tournament is an answer to prayer. He has not connected as much with the kids in his class because most of them love playing soccer at lunch and after school. Luke's favorite memories of soccer in Youngsville are generally the snack after the game each week. So, he tends to hang out with all the younger kids. He is really good at entertaining them, but we also want him to connect with kids his own age. When he signed up for this, we were excited. The first week he didn't enjoy it because no one passed it to him, but this week he was aggressive and active and he did great. He scored 2 goals and was great on both offense and defense. More importantly, he had fun and wants to practice and get better. This is his first real go at athletics, and this is a very sports oriented school - there isn't a whole lot else to do here!

Here is Luke playing handball.

On our ministry outing we went back and visited the public hospital where the boys painted the wall. We went into the maternity building - here is the picture of the delivery room.

Here is a horse cart that carried all of the trash out of the ditch.

The before:

The after:

Here are some local kids getting in on the fun.

Here is Zach at the end of the day - they had a little fun with the paint after they finished.

Zach heading the ball in the Petits Poteaux tournament.

This picture is for Bob Murray - sorry if this offends any cat lovers. This cat is right outside the office where we have language class. For days, we could not understand why it was so smelly. THEN we noticed the dead cat! We are sorry that it is not a scratch-n-sniff picture.

Trash

There are many hard things to get used to about living in Africa - one of them being trash. There is trash everywhere. I grew up being part of an organization called Children of the American Revolution - a patriotic youth organization where we learned about our country. One area we learned about was conservation. I remember many meetings where we focused on litter. It was drilled into my head not to be a "litterbug". Even if I had wanted to, I could not have even thrown a gum wrapper on the ground. Here, everywhere you look there are little clear sacks, black bags, little coffee cups, bottles and many other miscellaneous wrappers strewn on the ground. You see people eat their snacks and drop their trash on the ground. It pains me. There are whole lots of just trash. When it gets too high - they burn it. On Saturday, the middle schoolers went and worked at an area by the local hospital. They were there to paint a wall and to pick up trash out of the ditch. They had hired some horse carts to removed the trash. By the end of the day, they had removed over 10 loads of trash, for a relatively small area.

We have heard that not all of Africa has this problem, but that it is particularly bad in West Africa. It is hard sometimes to find a trash can outside. I found myself on one occasion throwing my trash on the ground. I felt guilty. It is something I have to get used to, but I know that I will never like it and will do my best to not be a litterbug!

Happy Easter

It has been a while since our last post, for that I apologize. Nothing very exciting happening and not much to share, but wanted to check in. We are celebrating Easter today in a country that doesn't recognize this holiday, but as a family we celebrated early this morning with a sunrise service at Dakar Academy. What a beautiful sight to behold - watching the sun rise and thinking of His sacrifice for us. We had an Easter celebration yesterday with an egg hunt, tug of war, egg toss and good food. We had to die eggs without the help of Paas! I had no idea how to do this, but thanks to the internet found out you just need food coloring, water and vinegar - who knew?

This past week - nothing much happened - language and life. Our only bit of excitement was that a stray cat had kittens in our yard. One was sick, so we tried to help it. Unfortunately it ended up dying and at the end of the week, and then we couldn't find the other three kittens. We are not sure if the momma took them somewhere or something came and completed the circle of life. It was not a happy ending, but it was neat for our kids to see newborn kittens.

We continue to progress in language and continue to have fun trying to use and learn as much as we can. We went out to a village on Monday and walked on the beach with all of the fishing boats coming in - it was a myriad of sights and smells. It was quite the adventure for me (Chris) - I almost got bit by a horse, run over by a horse cart, stepped on a dead cat and rat and then got into a conversation with a friendly drunk African (talk about a language barrier). For a beach and ocean lover it was hard to see the beach in this way - there are open sewers running to the ocean, trash everywhere, and goats eating trash along the water. At one point we saw a huge sea turtle that they had caught on its back - just waiting for death so they can eat it or cut it up to be sold. The matter of fact here is that it is all about survival. Whatever it takes to eat today - that is essentially what matters.

The kids continue to do well in school. They really like the school and are excited about next year and us living there. We continue to be thankful for being here in Dakar. We can't wait to show our friends and family where we live and to meet these awesome people (hint, hint). We miss you all, especially on holidays!

A fun day trip

While the kids are on break, we have wanted to explore a little bit off of the peninsula. We went to a little Lebou village outside Dakar where the work there is still developing. In the past, there has not been much response; however a couple of months ago a volunteer team came in and did a medical clinic there. They were well received. We went to visit the beach, but also to stop and visit some of the people who came to the clinic. Our group of nine people showed up in the African homes. We were warmly welcomed and sat for a brief time to greet them well. It was a great day to see a little more of Senegal. The drive out of Dakar is a killer (especially two times in three days), as it is quite a bottleneck and LOTS of traffic. The pics below were taken from the restaurant of a hotel on the cliff on the Atlantic. We look forward to heading back there for an overnight sometime soon. Enjoy the pics!