Settling in Salone - Part Two

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Hope you are doing well and are being hidden under the shadow of the Almighty.

Now favor is going to a mid week service and getting dropped back by the Pastor of a church you have never been and you have never met him before.   Shout hallelujah somebody!

Tonight I realized that just like a girl looks for her father in a man she would like to marry,  so a Christian looks for a church like the one she/he used to attend, serve and love before she/he moved to a different place.  At least that's what dawned on me tonight.  That I am looking for another Somerset Miracle Centre.  I am looking for another Rev. Dr. Joseph Nzeketha and Mrs. Elizabeth Mukuna.  I am praying that my search for a church here in Freetown will come to an end soon.  I have been to three churches already and two more lined up for the next two Sundays.  Will keep you posted as far as that is concerned.

Last week went by so fast that I didn't even know when it ended.  Here another week is ending tomorrow and both weeks feel like they are just one week.  I told you last week was a week of Camp at Aberdeen Women's Centre.  Well, tel papa God tenki that 26 women were operated on and they are now all walking around with catheters and hoping that their fistulas are no more and that after they heal they will be closed and dry.  During that week on the second day (Tuesday) I got a chance to pray with every patient that was being operated on on that day.  It was just an honor.  I bless God for that for I had mentioned to that I might not have the courage to go and witness the surgery but will pray for them.  Praying for them made me feel involved in some sort.  There are two women who normally go round the wards praying for them but now it is going to be three.  Hallelujah, hallelujah hot dog.  Keep praying for these women that they will heal well.  Also thank papa God oh that there were no major complications during the surgeries apart from one.  

Mamie came for her follow up check up this week and I got the chance to be introduced to her.  Remember the woman I told you about with the issue of a fistula for 29 years?  Yaap, that's her.  The nurse who told me her story called me and introduced me to her and after her check up she was not able to go back Up Line (up country) because of the rains.  So she has been staying in the ward with the rest of the women.  But every time she sees me now, she has been smiling and I have made a point to go hug her from time to time.  Why, is this important?  Why am I telling you this?  It is because when she first came, I am told, she had not had human touch or close human interaction for so long that when you touched her she would jerk somehow.  Smiling was not something she did by herself when she was inside that house for 29 years.  So you can see the transformation.  We just have nothing else to say but to tell papa God tenki.  To add to that, don't know if I mentioned this before, but most of the women who get fistulas end up loosing those babies for whom they get fistulas through.  So for someone like Mamie, she lost her child 29 years ago and now she is past menopause meaning her chances of ever getting another baby are minimal if not 0%.  Don't also forget that some of them get abandoned by their husbands when they get fistulas.  So if God puts it in your spirit mention them before God, please do.  Pray that we will get to them just are the right time.

We have a team that goes to the provinces (up country) to do the screening of these women and brings them back to the Centre here for repair.  Some women even come from Guinea.  Pray also for our staff as they go Up Line that God will protect them.  Pray that they will get to those women in time.  Pray that our facility will continue to sustain the work we do.  We currently need two vehicles, the ones we have are getting old and maintaining them is becoming costly since they keep breaking due to poor roads.  So pray that we get donors who will agree to purchase some new ones for us.  Also, pray for the screening team that God will continue to strengthen them because sometimes when they go there they are brought some medical cases that are just so pathetic it breaks their hearts.  The people in the villages see them and they think they are there to treat people and they are not.  Pray for better health care in this country.  Let me stop there with the prayer list because once I start to list prayer points for the City of Freetown, then this will become a long update and I had resolved to be keeping them short going forth.  Don't want to bore you with so much of Freetown or Salone until when you go to sleep you are dreaming of Freetown which is my current situation right now.  Let me know if you would like to help me to pray for this nation.  You never know, the people you pray for God might eventually take you to them.

Settling in Salone - Part One

S'up?

Hope you are keeping well and loving life like I am.

Went running on Friday evening and I got carried away only to come to realize I have been running for more than an hour.  Well, I normally don't like to over-exercise because I don't want to be too tired to do it again the next day.  Anyway, that is not the point here.  The point is, I don't know what to marvel about.  I didn't know whether to marvel at the wonders of God or the "wonders" of God's creation.  I mean, I was getting slowed down admiring the clear setting sun just above the waters beyond.  I was also having to dodge the waves because I did not want my trainers (sneakers) to get wet.  May be next time I should just run bare feet and I won't have to dodge the waves.  Plus I will get a natural pedicure.  All the sisters say Amen.  My only restraint to that is that the beaches around here are very dirty.  On the other hand, a few meters along the path I was running along with a lot other noble Salones (Sierra Leonians), there was this creature of a human being who....well, let's just say you don't want to know.  I was taught in literature that in writing, there is sometimes an element of suspense.  And there is mine right there.  Well, I just have to deal with it, keep running and mind my own business and may be pray for him if he is sick somewhere in the head (which I actually think he was - like mentally challenged you know).  

We went to the beach yesterday and the scenes were just beautiful.  From the drive itself which did not take so long to the beach where we went to.  The beaches around us are not clean but just a few minutes drive out and we find some cleaner beaches.  This is because the place is less crowded and therefore there is less that gets thrown into the ocean.  Also, there are not many houses in the hills in the area so no garbage get swept by the rains into the ocean.  Salones have not a clue of something called hygiene, they just throw trash anywhere and everywhere.  No wonder when there is an outbreak of a disease (especially water-borne) many of them catch it.  It is not only general hygiene that they are not aware of but also personal hygiene.  Many of the pikins who get brought to our Centre for treatment have skin diseases or hygiene related ailments.  Anyway, back to the beach, I was able to swim in the waves for the first time though I was afraid of going into the deep waters.  I only wish, if Jesus were here maybe I would have even walked on water....hehe.  But because he wasn't I only stayed in the shallow waters.  Just kidding.  We afterwards enjoyed freshly caught fish which they call barracuda and I was calling it okada (the motorbike that carries people just like a taxi)....ha ha.  I crack myself up sometimes.   Just as a side note, I don't normally call things which are what they are not, ha ha.  Anyway, the barracuda does not even have the bad smell that fish normally have.  You know having been raised in the country side, all the fish that got to us usually had the smell.  Yeah, that's how fresh they were.  I am saying all these to say that, I am loving it here.  I am enjoying every bit of it apart from the part I go to buy something and they take all my money.  They go make my mohni disappear.....you know, you know....:)

Church today was beautiful.  Loved the preaching of the word.  The pastor really taught the word using the Greek and Hebrew words.  Reminded me of my Pastor back in New Jersey.  He did rightly divide the word of truth.  Oh and the interesting part about the preaching is that he mixed both English and Krio.  But the more interesting part is that I understood it all.  My listening and reading a Krio bible has helped.  Clap foh mi naw, ah.  Wetin yu do?  (Clap for me now. What are doing?)

At work, camps are starting tomorrow.  Unlike the camps in the children's home in Kenya where I taught bible study, these are quite different in that the women with fistula will be operated on.  A doctor has been flawn in from Nairobi to perform the operations.  I am not sure if I will have the courage to go into the operating room to watch one being performed but if I don't then I think I will just pray for them.

PS - I am calling the update settling in because henceforth you will be receiving shorter and shorter updates (hopefully).  I hope there will still be a few things here and there that will catch my eye and knock my brain off that I will be writing to you.