A New Sign, Finally!

We removed the old sign with the Wheaton guys back in March. It was invisible to anyone who didn't already know where the Phare was. And the frame was rusting away. So we removed it and renewed our commitment to the plan to put a new sign out on the street. 

I confess that I had begun to expect another years-long wait, but after various conversations about design and size, voila! Good job, Herve and Alex!

I include a photo of the white wall, looking rather nice after a fresh coat of paint to cover up the political slogans someone painted there one night!

The Phare continues to be a bustling place. At the moment a couple dozen Campus volunteers are lodging here for 6 weeks.  The Brazilians were here two weeks back. Balla's latest crop of disciples finished there 3 months with us just before that. Others come and go and God continues to use this place.

I got back from a week's absence today and Yvette and Mbaye caught me toward the end of the day to ask me to film this clip. It's greetings to our colleagues, Mac and Roxanne Kuhns, who have retired and are living back in Canada. These two think of them fondly often and were so excited that they'd come up with the idea of sending a video greeting.

I'll try to post tomorrow to show the progress made by the Faith Christian Academy kids today. They are painting walls for us.

New Entrance Way

Things have been fairly quiet around here since the IBG conference. Mostly it has been families and small groups on their way here or there, or in the city for a short while. Mbaye, the day guard, our resident jokester, is on vacation and that reduces the daily energy as well!!

We haven't had a rain for 10 days now. That is a blessing in our struggle against erosion. But it means that things have turned very, very muggy. The humidity makes even sweating unhelpful!

But that last rain was a real gully-washer. It motivated us to keep addressing the entrance way. We decided to continue with Patrice's paving stone approach. If we have to tear it up because the electric company needs to get to its cables, we can put it right back down again afterwards. So we're creating a n upward slope to put our entrance above the level of the sidewalk before we descend again to the driveway. Hopefully that will keep the water rushing down the street from overflowing onto our campus. I guess we'll need one last big storm to test it! Or maybe it will wait until next year.

And, of course, you'll notice the amazing green everywhere at this time of year. It's strange to appreciate weeds, but I think of them more as "wild plants" at this time of year as we are refreshed from our 9 months of browns and tans.

Storm Damage

 

Monday, August 27: Jane texted me and said, "Glorious sky! Go look if you haven't!" That got me out of our cave of an office to take a few photos. Sure enough. Crystal clear air and big white clouds filled my view.

I took some video of the sky, but mostly I recorded some of the damage from Sunday's storm.

I feel bad about how long it's been since I posted anything here. The Phare continues to be a great blessing. Today starts week two of the FORBIDEC (IBG) bible intensive. We have a couple professors with us from Geneva Bible Institute and 60 African students. One of the professors is an old friend and he had lots of encouraging news about their work up there and the new generation of church leaders arising in France. The students here seem to be enthusiastic. Beautiful music floats down to me now and then, and laughter.

The rain yesterday dumped an overwhelming amount of water on the city, testing all the drainage systems around town. The one out front of us, that has not even handled earlier rains, failed miserably. At this point our greatest worry is that until they create an adequate culvert for the traffic circle, escaping water will continue to attack our wall! 

Of course, in context this is a small problem. There were several deaths in the country Sunday and others earlier in the month from collapsing walls and buildings. Still, it would be nice not to have to rebuild this bit!

 

 

Friday, August 31: Since Monday when I started this post, life got a little hectic and I set aside the rather time-consuming process of uploading video. Suddenly I realized it was Friday and I hadn't got back to this! Meanwhile, IBG has finished up their two weeks. As I type I am being serenaded with lovely worship songs coming from the conference room where they are doing their closing ceremonies. "Que Jesus soit loué (May Jesus be praised)," 100 young voices are singing.

Also, Patrice and a crew are up at the wall creating an erosion barrier on the corner of the wall. The weather service is calling for more large storms.

The word this week was that we received 6 1/2 inches of rain in 2 hours last Sunday, the most ever recorded in Dakar. Patrice says the radio is calling for another downpour that big this weekend.  Let's hope they are wrong!!

 

A Short Three Weeks

Craig and Tawanna's plane takes off in another 30 minutes. Their three weeks (less two days) staying here in Dakar have rushed by. Tawanna was busy each day with Jane and Antoinette, helping with the talibe boys. Craig spent his time here at the Phare working side-by-side with Patrice and Ndiaga.  The days were filled with lots of hard work for both of them. I've included a couple of video clips of Craig at work in the last few days. I've got Tawanna handing out a vitamin to a boy. She did traffic control duty, writing a number on the back of each talibe's hand and then giving them a vitamin, too. Somehow, she also managed to clean out and organize the nightmarish 3-dimensional puzzle of the talibe ministry storage room!

 

The first clip is of the job Craig and the guys were working on this last week, helping us take the first steps in creating a library / lounge / meeting room.

Craig was thrilled today by an unexpected experience. He and Patrice went to Ouakam (about a mile down the road) to get planks for book shelves. The delivery was done by horse cart. Guess who got to ride back to the Phare?!!

The Andersons took time this morning to thank the staff of the Phare and give some small gifts and to take a group photo. (Mbaye, Patrice, Yvette, Craig, Tawanna, Herve, Rosette, Ndiaga)

 

 Here are a couple more snaps. Tawanna is showing off a simple Senegalese outfit in this one.

And here's one of Craig reading all our water meters. We're trying once again to figure out why our bills are so high!!  So he went to each of the sub-meters each day and recorded water usage. We found no leaks, but we think we had a bad check-valve.

And here's a short clip showing the other project happening at the moment.

Volunteers and Clients

It's been a few weeks since I posted. 

The Phare continues to be busy, busy, busy. At the moment, CBN is hosting a training program. I don't know exactly what the topic is, I'm afraid. Someone from the network is here and lots of Africans. All I can tell you is the catering looks lovely. I've seen tablecloths and plates, instead of stools and metal bowls! 

A couple dozen college students with CRU are here, too. They are summer volunteers to help Pascal and Aurelie with the university ministry. Great folks. They visited Jane at the church to help with the talibe, coming in groups of three over the course of a couple weeks. The boys loved the extra attention! Not to mention some skin lotion that appeared one day.

Our two UWM families from Mali have returned to Kayes now that things are a bit more stable. We're missing the Harris boys, but I'm holding a boogie-board hostage in my office, so I know they'll be back!

And we graduated another session from the Discipleship Experience last Friday. The leaders that sent them were able to be with us, as well as some friends of the program.  We had a good time celebrating their accomplishment and the great gift they received from Balla of deeper knowledge of the Word!

Also since last Friday, our good friends, the Andersons, have come and are staying in the Chad apartment that I video taped for the last post.  Tawanna is in Ouakam each day helping Jane. Craig, an experienced camp maintenance volunteer of 20 summers, has jumped right in here with Patrice and Ndiaga. They are down in the Congo apartment right now replacing door mechanisms. And he's already replaced three screens!

 

The Andersons brought many supplies for the talibe work and also tools and screws and things for the Phare. Many people at Faith Community Church in Canton, our home, pitched in to get stuff.  It was Christmas in June for Patrice!

But in case you are thinking that Craig is suffering here in Africa...

 

 

A Video Tour of the Chad Apartment

Jane and I have old friends coming in June to visit and help out for three weeks. Craig will be helping with fix-it stuff here at the Phare. Tawanna will give Jane a hand with the talibe. We've proposed to them to stay in the Tchad apartment, so I thought I'd make a quick tour to show them. Once I had the video  clip, I thought others would like to see it.  So, for your viewing pleasure: