Photos of the North Way Work

I finally got a chance to take some shots of the "Baobab Room" that the North Way Christian Community construction team painted. (Thanks, Rodney and Kathy.) Isn't it beautiful? They not only got the tree right, they added birds in its branches and verses as a border all around the room. My heart lifts just going in there. We may charge an entrance fee for tours!

We still need to deal with the front window (not shown) and get some curtains to match the color scheme. Hopefully this next week we'll take care of that and put the room back into circulation. The window, though, depends on Jean and he is very busy at the moment with his crew doing the new restroom and also another job (a rush one, at that) down at Herve and Patricia's apartment that we've slipped into the mix. So, this Baobab room may have to wait a week on its window.

Progress on the new restroom has been a bit slow. Jean spent much of Monday and Tuesday trying to get the tiles we had picked last week. He searched the city high and low. Unfortunately, we had to switch to a different wall tile. Also, with all those conferences running during the week, the guys couldn't make lots of noise, so all the chisel work had to wait for snack breaks and lunch breaks! They did, however, manage to get the door frame mounted in its new location and also to start the cement sink (photo). It's roughed in with re-bar and curing. The walls are prepared for tile. I suspect next week we'll see it come together.

The delay was a blessing in some ways. I woke in the night mid-week with a sudden insight, realizing we hadn't yet plumbed in cut-off valves. In the future, we would have to cut off both bathrooms just to fix a leaky toilet! Later I remembered the idea of built in benches in the shower stalls. I'd completely forgotten to mention that to Jean up till now. Both of those would have been very complicated to do after the tile was complete!! As it is, they are easy to do.

Things are hopping

Two groups are here this week.

MTW is back to run two week-long intensives. This week the teacher is a French fellow, a professor who did his doctorate in the US. Church leaders are here from Senegal and Ivory Coast. An English-speaking African missionary also is running a seminar for a dozen men. In addition, in the evenings the ITES class that Jack from France is teaching is in its second week. As I walked outside just now, I saw the ITES folks upstairs, the MTW group in the main conference room and the other group is down in the picnic pavilion. It's a full house!

The North Way construction team did a wonderful job painting Chambre H. They gave it a fresh coat from top to bottom. Then they got really inspired! The back wall now sports a beautiful boabab tree and there are verses about growth and trees circling the room. This week we're trying to finish the renovation by addressing the last major job: redoing the wiring. With all these folks here, though, Patrice had to be careful today to only drill during breaks in class! But he's got the channel all in. Tomorrow we'll wire up the lights and plugs. Chambre H should be ready to go the day after.

I'll try to borrow a camera in the next couple days to show you.

A New Restroom in the Making

I'm very excited about the work this week. Our small team from North Way, the "surplus" from the medical team out with MIS this week, has jumped in with enthusiasm. The new restroom is taking shape. All the dividing walls between stalls are up, as you can see. Brad and Diane and Vonny have been laying brick with Jean Gomis' crew: Georges, Ahmet and Albert. They don't share a common language, but they've been trading words and having a great time.

Today they laid the last bricks and started preparing the wall for our sink. With Dianna K's encouragement we're going to try a finished cement sink. We planned to tile the whole sink (and walls and floor, of course). She explained that the latest fashion at home in the US is cement counters and sinks, finished with bits of Italian tile or seashells, nicely tinted and sealed. We figured we'd ask Jean if he'd like to try it if we explained it well enough. When I asked him, he said, of course, I know how to do that. And it's less expensive!

So, Brad and the guys are bashing out the wall a bit right now to get some rebar support for the thing. Brad wanted to know where the jack hammer was. I encouraged him, reminding him that doing it with a pick and a chisel is much more fun.

Meanwhile, Diane and Vonny are out laying brick with Ahmet, building a drainage / sewage system for the restroom.

This team was formed when the call-out for a medical team surpassed the 12 member maximum. Some of the folks agreed to come help us here at the Phare instead. That may sound like a consolation prize, but God has worked it out so that we got the right folks here. Vonny, the teacher, got to visit Dakar Academy. George, the handyman, is off at the other end of the property having a wonderful time fixing everything he sees (with Patrice and Ndiaga at his side). Brad got to bash with a sledge hammer to his heart's content. And I won't mention the shopping in the Ouakam market. The team has decided they got the better deal!

The rest of the team, Dianna and Sandy are painting in our Chambre H. It was just supposed to be a simple beige and white no-nonsense paint job of the walls and ceiling. That was quite a frustrating prospect for our creative friends, even if we perked up the bunk bed frames in blue. So after consulting with Herve and Kathy, they are working on adding a bit of wall art: a large boabab tree on the back wall! We're all excited to see how it turns out.

As always, it is such a pleasure and encouragement to have a team here.

North Way Medical and Builders Teams

Well, I haven't given any news for so long, I'm in that dilemma again of having to refuse the urge to go back and tell everything and then ending up with a long, boring post! So I'll just tell you about this week.

On Friday night 17 folks came on the 10:30PM flight from Madrid. Of course, with the normal delays and the additional complications of dealing with a group of folks that size, we weren't home until well after midnight. These folks came from North Way Christian Community, Paul and Kate Carter's home church near Pittsburgh. 11 of them were heading out to do medical clinics in villages for MIS this week. 6 have stayed with us at the Phare to help with renovations. Saturday we spent time in orientation and training, even doing a "scavenger hunt" that made the folks go buy bread in the neighborhood and walk down to the beach. In groups of three. Sunday, after church at Eglise Evangelique, we had a cookout with them and the larger UWM team. Later the medical team road off in their wheels for the week, a 35-passenger car rapide!

The team here has been a real pleasure to have with us. We spend all day laughing as we work. They are sponsoring the creation of a second public restroom that I've mentioned before, I think. They are also painting our Chambre H, a dormitory style room between the UWM office and the Phare office. We've been refurbishing it with a new window, screen door, paint, wiring and some furniture. It will be quite nice when we're done.

The restroom project is a long-term dream coming true for us. I showed the plans in a post on November 28th. What I didn't say was that we first envisioned this in 2000. Our first Wheaton Football Ministry Project team started the series of steps that took us here. They dug and poured the foundation for a storage room next to the dormitory. That allowed us to clear out the old laundry area under the steps to the Mali Apartment. Last years' WFMP guys helped us start the reworking of that space into a new housekeeping room and a guards' lockerroom. That in turn freed up the room where we are now putting the restroom. God is good.

And He has His angels watching out for us. Yesterday, Herve and I stepped in to talk with the ladies painting Chambre H. In fact, we stayed long past getting the answer we needed, laughing and discussing various other things. Suddenly, the ladder that Sandy was using slipped. She had it leaning against a bunk bed frame and it just started sliding on the dusty tile floor. Wham, the lowest rung hit my ankle and stopped. Sandy held on. If I hadn't been standing there, in the way of that ladder, it would have slid another three feet and our friend would have hit the floor face first, hard enough to break bones. As it was, she got a half-second thrill and all of us got a chill.

Sandy switched to something safer to stand on!

The Carter Girls Final Report

My, oh, my. I haven't posted any news since the 30th of December! I'm so sorry.

Things got crazy for a while and then we were away and then they got crazy again! I know... "Excuses, excuses."

These two weeks were miraculous ones for the Carter family. After many days of grave warnings from doctors about her condition, Emma began to shock everyone. Each new day brought more wonderful news. She was breathing on her own one day. She was awake and calm the next. She recognized folks and knew where she was. She spoke. It just kept going.

At this point, Emma has been out of the children's hospital for 5 days. She and Paul are staying near the hospital in a special hostel for patients. If her tests today go well, they hope to fly to the US on Friday. Kate and Abigail went back to Pittsburgh last Thursday. Kate's brother was here to get Jackson and Melissa last Friday. Soon, they will all be together again for some much needed R&R in their home town.

We are rejoicing in God's goodness in preserving Emma through all of that. Folks from all over the world were praying and many wrote to tell us so. If you were one of those praying, please accept our thanks. Our God is good.