An Exciting Day, a New Beginning

Yesterday was an exciting day here at the Phare. We held the opening ceremony for the UWM Discipleship Experience. This is a dream come true for our team. A small group of young, potential leaders will spend three months in intensive studies led by a mature Senegalese brother. They will look at Scripture daily, doing a survey of the entire Bible and then going through it again using a chronological story approach. They will also be looking at various topics concerning the Christian life, from a Senegalese perspective, of course. They will also work on some basic church leadership skills, like how to lead a worship time or how to share the Gospel effectively.

Balla Konate is our discipler / teacher / coach / rabbi. I wish I knew the right term for it. He has been very excited, in the quiet kind of way that Balla has!

We have seven students for this first session, most sent to us by Inter-Senegal Mission. Six were there for our opening day. Number seven had to wait for his wife to return from a trip. He'll be here today.

They are an articulate bunch, committed to the Lord and already involved in important ministry with their village cells or churches. They have some training already, but not enough basic Bible knowledge.

And, boy, can they sing! I think that is a Serere thing. They actually do harmony. Balla invited them to sing a couple songs as part of the opening ceremony, spontaneously. He said something like, "I know our Serere brothers love to sing, so..." He was right.

We've cleared out one of the dormitory rooms to make into their classroom. The last on on the left. And we've put them in the next dorm room for living. Over the next three months there will be a few times when we'll have to move them to another spot because of large groups staying on site here. But for the most part this should work. Eventually we'd like to build a small dormitory and classroom building down by the back gate. I've got initial sketches. But for now, given that this is an experiment and we'll be learning as we go, it's probably wise for us not to invest too much in permanent stuff. We've got some furniture and a TV/VCR and some cooking stuff. But other than that, we're trying to "travel light."

So, we're off and running. Praise the Lord.

Tiles!!!

We found some! Well, they are not exactly the same, but they'll do.

I'd given up, as you know. I was ready to tear off the tile we'd already done and start over with a new scheme. I shared once again my chagrin with Herve and he seemed reasonably sympathetic. But he was a bit confused when I explained the new plan, so I took him over to the work site to show him. Suddenly a light when on in his eyes. He got very animated. We were going to remove the tile already cemented in place??!! Such a thing cannot be.

So, we went over the ground again, talking to Jean, and he mentioned that he had seen a tile that was pretty close to the one we were using. But not exactly.

We decided to try again and sent Jean off to get us a sample tile. Sure enough it was a little darker than what we already had on the toilet stalls. But not so much darker that we didn't immediately look for a way to make it work.

We realized that all of the tile laid so far will be hidden by doors inside the stalls. We had just enough left to finish the last bit of that inside wall. Voila. A solution. We'll do the shower stalls and the sink area in the new stuff and no one will be the wiser.

Except that I'm telling all of you!

Anyway, we're back to work and making progress. Hopefully the tile will all be in place by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Tiles, Argh!!!

OK. Now I'm frustrated. The first time we started over, I just shook my head, having been through similar things many times. But the second time. Argh!!!!!

When the North Way team was here in January, we took time to pick tiles with Jean Gomis. He brought us samples. We sent him back for more. And finally, with Dianna K and Kathy settled on a cool plan. When Jean went to buy them, though, the week after Dianna and the that team had gone back to Pittsburgh, he discovered that there weren't enough of the tile available at his supplier. Of the wall tiles, at least.

We started over. We picked a new set of tiles, keeping the floor tile (first photo) that we'd originally picked. After another round of "no that's not quite right, bring us some more like this," we got a good style to match the floor.

Then Jean went to buy them and came back with only half of what he needed for the walls, plus a dark version. He explained that there were lots of boxes of the light tile that we picked for the walls, but that they were filled with cracked tile. So he got this other one to mix in with the light tiles! I chastised him a bit and told him he'd have to find more of the light ones. The dark ones would make the bathroom too sombre. He agreed and assured me he could find them.

I believed him. My mistake.

So today we are half way through tiling the bathroom and Jean has wasted the last 4 days looking for those light blue tiles. They aren't available in Dakar. We need to start over. I want to scream.

Sometime today I'll get with Kathy and look at the new samples that Jean has brought us. They are nice, of course, but not at all the same textured approach we were after. We'll probably need to do another round of "take these back and get us something like we started with!" Or Kathy is going to need to go with him to a tile market. And then we'll need to tear off what we've already done. What a waste.

And meanwhile the bathroom isn't done yet and the next major project is looming.

Did I say that I was frustrated yet?

Correction - Wrong Photo

Oops. That was Rougie's older sister I showed below in the photo! This is Rougui.

I just finished printing the photos on all the new medical cards. When I printed out the card marked Rougui, its number indicated this photo. Jane confirmed it. Now why did I have the other lady's face in my head for Rougie? I know she was introduced to me in the last year as such and I was shocked at how much weight she had gained. I must have missed the word "sister" in that conversation! Sorry.

Taking a Breather

It's relatively quiet here at the Phare this week. Well, as I write, the sound of hammer and chisel pounding comes through the concrete walls. But that is a happy sound for me, so I won't complain.

The last few weeks saw a series of guests with various courses and gatherings and events. We were busy and our rooms were full and we had little time for smelling any roses!

Last Saturday, for instance, was a full day. We hosted a Talibé Day. The Oliveiras' son, Ianis, was down from France with his wife and new-born son for the month of January. He had brought money specifically raised to do vaccinations for talibés. He was a whirlwind of energy, contacting the various medical authorities and medical ministries. In the end Ianis managed to arrange volunteers and vaccines to allow us to treat nearly 140 kids and teachers. They all received an exam, yellow fever and tetanus vaccines, a parasite treatment and any first-aid they needed. After their shots, the boys played soccer or watched the Jesus film. Oh, and they also got a pair of plastic sandals as they left.

140. That is a lot of kids. Ianis scurried about solving logistical problems here and there. Jane with UWM-er Patty Mulay at her side helped direct this effort, too. That is more than enough activity for one day at the Phare.

But meanwhile, some of us were inside Apartment B helping a small visiting church team prepare for the week, doing an orientation and then later directing them in a scavenger hunt in the neighborhood. While we were doing that, the steering committee for the church planter training partnership was upstairs in our other conference room, finishing up a multi-day consultation with a visiting expert. Elsewhere on campus we still had a few stragglers from the MTW training waiting for flights home to other countries.

I have no photos of all of this, except portraits taken to print on medical history cards! Sorry. I've included a few of those here. My new camera arrived with that American church team, but I wasn’t outside with the Talibé Day to be able to use it. Ianis promised me before he headed back to France that he’d send some of the snapshots that were taken. I’ll post them when I receive the CD.

Oh. You may be curious who the man and woman are. The fellow is the Koranic teacher for one of the talibé schools. The lady is the wife of another teacher. For those of you who have heard the story, this is Rougui, the wife of the first teacher we connected with. She is the one who was 16 and pregnant in "lost" in the big city. Antoinette helped her with the birth of her child.