Musings from daily life at the conference center. Not exactly "news", but a connection for our friends near and far.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Brick by Brick
Things are fairly calm here. It's a week where our rooms are occupied by families passing through, not conferences. There are several missionary couples who have had to temporarily (indefinitely?) flee Ivory Coast with the continuing escalation of violence there. Also, Jane and I have visitors in from the US, Eric and Jacque and their teen-age son, Joshua. Eric's cousin, Sara, and her family are with the Lutherans up in Linguere. The Lord worked it out that they were already down in Dakar this week, so they have been able to visit. They were here over the weekend and will be back again tonight with their little girls. And, of course, Aaron and Sarah and the kids are back in Senegal. We've all been enjoying their presence with us here at the Phare for a little while. They will soon slip away, moving down to their new home in Mbour, but for now we are blessed!!
Also, the masons continue to work on our new wall to the south. Here is a clip from the weekend showing the progress to that point.
So I went out this morning for the work day began to film a little of what progress we've made on the wall this week. After that first day fighting clay and rocks, I thought we might not get very far. But the soil down the side of the property is much more "diggable" so we've moved ahead at good speed.
Seeing the progress we've made, I ordered another $1100 worth of brick and the brick makers are here again this morning.
Here are a couple of still shots to the left and right of the entrance to our driveway before work today.
Just now I took a clip of the work in progress.
I also thought a few folks might want to see where the road work is out front, so I took a clip of the separation barrier going up.
We welcomed 38 students and alumni for the Wheaton College football team on Saturday. 16 are hear with us at the Phare for the week working on a construction project. It was a great day to work, cool and breezy. The guys gave a full effort to dig the first couple of sections of wall we are putting in. That was about 75 feet long, by 2 feet deep. If it had been sand, I'd say it was no big deal. But once again we find ourselves chopping at clay and trying to break rocks free and leveraging them out of the depths with steel bars! In addition, we're having to remove the posts that have been holding up our tin temporary fence. It was a real workout for the team!
Rodney Duttweiler is here with the guys. I'm afraid the cement that the posts were held in the ground by got to him at one point. I recorded this message for Aaron who did that work, replacing some termite-ridden wooden posts with heavy pipe.
Soon, though, one of the alumni working on that post had an idea.
It was a great victory. We cut off the offending pole... By the end of the day, though, our ditch was much deeper than we had really planned at that point. We ended up having to attack that ball of concrete anyway. Ah well. It was fun!
Cebu jen for lunch and beef brochettes for supper. Don't you wish you were here?
Tomorrow the Wheaton guys come and life will be quite hectic and any post I do will show progress on the property, I'm sure. But yesterday something very important happened, though less showy or spectacular. Before time sweeps on, I wanted to post just a bit on it.
Late in the morning (originally scheduled for 11, pushed back to 11:30 when we heard some guests had a 10 o'clock meeting, actually started around noon), we had our graduation ceremony for the current group of village church leaders. They have been with us at the Phare for 3 months, spending each weekday morning with Balla, studying the Bible from cover-to-cover and talking about life and ministry issues as well. The Discipleship Experience we call it. A group of just 6 men get great in-depth and personal time with each other, with their teacher and with the Word.
The graduation was also intimate, with just 16 of us there! 6 students, their teacher, the folks who sent them to the school (like Jose) and a few of us UWM cheerleaders! We started with singing. Here's a clip. I just love the Serere style of music and couldn't resist letting you hear it.
We had a very African event. Everyone spoke, it seemed. Jose and Gabriel and Balla. Each brought not just a "good job" but a whole mini-sermon. My only problem was Balla had asked me to give a "challenge" message and as I listened to the others I realized I'd better cut mine short. Then, as each new person stood up, I thought. Maybe Balla will just skip me! Even the students each got up and talked about the school and expressed their thanks and talked about what the 3 months had meant to them. Here's one who is most comfortable talking in Serere. Antoine, his supervisor, is translating into Wolof. Behind me, Herve is translating into French for someone whose Wolof isn't strong enough. Cool, huh?
So eventually it was my turn and Balla gave me the floor. I tossed my notes aside and just reminded the guys of God's love and presence and the joy of life in Jesus. And as quickly as I could, I sat down... Well, OK. I have a preacher's habits at this point in life. Maybe my "quick" isn't most people's "quick", but no one had time to fall asleep!!
Anyway, joking aside, it was a very encouraging time. These 6 were focused and enthusiastic and "engaged" and glad to be there from the first day to the last. They go back to their various villages more confident and better equipped to live their lives for Christ, not just claim His name. And to help lead their churches in that same way.
The Wheaton football players will arrive Saturday for a week of ministry in Senegal. We will have 15 helping us at the Phare. Others will go with Guy P of the Assemblies of God to work in a village. A dozen will be over at Dakar Academy with Dan. And Alex and Amet have a crew of 5 for the week helping out in the slums.
The original plan for our team here at the Phare was to work on the men's restroom, but we've shifted the plan in the last few weeks. The property just to our south, along our driveway, needs to be developed a bit if we are to legitimately request it from the government., our dream for a number of years Part of the investment that is expected here is to put an enclosure wall up. Our tin fence doesn't count! So, before someone else makes a move on that land, we want to make it clear that we're serious by building an 8 foot wall along the 150 meter boundary.
So, with what money we have, we'll start and build as far as we can!
I also noticed this morning that the trees are starting to sprout new branches. Hopefully before Aaron and Sara return they'll all be showing signs of life!!
