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...