One of the things that plagues Mount Nimba is wildfires. The iron ore rocks can easily spark when struck together, causing frequent fires that can’t be controlled. This guava was burned on the outside, along with the rest of the tree, but the inside was ripe and delicious!

The abandoned rock crusher that goes down 8 stories into the ground is now the home of thousands of large fruit bats! We enjoyed watching and listening to them while staying far away from the edge!

Izzy and I, along with my brother-in-law, Tim, and a pastor from his church, Lance, were also able to visit a local school, the Randy Godfrey Elementary and Junior High School, last week. It was fun to pop into the classes and encourage the kids to keep working hard in school! I especially liked the Jimi Hendrix quote written on the outside wall, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

The kids continue to work hard in school, usually finishing around lunchtime or just after. This leaves them plenty of time for other things until dinner. In fact, I often don’t see them for hours at a time!

The river is one of their favorite places to be. I can’t take good pictures of them as many are only in their underwear or less! 

They can often be found piled on the couch, listening to Selah read to them. She is always patient and willing to read the same books over and over. 

Selah has also become the favorite of our cat, Coco. She was kind enough to leave Selah a gift this week on the rug by her bed: a rat’s head! Although Selah wasn’t thrilled with the gift, we are thankful for the proof that she is already hunting, despite not being much bigger than a rat! Since then we have had two mice climb/jump out of holes in our ceiling. We couldn’t be more thankful for our sweet little hunter! (And we are working on those holes!)

One of our new favorite pastimes has been bread making. Cinnamon bread is our current favorite! Izzy made the one on the left, a blend of the braided Challah bread with a cinnamon and sugar filling and baked in a loaf pan. Delicious!

Soccer continues to be an exciting part of our Saturdays. Although the play is less graceful due to very rough fields, the fans are my kind of people: LOUD! I enjoy the energy of the crowd and the banter back and forth throughout the game. Definitely lively!

This week we were blessed with a break in the heat! Not only did it rain for over an hour, it rained HARD! I had to close the windows and cover some of them where rain insisted on blowing in. It was amazing! It dropped the temperature from the upper 90’s to the lower 90’s, making life a lot more bearable for me.

Another fun thing we got to watch this week was the palm nut cutting. Our campus has hundreds of palm trees which grow palm nuts for palm oil. This week they were cutting in our yard and across from our house, so we took a few videos to share the process. Very simple! Come visit, and we will set you up with your own machete to try it!

Thanks for following along on our adventures this week! 

Praises:
- Everyone is healthy and rashes are going away.
- The temperature has cooled off considerably since the big rain storm
- We enjoyed having visitors for almost two weeks! What a blessing.
- Life has settled into a gentle rhythm with downtime for me.
- Rikot turned 20 this week! 

Prayer requests:
- A HUGE request this week is for our car. Kenneth was traveling back from Monrovia after taking people to the airport when a belt flew off under his hood. Somehow this hit other things (I don’t know what happened exactly) and caused the engine to seize. As I type, the engine has been completely pulled out of the vehicle, and they are attempting to fix it. However, it is a very serious issue that may not be fixable. Pray for a miracle for our new car!
- Jireh is struggling with being very whiny and attached to me. It is exhausting and overwhelming to have him climbing on me all day or screaming if I won’t hold him. He has also struggled with an itchy rash and stomach issues. Please pray for healing for him and for him to chill out!
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We love you all! Thank you for your faithfulness to stay in touch and to pray! We are so thankful for our community that lifts us up when we are weak. Blessings!

If we aren’t friends on facebook or IG you might have missed the announcement that we received all of our things last week! It feels like Christmas, opening crates that were packed back in September/October. It’s been an absolute joy to have books to read and art supplies to use for school, even if our house is full of crates and chaos until we get some furniture. Jireh was so excited to see his books again that he just had to sit down in the middle of it all and read. I don’t blame him a bit! 

​The other exciting part of this was getting the books we collected for the Betty Jonah Orphanage! I was thrilled to be able to deliver them on Saturday to the kids and help them set up their little library. Several of the kids sat and read the entire time, trading for new ones whenever they finished the book they were working on. I pray this will be a blessing to these children, and in the future I hope to add to their library whenever possible. A special thanks to the Silt Library for all of the donations!!

​Kenneth has added some large responsibilities to his schedule in the last week that are keeping him pretty busy! He now holds the title of Campus Director and will be overseeing operations on campus that don’t include academics. This is a pretty big responsibility, and one that doesn’t come with very clear instructions! Thankfully, he is very capable, and I know he will do a great job overseeing so many departments. He continues to coach soccer and basketball, teach two classes, do his doctorate homework, oversee several students doing work study, lead a student small group, and still find time to go shopping with me (our weekly “date”)! As much as we both didn’t want him to start our time in Liberia being busy, we know it is the best thing for the campus right now to have him in these leadership positions.

Despite all of these good things, this week has felt very long to only be Tuesday! Nothing too serious going on here, but sometimes little things can compound to make life just plain tiring. We are currently dealing with an onslaught of pink eye in our house. I’m not sure where we got it, but I’ll spare you the pictures. Three or four of us are passing it around, and it is no fun! Along with this, Jubal started running a fever tonight, so we are praying it’s nothing serious. 

I also realized that I may have spoken too soon about adjusting to the heat. It seemed like it was very bearable last week, but this week it’s just not. I think the humidity that usually comes with rainy season is starting to make itself felt with none of the relief of a good hard rain. We are cooling off during the day with cold baths and damp clothing, and thankfully, the nights are mild and even cool sometimes still. I hear that February and March are the hottest months of the year in Liberia, and I’m praying that is true, and we will soon be through them. My patience seems to be a lot thinner when I’m sweating buckets. 

We are feeling the overwhelm this week of life in a tougher place. The constant battle with sickness that we face overseas can be exhausting at times, and this, along with the heat and the stress of so many responsibilities, is all encompassing. The lesson we come back to is this: our feelings are just that, feelings. We feel hot. We feel tired. We feel stressed. Yet we are learning not to put much stock in our feelings. No matter the circumstances or mild discomforts, God is still working, sometimes more than we realize. We just have to continue to press on.

Praises!

• The kids are making friends and enjoying it here so much!
• Jireh has turned a corner with potty training, and I think, is almost done (including nighttime!) The bad news is that he seems to have given up wearing clothes. Underwear are his new favorite, and only, attire.
• Kenneth‘s brother, Tim, was here this week on his way to Guinea to meet with Liberians who might be interested in taking the gospel to Guinea. So good to see him and so exciting to hear about what God is doing just across the border!
• Zion seems to be recovering fine from a concussion he got Saturday after being knocked out in a soccer game. He has enjoyed playing here, but it IS more violent!

Prayer requests:

• Kenneth has a lot on his plate! Pray that he will handle it all with a spirit of peace and organization. 
• Pray for Selah, Jubal, Kenneth and I to recover from our pinkeye, and that it won’t spread any further.
• Tim and his team return tomorrow from Guinea and will spend another week here with us. Pray for fruitful meetings with potential partners and refreshing time together with him. 
• One of Tim’s teammates, Lance, is currently sick with a high fever and possible malaria. Pray for a full recovery before he has to fly home. 
• Pray for all of our hearts as Zion prepares to head back to the States. We do not feel prepared to lose him, and although we planned for him to go back in time for spring soccer, we are regretting agreeing to that. We will miss him tremendously.​

As always, we are blessed to have you all in our lives! Thank you for lifting us up and for your encouraging emails and messages. We are so grateful for each one! We could not be here without the support of our friends and family, so thank you for supporting us!

”I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward - to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.”
Philippians 3:12-14 the Message