Well, I already failed at my plan to blog every week this year! This is the reason I never make New Year's resolutions - making a vow just makes me want to break it! I will continue trying though since I do love sharing pictures and little stories from our lives here in Liberia.

The biggest news is that we are planning a visit back to the US! We haven't really been here long enough to warrant a trip back, but being that Izzy is almost done with high school, we decided it would be a good idea to have him play his senior season in Colorado and hopefully help him find a college. This means that we will be heading back mid-July and will plan to stay until just after Thanksgiving. The kids are pretty excited and are already making plans for all the things they will do with their friends! We are hoping to do some traveling and speaking while we are there as well, so if you have any interest in having us speak at your church (by us I mean KENNETH), please let us know now so we can put it on the schedule. We are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible!

Recently we got invited to celebrate the birthday of my good friend, Kehwon. She, along with her husband, is a professor here at ABCU. We enjoyed the delicious food she provided for her party as well as the dancing and singing! Along with her wishes and prayers for her next year, she shared the things in her life she would like to improve on and areas she would like to see growth. I am continually impressed with her maturity and wisdom as she seeks God for her marriage, family and classroom. ABCU is so blessed to have teachers like her who care so deeply for their students and love the Lord so faithfully! Happy birthday, Kehwon!

We continue to find new animals and have adventures with them, some a little TOO exciting! In the past two weeks my kids have killed three snakes, including two kinds of cobras and a green mamba (I'm sparing you the grisly pictures). Acuka had the unfortunate experience of having the mamba slither right over his foot! When Izzy and his friend started moving rocks to find and kill it, it shot out right at Jireh's foot! I yanked him backwards, and the snake changed direction at the last second. Thankfully both kids were ok and a lot less shaken up than me! I have never in my life been afraid of snakes, but there is something terrifying when it comes to them being near my children. We are always so grateful for the prayers that are lifted on our behalf. God has definitely been watching over us!

Another way God has taken care of us this month is by providing us a source of beef! Liberia does not have many cows due to the dense tropical undergrowth, meaning that we have been living on only chicken since we arrived. Thankfully we all love it! We finally made a friend who is from Guinea, and she travels back and forth across the border frequently to buy and sell beef. She offered to bring us some, and it did not disappoint! For less than $3/pound we are now enjoying steak or cubed steak frequently! We are so grateful for His provision and tender care of us.

As always, we are so thankful for your generous support and prayers for our family. If you'd like to see more pictures and hear more stories of what the Lord is doing in Liberia, be sure to sign up for our newsletter! XOXO!

Kenneth and Jireh had the opportunity this week to visit a school for the deaf in Ganta, Liberia. It was a moving experience for both of them. Jireh learned how to say "I love you" in sign language and now thinks he actually knows how to sign! He tried to copy the students in their hand movements, and although his didn't make any sense, the children all enjoyed watching him try to communicate with them. Some forms of communication don't require words though, and Jireh spent a lot of time playing with the children at the home, some as young as seven or eight.

The deaf are one of the largest unreached people groups in the world with some reports saying their numbers reach 70 million. Due to the fact that there are few books in sign language and many churches do not have an interpreter, they have very limited access to the Bible. Many have never heard the gospel message that Jesus loves them and died for them. 

Life can be especially hard for deaf children in Liberia. Many of them grow up without a language to call their own and no way to communicate their needs or wants. There are only a handful of schools for the deaf in Liberia and considering that most deaf children are born to hearing parents, very few ever learn to sign or have anyone to sign with. Many children grow up with little attention or even love, often ostracized or ignored. This means that visitors who offer hugs and attention can draw quite a crowd! Kenneth enjoyed the challenge of trying to communicate with the students as well as hearing some of their stories from the director, a former ABC graduate. 

It was an impactful trip for them both, and we hope to go back and take the rest of the family to spend some time there with the children.

Please remember to pray for missionaries to be raised up among the deaf community who would go to their own people, the deaf of Liberia, and share the love of Christ! If you would like to read more about this school and the ministry they are doing in Ganta, please check out www.beyondthebricks.net. 

​"Fire!! Fire!!"

The word echoed through campus, more and more voices joining the chant. Bobbing lights quickly headed into the darkness, straight for the burning field as students yelled back and forth.

"Grab buckets! As many as you can find!"

Kenneth stuck his head in our doorway and grabbed the stack of buckets we had raced to find, and calling the older boys to come and help, quickly disappeared again into the darkness, buckets in hand.

He and Selah had headed out to Camp Four that evening to take Selah's friend home and were shocked to see the huge yellow flames off in the distance. It was probably just a regular burning that had gotten out of control, but it had quickly engulfed an entire field across the road from ABCU's property. After arriving back home, Kenneth had immediately walked out into the darkness to check and see if it had spread.

"It's probably not on our property, but I'll just take a look," he had said.

Finding what he had feared, he quickly called another professor at the dining hall while he waited at the edge of the field where the fire burned. Within minutes students were running to the fire and cutting palm branches, lining up to attack the rising flames. 

"We are the ABC fire department!" they sang as they beat at the flames, girls and boys next to each other, swinging their palm branches at the glowing fire. Within 15 minutes the fire was out, and the "fire department" trouped back, still singing, now victoriously, at the top of their voices.

What a night! And what a courageous group of students we have at ABCU. We are thankful that they rushed to the fire, not away, saving our gardens and palm trees from further damage. Today rain fell for the first time in over two months, and the next week will bring new green grass to cover the burns of this week. 

Thanks for following along on our adventures! 

If you haven't already, check out our YouTube channel for random videos of our lives. Some are short devotions by Kenneth, others are clips of places and things we see here in Liberia. Enjoy!

It's been a good week of getting settled back into old schedules. Kenneth is​ teaching three classes, coaching two teams, and continuing to pass on responsibilities that he resigned from last semester. Along with this, we have all enjoyed seeing students we've missed and are excited to meet new ones as well! The campus is lively and busy with visits from faculty, staff and students peppering our days. 

This past weekend we were able to host new friends from Monrovia who drove over to bring a new student. They have several teen daughters, and our kids had fun laughing and talking into the wee hours. They wound up extending their stay an extra day in order to squeeze in a few more hours together. We are thankful for new relationships for our kids and for ourselves!

Selah and I often find time for a walk in the evening and are learning how to make sourdough bread together. We both miss having the other girls around, but thankfully, we enjoy each other's company! She loves sunsets, music, makeup and sports and can always be found with a song in her mouth. She is truly a joy to have around! Believe it or not, she's about to start driver's ed, and I am just not sure I'm ready for her to be that grown up!

We were excited to welcome some new professors on a short-term basis this semester. Our school has an amazing faculty and staff, and we are proud of each of them! One of our goals for the year is to have a family or individual over for dinner at least once a week. Our desire is to build such a strong community among our faculty that it feels more like a family here than a job. Pray for us as we work towards this goal!

Kenneth continues to be given more opportunities to preach with this week alone bringing two! He is an engaging preacher, and the students often talk about his messages for days afterwards. Last semester he was asked to speak in chapel and showed up dressed in his soccer clothes, baseball hat and tennis shoes! Liberians take proper attire very seriously, and this was definitely not acceptable! The students were whispering and murmuring as he walked up front, hat on backwards. He kept them in suspense for a good part of his sermon, and they sat in obvious discomfort as he pretended to be oblivious. When he finally acknowledged that his attire was part of the message he had to share, there was a good bit of laughter and sighs of relief as the tension was broken. That was a sermon they won't forget quickly!

We continue to covet your prayers as we serve this semester. For those of us at home all day, Kenneth's long hours and busy evenings can feel difficult after years of having him working upstairs in our loft. We were spoiled!

We also pray for more opportunities to be involved in our community outside the gates of ABCU. The Betty Jonah Orphanage just outside Yekepa is a place near and dear to our hearts, and we hope to be able to spend more time there this semester. 

We love you all and thank you for your prayers! We pray God's favor and blessings on you as you head into this new year!

With love and blessings,
​The Williams

​It's been a while!

I made some New Year's resolutions for 2025, and one of them is to be more consistent with updating our blog! I find myself putting most of my pictures on IG or FB, and although that works, I am more and more often finding that I have more to say that a simple post can hold. Some blogs may just be photos of the week, but I am resolved to update WEEKLY, so feel free to check back often.

If you get our newsletter, which many of you do, you know that we had a full Nov/Dec with a new granddaughter joining the family as well as visitors from the states. After our friends left, we were "stuck" in Monrovia for another week, waiting on our car. Thankfully our serious car problems happened while we were already at the guest house, so we were able to extend our trip into a long, relaxing vacation at the beach. This was actually really needed after our first very busy year here in Liberia. We met several other missionary families and were able to visit a local church on Sunday thanks to the invitation of one of them. Our New Year's party was a bit dialed down compared to the party we usually host, but we enjoyed the bonfire on the beach (who wouldn't??) as the boys all played football late into the night with their friends. We are grateful for new community and relationships as well as a beautiful place to wait for our "new" car.

We got back to Yekepa this past Sunday afternoon and are enjoying seeing students trickle back onto campus as they register and get ready for classes which start this coming Monday. Kenneth resigned from his job as campus director and is looking forward to a year with more time for relationships with the community and the students as he focuses on teaching and coaching. Investing in our faculty, staff and students is one of our priorities going into this year, and we are thankful to have Kenneth home more as we look for opportunities to do this together.

More next week!

​Happy New Year from West Africa!

It's been a summer to remember so far and busy enough to keep me from doing much other than spending time with those in front of me. If you are on our newsletter list, you have heard some of it. If you aren’t, be sure to sign up on our blog!

In May we were excited to welcome our daughter, Rikot, and her fiancé, Sadat, for a three week visit and last-minute wedding! I have looked forward for years to my kids getting married, but never did I expect it to be this incredible. It was an absolute joy to get to know Sadat in person and to spend some concentrated time with them as a couple. We are blessed to have him as a part of our family!

Surprisingly, all of my kids from the US were able to take a few weeks off to join us for the wedding. We hiked, played games, ate Liberian food and just enjoyed being together. It was a dream come true for me! Although we were sad to not have all of our friends and family here, it was still such a blessing to be able to celebrate with the new couple. They have since settled back in Uganda and are praying for the Lord's guidance for their next steps. Their hope and desire is to continue working with Rikot's community in Karamoja, Uganda. If you would like to support them financially as they serve in Uganda, you can give via Rikot's venmo (@Rikot-Williams) or email her for more information ([email protected]).

Since the wedding, we have had an influx of visitors! In mid-June we enjoyed a visit from Kenneth's brother, Tim, his wife, Amy, and daughter, Jaelle, along with three other team members, Jenny, Jamie, and Donna. They spent the majority of their time putting on a discipleship retreat for the teen girls from a local children's home, the Betty Jonah Orphanage (you might remember that we brought books for them earlier this year). It was a joy to pop in and out and watch the way they invested in these young ladies. Selah was invited to take part and has made some lasting friendships due to that week! They were also kind enough to stock us up on chocolate and other delicious snacks along with some fun activities for my kids.  
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One of the best parts for me was watching my kids introduce them to Liberia. We were able to take a day trip up to Mt. Nimba as well as spend some time swimming in the river. Then there were the normal, everyday trips to the market which are nothing close to a normal American shopping experience! Redeemer Baptist Church, our church home here, also put on a concert in their honor, which they also participated in! They were a huge encouragement to us, and we were blessed by the way in which they served. Thank you for coming and blessing the students of Liberia!

The week following the team's visit, my sister, Kerri, brother-in-law, Andrew, and niece, Haven, joined us for a week! Despite not getting their bags for almost their entire trip, we had a blast together, catching up on news from the other side of the globe as well as showing them around Liberia. The cousins had a great time playing together and celebrating Jubal and Benaiah's birthdays. They even spent an afternoon swimming at the beach in the rain and loved every minute. We only wish they could have stayed longer!

As you can imagine, all of this coming and going has been really tough on the kids, particularly Jireh. After a week of screaming, crying, temper tantrums and meltdowns, he was finally able to put his feelings into words today.

"I don't want them to visit me. I want them to stay with us! I miss them."

Cue the tears. Mine, I mean. 

It's tough being three. But honestly, we all feel it. Although having visitors is exciting and fun, it also leaves a hole when they leave and makes us feel our homesickness more acutely. Last week made six months since we left, and it has been as good as it could possibly be! However, we still appreciate your prayers for our hearts as we miss those we love daily. 

Praises:

• Rikot's dual citizenship was approved! She can stay in Uganda as long as she likes and move freely between there and the US.
• Both Selah and Izzy have made new friends and are settling in well in Liberia.
• Kenneth was able to hire a new farm manager, and although he doesn't know a lot about farming, he is teachable and hard working. 
• We have been mostly healthy other than a few quick bouts of malaria.
• All of our visitors have encouraged us so much!

Prayer Requests:

• Kenneth got his class schedule for the fall, and he's teaching two new classes. He's very excited about them, but it does mean creating all new content for a semester course, something that's time consuming.
• Zion starts college in August at Justice College in Phoenix. Ezra will be transferring there as well. Prayers for them as they get settled in. I was originally planning to go help them but have since changed my plans.
• Ezra, Zion and Izzy are heading to New York at the end of July for a mission trip to serve our Nepali friends and their church. Pray for them to raise the funds they need (about $1,500 each) and to serve well. Please consider giving if you feel led! (@Zion-Williams-02 for Zion or @Ezra-Williams-10 for Ezra and Izzy)
• Pray for Kenneth to continue to manage his campus responsibilities well. 

We continue to thank the Lord for the community of friends and family who pray for us and financially support us. We are here due to YOUR faithfulness to support us! 
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We love you all,
Kristi and fam

Believe it or not, it’s getting close to the end of the semester! Kenneth’s classes are plugging along at memorizing the Sermon on the Mount as well as taking turns preaching. He has really enjoyed getting to know these students and playing a role in their lives. This past week we found out that many of his students and others that we have relationships with are behind on their school fees. This is an easy thing to have happen here where students don’t often have a means of getting financial support such as through school loans, scholarships or other outside help. If you are on our newsletter list you should have gotten our special request for help for these students. We were so excited by the response! It looks like we will be able to help about 10 or so students to be able to continue with the semester! We will send out final numbers in our newsletter at the beginning of May. Thank you to so many of you who gave! What a blessing. 

Although Liberia is always green, nowadays it is EXTRA green. I have a little garden with several things growing that I can’t get in the market here. Currently the green beans are doing the best, but the carrots are a close second. Only about a third of my tomatoes and peppers came up, so I started a few more in the house to fill in the gaps. So far so good! 

Lately, these two have been enjoying reading more and more. I often find them with a cup of tea or just piled on the coach, reading books. Now that it’s mango season everything is done with a mango in hand! Here in Liberia mangoes are called “plums”, and they are delicious! We are all enjoying the fact that the boys will spend all afternoon picking plums for us to eat!

Kenneth and I were thrilled to get a bag of Wild coffee this month from a visitor to Liberia! Despite not even knowing each other, they were willing to transport it for us. Kenneth is making us finish the bag we’re on (something from the grocery store here) before we open this one, and I can hardly wait!

Benaiah found some lizard eggs sometime in March and has been excitedly waiting for them to hatch! Not only did they hatch, but in our hands! What a cool experience for all of us. We are never lacking for animal encounters here. In fact, it’s one of my favorite things about living here! God’s creation is pretty incredible. 

We enjoyed another trip to Mount Nimba this week. It has become our favorite place to get away from town and experience some peace and quiet. The views remind us of Colorado! You can even see into neighboring countries from the top of the mountain. Breathtaking! 

Praises:
-     We are all doing well health-wise. Benaiah is currently on antibiotics for an infection in his leg, but he is recovering well.
-     It’s rainy and cool today!
-     Rikot’s Ugandan visa was extended for two more months!
-     Many students’ school fees have been covered due to the generosity of all of you!
-     Our car continues to work well.

Prayer requests:
-     Continued health
-     That students will finish the semester strong, including the Williams students (and their teacher!)
-     Our campus is in need of a farm manager! Please pray that God would bring someone ( if you are interested, please let me know!)
-     Today is Zion’s 18th birthday! Pray that this next year will be one of growth and fruit in his life. We are excited to see him play college soccer in the fall!

Thank you for your prayers and financial support. We couldn’t be here without you! Please send us an email when you have time. We love to hear about your lives!
Much love,
​the Williams

​Sorry for the lack of communication! Believe it or not, an undersea cable stretching from Europe to West Africa was damaged, cutting off all internet to many west African and Central African countries. This, along with some friends visiting and just the general busyness of daily life, has made it hard for me to get something posted. 

BUT! 

We have answers to prayer to share! Our palm tree mechanic has come through in a big way, and we now have a working car! After bringing back parts from Monrovia we were very frustrated to learn that the engine cover was missing a hole, the hole to bolt it in over the engine. He was able to take it to a carpenter and have him drill a new hole. Somehow this worked, and our engine is now running happily WITH the cover. Our air conditioner will also work again as soon as we find some refrigerant in town to add. It’s a miracle to look at our car now and know that just two weeks ago our engine was sitting on a stump, and we were feeling hopeless about the whole situation. We are so grateful to those of you who gave toward this need. God is faithful to provide what we need, when we need it! Thank you for letting Him use you. 

​Our health continues to be up and down, but overall we are doing well with no serious issues. Boils are still coming and going on various people, but we have a medicine that seems to be helping. It was encouraging to learn that our friends who visited this week (they are IMB missionaries in Ghana) struggled with the same issues when they first moved to Ghana. He was able to give us some good tips to get rid of them for good! 

​Rainy season is here a bit early this year it seems. Although it doesn’t rain daily, it’s coming at least every third day at this point, if not more often. The rain makes things grow so fast that you can almost see it happening! Last night it rained for five hours straight, and having never experienced this before, I started to get worried about flooding. Kenneth kept assuring me that it was very normal here! As soon as the rains started this month I hired a student to help prepare my garden, and it’s now ready to plant. I am so excited to have a garden I don’t have to haul water for! It will also be fun to have things we can’t find in the market such as carrots, bell peppers, lettuce, regular size tomatoes (they only have very small, sour ones), and green beans. Gardening will be a bit different here, but I’m looking forward to the two growing seasons rather than one. I’ve also ordered many varieties of tropical fruit to try and plant here in Liberia. Food forests, here we come! 

​It is always a fun treat for us to have visitors, and this week’s were especially fun! William Haun is an old boarding school friend of Kenneth’s, and they spent the visit reminiscing about all the mischief they did in middle school. Believe me, it was a lot! William also happens to be a professional photographer, and his son, Trey, is well on his way to becoming a professional unicycler. We were blessed by their visit and grateful they took the time to stop and see us!

​​Kenneth’s classes are going well, and he is staying busy overseeing a million different things every day. His soccer and basketball teams are improving daily as well. The basketball team won their first scrimmage last night, and we’re so encouraged to see how far they’ve come in only two months. This morning a player stopped by to share how excited he was to see that they have the ability to win! They are learning positions and offense/defense, many for the first time. Although the soccer team has not won yet, they have progressed from 5-0 losses, and this past week tied the first place team 2-2. Improvement! We are seeing the need for a basketball coach though, and are hopeful that one of you reading this might feel called to come and join us here! 

Praises:

• A working car!!
• Overall health
• Fun visitors
• Rain
• Money to fix our car

Prayer Requests:

• Good friends for our children
• The work on our car will hold up
• We have a number of our students who are struggling to pay school fees
• Kenneth will continue to learn and excel in all the different components of his new job.
• The presence of the Holy Spirit on our campus in the faculty and the students
• For more people to come and join us! (Maybe this is you! If you want to talk more about this, please reach out)

As always, thank you for lifting us up! We are incredibly blessed to have each of you in our lives. 

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!