Settling In

​Our house. Looking forward to planting some beautiful flowers around the outside during rainy season!

Welcome to our new house! Here are a few pictures so you can see how we're living. We are so grateful to have a house that fits our family easily with room to host visitors as well. This campus was started by American missionaries, so the houses and buildings are very similar to something you might find in the US minus a few of the comforts. Our house is still a bit empty since it's hard to find furniture here in Yekepa. Soon we plan to take a trip to Monrovia (five hours away) and hire a truck to bring things back for us!

Our dining room/school room, soon to be outfitted with bookshelves!​

Other than a few things, my life in Liberia is not all that different from my life in the States. I still spend the majority of my days homeschooling my kids and cooking. This is often punctuated by visitors right now as staff and students stop by to greet us. We currently only have two stove top burners to cook with, but we are hoping the school will provide a new oven soon. Luckily I have some experience cooking bread on a burner thanks to our time in Uganda! Our house has two bathrooms with running water, and the electricity is on from 6am-2pm and 6-10pm. This is usually enough to keep our little fridge/freezer cold and charge our phones/computers. We have a router that we use for wifi, and we pay by the GB. Our internet here is a lot better than anything we had in Silt, so if you ever want to FaceTime, it's perfectly clear!

Back porch where kids play, and clothes are washed. The current soccer field is just beyond the clothesline.

One difference here is how we do laundry. We don't have a washing machine or dryer, so all of our clothes have to be hand washed and hung outside to dry. Although I've done this before for short times, I'm really bad at it! Thankfully I have been able to hire a lady to help me with this. It just takes too much time to wash clothes for nine people if you want to get anything else done in a day!  

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The hallway that leads to three of our bedrooms. 

Another difference is that our house doesn't have air conditioning or heat (not that you need heat!). Right now it's dry season in Liberia which should last until April or May. During dry season the temperature stays between 92-96 degrees but drops quite a bit at night to the high 60's. The heat was really hard to adjust to at first, but the kids are already getting cold at night now, and I am taking fewer and fewer cold showers before bed. Progress! I'm very thankful for the cool tile throughout our new house which really helps to keep the temperature bearable inside.  

Our bathroom. We will get a shower curtain and rug from Monrovia when we go.

Overall we are incredibly grateful for this place and these people! I am finding Liberians to be a boisterous and hilarious group. I am picking up more and more words as the days go by, but I'm still struggling to understand enough to do basic things by myself such as buying vegetables. What a gift that Kenneth understands and can “translate” for me! We have had some fun times shopping in the market together and laughing over my poor Liberian English attempts. Eventually I hope to be able to do the shopping by myself or with a few of the college students who have volunteered to come along and help.

Our kitchen with our little stove and refrigerator. 

We so appreciate the prayers you have been lifting on our account. Our first day at our new house was a rough one! Despite several conversations and what felt like ample planning time, we showed up to a house with nothing but beds. We spent the afternoon/evening borrowing things from other teachers on campus and were able to come out with enough bedding for our family, a few dishes, some silverware, and a mop and broom. Thankfully I had bought two skillets in Monrovia that served as all of our cookware for a day or so! We have been to the market several times since and are now fully functional (although in a limited capacity until we can go to Monrovia and our shipment comes in!) and have even had company for dinner. I'm so thankful that the Lord provides what we need and especially gives us the perseverance when we just want to quit.  

Our bedroom. We are the only ones with a dresser, so rooms are a bit of a mess right now.

We also appreciate those of you who have been financially supporting us or just started financially supporting us! We were completely shocked at our most recent giving report and just want to say again how grateful we are for your support! This week some of that support has gone to buy us a whole slew of kitchen/household items that we never planned to purchase. What a blessing that God knows our needs before we do and provides in advance!
Praises:

• We are in our new house, and everyone seems to be adjusting well. They are all happy and healthy and making friends!
• ​We have running water and electricity!
• We have working internet, far better than we imagined it would be, although sometimes that happens to be in the middle of the night.

Prayer requests:

• Kenneth's first classes start tomorrow (Wednesday)! I'm so excited for this opportunity for him! I know he will be a great teacher.
• ​ABCU's soccer team has it first game Saturday. Kenneth just found out yesterday, so he has a week of practices with his guys before they play! Zion and Izzy are both playing on this team.
• Pray for Rikot as she is getting settled in Uganda, that the Lord will provide for all her needs and lead and guide her as she seeks his direction for her time there.

As always, we are so blessed to have each of you in our lives! We continue to covet your prayers for our family and our work here. Many blessings on each of you!

Jireh with his friends, twins Daniel and Nataniel (2 yrs) and Prayer (4 yrs)