Saturday 29 September 2007

A New Chapter Dawns

Finally, the waiting and preparation are over. This is it – today we leave the UK to start the first leg of our journey to Segbwema in Sierra Leone, to take up posts as Mission Partners with the Methodist Church.

Tuesday night was a tedious and tiring night as we tried to fit everything we thought we would need for two years, into 5 suitcases. Trying to fit 2 years clothing into suitcases without exceeding BA’s ‘generous’ weight allocation of 92kg just doesn’t work. I am sure most of you guys know that. There was the constant weighing, adjustments and re-weighing of jumbo suitcases on bathroom scales hoping for some ‘magic’ but eventually we had to admit defeat. Suddenly it dawned on us all that no matter how hard we tried we just would not be able to fit an assortments of clothes, CDs, notebooks, every conceivable time saving equipment etc, into our suitcases. 102 kg was after all not that generous for 2 adults and a growing toddler when going away for 2 years. I am sure we will master this trick later – but not yet.

Wednesday morning was very emotional for me. Was up early as usual leaving J & J in bed and tip toed downstairs. I took one look around the house, all the cases on the floor, unpacked papers and the general chaos, and for no apparent reason the tears started flowing. It dawned on me then that this is what the last 18 months has been about - preparing for our ministries in Sierra Leone – all the preparation during the past year and months was geared towards today. Today is the day – and the thought made me emotional. I just went back upstairs to cuddle J & Little J. Did I have any regrets – of course not. I knew we were doing the right thing and this is what the Lord wanted us to do.
Finally we made our way to the airport after more weight adjustments and finally giving in as a losing battle. The irony is we got to the airport only to be told that we had a more generous total weight allocation of 138 kg between us even though BA was not keen to publicise that.

PART 2 In Ghana – The Entry Visa Saga

We finally arrived safely in Ghana around 8.00pm local time. The flight was smooth and the hostesses were very pleasant. Little J slept for the first 2-3 hours and for the rest of the flight the plane was her playground. We had to take turns in jumping and jogging down the aisle. It’s getting harder as she gets older, but we expected that.

We knew getting into Ghana would have been expensive when we checked in at Heathrow and we were told we needed a visa to enter. We ‘forgot’ this small matter….. and it turned out to be a long and expensive mistake. At least, they didn’t send us back on the next flight to London!!! We had to fill in countless forms in order to apply for ‘visa on arrival’. The visa application cost us $300.00 in total and even little J had to pay the $100.00. The irony of the situation is that the Ghana immigration service would not accept payment in the local currency, not that we had any local currency on us anyway. British pounds sterling was not acceptable either. In Ghana US dollars reigns supreme over the British pound. We were one of the last people to leave the airport that night, and Little J made the best of the emptiness of the immigration hall by running, rolling and basically ‘cleaning the floor with her clothes’. She was basically at home there, greeting all the officers, but it wasn’t enough to get us in without paying. Anyway, I think it’s good that they demand a visa. It shows not only the 1st world countries can do that and get away with it, and there were many varied people on the flight (not only Ghanaians). To think that we needed a visa to visit Ghana when Michael comes from Ghana, but then that’s what happens when we exchange our passports for that of other countries. The good thing about it all is tat no one tried to extort any monies from us ‘to try to help us’. If anything at all, they were very sympathetic considering the amount of money w had to pay. Everything was done above board – there are still honest government officials in third world countries contrary to reports we read in the west. Praise God
Ghana feels and looks a lot like Kingston and the people look like Jamaicans!!!!!! The difference is in the speech and the driving on the right, and they drive better, but otherwise, it really feels like home.

Until later, continue to pray for us.

Thursday 20 September 2007

The Final Push

Wed., Sept. 19th 2007.

Hello Friends,
I seem to be having trouble getting on the internet and we haven’t even left the UK yet!!!!!!!!!
So I have decided to write this letter as a Word document and attach when the internet is up and running again. So much for being in the so called ‘first world’……..

I promised to update you all as we prepare to leave for West Africa. We have a week to go now and I can be honest, we are really looking forward to it. It’s been a very long preparation period and I know some of our friends are not happy with us leaving, but God has called and we must answer. I hope it will be for a short while, but with God, nothing is impossible and we are open to the call.
We are well and truly immunized to our eyeballs – the last injections we had on Fri. 14th, and to tell you the truth, I got used to them and Little J started to look forward to the soothing expectations of jelly beans. The Lord is good. He has taught us how to cope even with needles!!!!!! The new experience is taking the anti– malarial, which we cannot afford to miss a dose, as the result can be very dire indeed. We have opted for the once weekly tablet
( mefloquine) which does not have a good reputation ( has documented psychiatric side effects), but again God is good. I can only report vivid dreams ( which sometimes are not too bad, esp. if I’m dreaming about Jamaica or food!!). I haven’t recognised anything else
( although I do think someone is following me … smile). Michael hasn’t reported any additional strange behaviour on my part. He’s as strange as anyone can get, so he’ll do ok on them. Little J seems ok. We think she also has vivid dreams ( she has been jumping out of her sleep a lot lately), but then again we were told this is expected at her age.
Packing is easy………….its just the sorting of the house that has been overwhelming – what to take, what to give away, what to store, what to throw away. The latter usually needs to be shredded and that really takes time, and cannot be done at 4 a.m.!!!!! So it tends to pile up. But we plod on, counting down the days ………7 days to go!!!!!!!
We are in the process of setting up a bank account ( as suggested by many). These will be revealed asap to enable those who want to, cotribute to the development fund for the hospital.
We’ve met a few missionaries who were at the hospital (many before the war), but have recently visited Sierra Leone – as recent as this year. They have been fabulous in showing us photos and updating us as much as possible with the situation on the ground re: personnel and living accommodation ( or lack of, in our case).They haven’t held back or romanticised the situation. Many have said over and over again, about how hard it’s going to be because the task is huge, and the situation is so different to living here. We’ll see. Our house ( a 2 bedroom bungalow) is very close to swampy land. So we’ve been told the mosquitoes can be fierce and in abundance in the rainy season, (not to mention the snakes………….) Maybe we need to buy some guppies for the mossies and a mongoose for the snakes………….. need to check ebay.
The house is properly screened though, and we have been advised against going out in the evenings – that’s when the mossies come out. We’ll see.
Our kitchen consists of 3 stones for wood fire and a pot. Sounds and looks interesting. Maybe we can upgrade to a coal pot and bags of coal??
Toilet facilities will most likely be a pit latrine ( not new to that). Chimmies ( any Jamaicans out there???????) will come in handy I bet. That’s first on my list of ‘ things to buy’.
The plan is we will stay in the capital- Freetown- for the first 2 weeks, for meetings and to be greeted. We will visit the Hospital for a night or 2, to see the facility and make our list, then return to the capital to get ‘provisions’. It sounds so ‘wild, wild west’. We’ll see. In all of this we are convinced that God is in it. He’ll go before us to prepare the way.
We will spend 2 weeks in Ghana before going to Sierra Leone. We really look forward to seeing relatives who we haven’t seen in over 2 years. Little J needs to meet all of them, so it will be wonderful to see her interacting with her African cousins. She has met the Jamaicans, American, Canadian, Irish and Dutch and she did so well with them. For kids, language is never a barrier to communication. They all got along, and she asks for them nearly every day. A little child shall lead them…………….
Well, we shall write again when we settle ( a bit ) in Sierra Leone. By then, I should be able to update on our living arrangement and the true state of the work situation.
Please continue to pray for us. We have prayer cards to send out to a few people. Please say (before Fri. 21st) if more is needed – give full address please.
The bank account information will be given asap.
With all of God’s blessings.
Love,
Joanna, Michael and Little J.

Thursday 13 September 2007

The Big Bash - just having fun







On Sunday 16 Sept, our friends and bible study group at church organised a farewell bash for us and it was great. We are really going to miss our friends but we have to respond to God's calling. It was good to hear the concerns and support for us and we pray that our friends would keep up their own ministries and stay in touch.
Special Thanks to Bro Sheperd , Nana Yaw, Nicholas, Alex and Abi for organising this for us. Thanks for your kind words.
Top pic - With my beautiful Wife Joey
below - I am the handsome one on the left with Nana Yaw










It Started with a Kiss

So we are about to start our journey into Sierra Leone as Mission Partners for the Methodist Church of Great Britain - this is our story.
Michael used to work in Marketing with a large para statal organisation in the Communication Industry whilst Joey worked as a qualified Midwife with an NHS Trust in the UK.
In 2005 we believe the Lord called us to leave our jobs and go to a new land to help with our skills.
Through a series of events and 'happenstances' we were selected by the Methodist Church of Great Britain to work in Sierra Leone in West Africa. As part of the preparation period we spent a year in Birmingham at Queen's Foundation to do a Masters degree in Applied Theology - that is an experience worth recording - but not yet.

Finally we are about to leave for our psotings - Can't wait.