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.