A Sad Goodbye...

Ahhhh.. It is always so hard to say goodbye and it proved to be even harder then I had imagined. The last 7 weeks in Congo have been so amazing. I have met and become good friends with some brothers and sisters that I will always hold dear! It has been such a privilege to be able to work side by side with all of them.
The last few weeks of work flew by, with me trying to fit in as much as I possibly could. Work in the sewing/laundry department was fantastic; the sisters & brothers there had so much patience with me and I learned a lot of new things: I can now tailor a mans dress shirt, shorten and re-cuff mens dress pants, take in a skirt or enlarge one, change the placement of darts on a blouse, and sew loads and loads of buttons;)
My last weekend there was full of get togethers with some of the ones who I especially grew close too. Hockey, sauna; pizza, dance party, dinner party; all of this I somehow fit it which ended with me barely having time to pack!! Oh well:)  And also on Sunday Brian, Mona, and I were invited to a local sisters home for a meal. She is a widow with several children and supports her family by selling beverages out of the two large ice boxes in her living room. She made a delicious Congolese meal that I will never forget: beans, rice, plantains, grilled fish, smoked fish, caterpillars, legumes, fufu, & fresh coconut afterwards for dessert. Her hospitality was amazing! I only wish I had had more afternoons like this, spending time with the local brothers and sisters in their homes & with their family.
Just after morning worship on Monday I had to say my goodbyes. I was a bit overwhelmed by all the love shown to me from everyone; they had all become family! Something that they do here when someone leaves is to gather at a certain area outside and as your car drives away they all stand and wave to you. Just imagining that picture again in my mind as I write this makes me emotional all over again. I really hope that this was not my last time in Congo!!

ps: where I am staying now I cannot load pictures onto my blog. So stayed tuned for photos, I will put some on as soon as I can!

Camping in the Congo!

Just a quick note with some awesome pictures!!  A group of us just got back from camping in a place called Yanda. It was great! We left Friday afternoon, driving about 2 hours away into the country. It was nice to get out of the city and see some of the country side, which is really beautiful.

The place we camped at has a small building with 3 rooms that you can stay in, or you can bring a tent. There is no electricity or running water. To get water you can take a small walk to the well that is on the property and fill up your buckets! You can also bathe in the river that is at the bottom of the property. We spent the whole day yesterday just laying by the river and relaxing.

Our welcoming committee

This morning we went to the local Lingala congregation. That was so wonderful! Everyone was so excited to have some visitors, especially the children. I took a ton of photos.

Then leaving turned into a small adventure. We walked back to the camp and were planning to stay for a couple more hours before taking off. But the weather decided to not allow that! Within ten minutes of getting back the sky turned dark and the wind came on strong. It was going to downpour! This was not a good thing for us because the road that we had to take to get out was going to quickly turn into a muddy mess. Right away we started packing as fast as we could, throwing things into bags. One of the brothers with us had rode his bike out so he had to leave immediately to try and get ahead of the rain. Which didn't really happen, the rain started soon after we started packing and we ended up loading the car in the pouring rain, all of us getting soaked in no time. It was so crazy! Then there was the road to get out...........Lots and lots of muddy holes to drive around or through, but our truck made it with no problems!! We arrived safe and sound back home in the early afternoon.

Relaxing by the river

Getting water from the well

This truck was coming down the hill afterward... with about five men acting as "brakes" holding onto it from behind!! 

A bit of news...

This past week was a bit of a change of pace. We finished with the laundry room and I was then asked to move over to the sewing department, instead of going on the next construction job. Brian had asked me a couple weeks ago if I would be willing to do other things here, besides construction, and I had said of course. Especially if it was other brothers and sister who were all only french speakers! (the construction crew all speak just English) It ended up working out well as more construction guys have come in and there is not really a lot of work to be done at the moment so they were needing to find some other spots for the some of the brothers. So as of last Wednesday I am now on the Sewing/Laundry crew!!  My first job had nothing to do with that though......I got to work with two other sisters in the donation room! There was a large donation of suit coats, along with some full suits, sent from the United States. They were all hung up in a small room and then, using a master list, we called each brother here at bethel, according to seniority, to come and pick a few items. It too us 3 days to get through the whole list. It was so fun to be able to help out with it though. All of the brothers were so happy!! Although most of the suits, because of coming from the states, were huge on the smaller sized Congolese brothers, they were still smiling ear to ear, even if they could not find the "best" fit. Hopefully some of them will be able to get them adjusted. 

Long weeks of work equal short weekends....

.....so you have to pack in as much as you can, including naps!! We have been on a tight schedule, trying to get the work done in laundry so by the time the weekend has been rolling around all I really want to do is sleep. But the weekends are the only time for a bethelite to go in service. And I have been missing the ministry a lot. It feels strange not to be going out as much! Anyways, Mona and I met with the group on Sat. morning. To get to the home where they meet is about a 10 minute walk from bethel. It first involves crossing a highway that is sometime 4 lanes, sometimes 6 lanes across! You basically look for an opening and make a run for the middle or the road, which is a strip about 1 ft wide. You wait there for the cars on the other side of the hwy to clear enough for you to quickly dart across again. After crossing that, you are awake and ready for the morning is service:)  
The service group meets outside of a local brother and sister's house. There were quite a few of us meeting! Then we just break away into groups of two and the brother gives you a bit of territory nearby to cover; in our case it was an apartment building. We only worked the first level and at all doors we had good conversations! It was great. The last door we spoke to a young man who goes to school with a witness who started studying with him. But right away he wanted us to tell him why his translation the bible does not contain God's name. We explained the reasons to him. But he wants to now the names of the translators themselves! So Mona told him that she would make a list of different ones and bring it back to him. He seemed happy to hear that.
After service we took public transport to downtown Kinshasa, where some of the big markets are. I wanted to get some more fabric. To ''catch" public transport you have to go back to that really large street I mentioned early and walk along it until you get to a spot where it seems like lots of the buses/vans/taxis are stopping. (maybe there is some actual order to where they stop along the road, but I have yet to see what it is) Then you just wait till a ride comes along that is a) going to the area you need, b) not already overflowing with people, c) not one of the taxi's that they call "esprit de mort" (not really sure of why you wouldn't want one of those!;), d) does not have a bunch of shady looking characters on it, specifically only men!  When you finally find one of those then, phew, it is smooth sailing from there!!!........ha ha, not really. Unless you call smooth sailing being packed in like sardines in a gutted out vw van that has been outfitted with "super fancy" wooden benches that seem to rock back in forth with every jolt and turn as you lurch over roads that are full of pot-holes, dodging other cars and drunk policemen, who are trying to stop the driver to get a bribe! I love it though.... I always look forward with anticipation to my next use of the public transport;)

In any case, Mona took me to a few fabric stores where we got some great deals on some beautiful fabric. Regarde:
The getting of the fabric involved a bunch of women around a huge pile of cut fabric in all different styles and colors, reaching and grabbing as quick as one can while the pile is periodically re-filled by a man in the corner. It was a blast! I would love to go back and do it again, but I fear my self-control. Or lack thereof. There are just so many different kinds, you sort of want all of them. Or I do at least!
After the fabric we headed deeper into the market to find jewelery but instead got sidetracked by a man with a pile of shirts in the ground in front of him. Mona proved to be super adept at finding some great shirts, swiftly flipping through the pile. For a little less then .50 cents a piece, you couldn't really go wrong.   Then it was time for public transport back to bethel. Another fun experience: As soon as we got on a man in the way back started hollering out the lingala word for white person. "mundele". He was not being super kind about it either. Mona mentioned to me in french that he was not being very polite. I agreed. He kept up with it. So Mona then, to the passengers around us, asked if this was how the Congolese now treated foreigners? What happened to manners? Well, this got the rest of the passengers upset....at the man. The Congolese are very prideful and do not want to look bad to other foreigners. So they all agreed loudly with Mona and yelled back at the man that he was an imbecile and why was he making the Congolese look bad to the foreigner?? Did he not now how to treat someone?? This got him to be quite. And the rest of the ride went well. Or, shall I say, as usual. (See above;)
I also went out in service on Sunday, working with two young local sisters. A cute story that happened at the meeting was when the brother was making the groups he did it according to what hour you were stopping. He would ask "11am?" "12pm?" "1pm"' etc. Everyone was paired off because everyone was stopping before then.  Except this young boy, maybe he was 10yrs old? He looked young. The brother conducting the group asked him what his plans were, what time was he stopping.  He replied "3pm" with a huge smile on his face. Well no one else was going out that long! But he insisted that he was going out until 3pm! It turns out that he was just recently baptized and had already started to pioneer and he needed his hours:) He ended up going with two other brothers.... I hope he got them to stay out with him!!
Another cool tidbit that I heard today was that over the weekend there was a kingdom hall dedication in the country side. The congregation only has 45 publishers. But there were 245 at the dedication talk! The local village chief came and when, during the talk, the brother talked about how all the work was done by volunteers and payed for by voluntary donations, the chief got up and walked over to the donation box and put money into it! Pretty neat.

The sisters I preached with on Sunday

Scenes from service

Lola Ya Bonobo

Yesterday some of us from Bethel took an excursion to Bonobo Park. The bonobo's are a in the great ape family and are most closely related to chimpanzees. They are only found, in the wild, here in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the main reasons for this is that they are not good swimmers so the the Congo river keeps them from spreading out to other areas.
The habitat we went to is about "1 hr to 4 hrs, depending on traffic" away from bethel. Thankfully we did not have to bad of a time and we fell into the 2 hr travel time slot;) It was the overseer in the computer department who organized it for his team to go. The overseer in laundry, Charles, heard about it and invited some of us in construction to tag along as well. I am so glad that he did!
The Bonobo's are very close to nearing extinction. As our guide said, "they are the pride of the Congolese, but it is also the Congolese who eat them!" Therefore it is highly illegal to catch, hunt, or eat them. I think he said it is a fine of $3000 dollars if you are caught. Because of this happening, there were a lot of orphan bonobo's being left to die in the wilderness. That is where the habitat that we visited comes into play. They take the orphans and rehabilitate them back into the wild. The bonobos require a lot of love and attention when they are young from their 'moms', sometimes up to 4 years of it! It does not work well to pair the orphans with an adult bonobo mom, so instead they get adopted by human 'african moms'. The first place that we visited in the habitat was the nursery where around 10 orphan babies were playing around inside an enclosure with 4-5 African mom's sat in chairs watching them. Many time the babies would run over to one of the 'mothers' and latch onto their leg, or hop up on their lap for a hug. Some of the babies refused to leave the comfort of their 'mothers', holding onto them much like a small toddler would with it's mother.  It was really interesting to see....It made me want to hold one of them too, but I guess that wasn't allowed;(
After the nursery we visited some of the other areas of the habitat where all the adults were kept. Each bonobo had a specific name, most of the time it was a town or city somewhere in Congo, and they would recognize their name being called and come tromping from the forest, swinging on branches and even doing somersaults to come to us. They were incredible to see!

The Nursery

Our Group

Extension

Not much news for the last few days... We have been busy trying to get the duct work up in the attic as fast as we can. Sweating buckets! Here are some photos of the work we have been doing.

One small bit of news: I have extended my stay for 3 weeks here at Bethel! One month is no where near enough time.... In fact I would have liked to stay longer but it is to difficult to arrange everything back home so I just settled with 3 weeks. I am so happy for whatever extra time here!!
I will still be home in November, just a bit more like mid November instead of the beginning of the month, I promise:)

The main duct we have been working on

Matt & Petros

Petros and Stella, the couple from Greece

Laura & I hanging over the duct work

The Greeks are here!!

  Wow! I cannot believe that it is Sunday night already.... Sorry for such a delay with my posting. Internet here at Bethel has been spotty... and I have been tired!

   So you know that truck that was supposed to arrive at the end of last week from South Africa with all of our supplies on it for the air conditioning job? Well it didn't actually arrive on the day it was supposed too. Nor did it arrive on the next day, or the next. Fast forward a week, last Wednesday night, when it finally arrived!! The poor brothers overseeing the work were exercising great patience. The days leading up to it allowed us to get semi prepared, with me and another sister, Laura, finishing up with some pipe insulation in the main room and the brothers trying to get everything else in order. When Thursday morning came we felt like we were all set to finally get under way....but of course there are always set-backs.. especially in Congo. For instance,  getting the forklift stuck in the loose gravel for about an hour; not being able to find the correct screws for the sheet metal; unrolling insulation to find that it is way to old and disgusting to even be used, rolling it back up without inhaling any of the nasty dust...... But then, you get under way and into the swing of things:)

We had to first unload all of the metal and figure out where to store it. Originally we set it all by the outer wall, near our "building and insulation" center. Security quickly let us know that that was not a good idea, as in the night it could easily be stolen by someone on the other side of the wall. So we had to move all the pieces again. Laura and I had a bit of fun as we moved all the pieces.. 
Then the building and wrapping! It was nice to be able to start doing something that I felt I really knew had to do (thank you HVAC crew with the RBC) Although our materials that we have here are much poorer quality and you really have to make do with what you have, it was great to see it all start to come together. True, we are far off from it ALL coming together, but it is still nice to be a part of. Due to the fact that the truck was so late, we all ended up working on Saturday, 7:45am to 6pm. Yikes!! It was super hot that day too. And, I will admit, that by 4pm I was hot, very sweaty, super itchy, and just down right exhausted that I so badly wanted to call it a day! Just about that time though, the temperature seemed to change, getting cooler, and I was able to manage another few hours. Plus, we actually had two brand new members to our crew that day. For the past week  we had been hearing about  couple from Greece that were coming. Brian started calling them "the Greeks"and pretty soon the rest of us joined in. We were all anxiously awaiting "the Greeks"arrival! Turns out that Petros and Stella could not wait to get started working, so much that they gladly volunteered to have their first day be on a day we were not even supposed to be working!! It was so nice to have some fresh faces to help us out, especially as they were all new and energised, which helped keep the rest of us going. The yummy Greek candy they brought to share with us also helped. Petros and Stella are the first international volunteers from Greece, ever!! It is very rare for couples to even here about doing this sort of thing, they said. So neat that we get to work with them. I only hope that they don't get tired of all the jokes about plate and cup smashing! ( Stella told me that they actually don't ever do this in Greece;)
  Today I took a much needed rest, skipping service to sleep in. Since I missed my French meeting yesterday I went to the English one that is here on Sundays at 11:30am. Then I spent the afternoon at the pool!! So nice:)

Service with Pierette

I was invited to go in service with a sister named Pierette yesterday morning. She goes to a local French congregation that meets near the river. We took public transport from Bethel to get to her territory. The area she preaches in is  lot poorer then the area that I had already been to with Mona. But the people were, of course, very nice and more then willing to talk to us. She actually had bible studies all morning so I just accompanied her on those. We also did a lot of informal a long the way. Everyone you stop will take the magazines from you!!
Here a a few pictures of my morning:

Pierette's Kingdom Hall

Pierette, on the right, and one of her studies.

Kids playing marbles in the road.

Playing cards

These girls were playing some sort of game on this, maybe choo-choo train?

Boat taxi across the river

Pierette and I

Housekeeping, dining, laundry, & construction...

     My first few days here have passed by quickly. Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday were all orientation days, with two different trips to the US embassy in between. On Monday I worked with housekeeping. It was slow going and pretty uneventful, as housecleaning usually is;) Tuesday I got to be in dining/kitchen all day. We would start off with clearing all the tables that had fed the 400+ people in the bethel family. That ended up being my favorite part! After that I was moved into the kitchen where I helped bag greens, onions (lots & lots of sliced onions, I cried!), and sugar. I also got to see homemade peanut butter be made and dished out. The sister doing that noticed my eager looks and put aside some in a bag for me to take back to my room. Merci! At around 3:30 the brother in charge asked if I had any "force" left in me. I replied oui. So then he put me to work with the spray gun, rinsing off pan after pan as two brothers washed them. Needless to say, I was pretty wet by the end it.
Yesterday I ended my orientation with a day in the laundry. There is a brother from France named Charles who is the overseer who turned out to be a pretty great overseer. He is also very funny. He is married to a sister from Italy who is also very lovely. I haven't figured out what she does yet, I think it is delivering the mail, but she always manages to drop by now and then! Another young brother from France named Timothe works under Charles. Then there are about 20 others who also work in "lingerie". There is so much organization that goes into being able to get the laundry done of so many people, every week! I think that is one reason why I liked it. I was paired with a local sister names Solange all day who tried to get everyone to speak French around me so I could understand, but, as it turned out, she was always the first one to slip into Lingala, with everyone else quickly following in behind. It was fun to laugh at her about this;) I really enjoyed working in laundry; everyone was so nice and relaxed and the overseers were great too. I did have a pretty easy day though, as this was the same day I had to drive to the embassy twice. It turns out that not only did I arrive in Congo with an expired visa, but I also arrived with an almost full passport! In fact, that crazy arrival day in the airport gets even crazier because, technically, I had already run out of pages for them to put my temporary visa into and they happened not to pick this out. It is amazing that they did not try to get more money out of me right then and there! Anyways, the brothers here at Bethel that are working on getting me my actual correct visa told me I had to go the US embassy first and request new pages to be put in my passport so that there would be a place for the new visa. Brian called a friend he knows at the embassy and was able to get me an appointment, even though they normally only do this sort of request on Mondays and Fridays. So I went in the morning and had to leave it there, with the lady at the desk promising to call when it was finished. Thankfully she called in the afternoon and I went back in the afternoon to pick it up. It was nice to have my passport in my hands again, if only for a short time as I had to hand it over to the brothers as soon as I got back. They only have today and tomorrow to get me my new visa! I am so thankful that they are taking care of all that for me. It is a huge relief!
 I am quickly seeing that my French will greatly improve here. At lunchtime I am trying to sit with new people, even though this is pretty hard for me; my comfort zone is very much to stick to Brian and Mona. But I realized today that the crew I am actually working with are all English speakers!! bummer;( Not that I do not like the crew and the work. But it would have been really great to have been working with the local brothers and sisters so I would be forced to use my french more. So another reason to really try to branch out at lunch time. I also have been invited out in service and to get togethers a lot.... so much that I think I may need a personal planner to keep track of everything! Apparently, a single, white sister from the states who can also speak french ("an American who can speak french???") is very rare... or at least I keep being told that all day long. It also seems that every single brother and sister know my name and are constantly calling it out in hello. It's nice. It would be even nicer if I could at least remember some of there names. I hope with time I will get better.  
Today I started my actual job that I will be doing for the time I am here. They are re-doing all of the air conditioning units in the laundry room. It is fun to be doing something that I actually have a little experience with. Thank goodness for RBC! Today was a slow day though as most of our supplies for the job have not arrived. But they are supposed to arrive tomorrow, on 4 trucks that branch in South Africa sends up. It takes 2 weeks of driving to make it here!! Wow! Not only will our supplies be on the truck, but also many other supplies for all of bethel, as well as literature for the whole country. I wonder if this causes any excitement in the bethel family, or if it is just a normal thing to happen once a month or so. I guess I will see tomorrow.....

Photos of the last few days, Bethel Kinshasa, Congo

Ways the literature gets moved around Congo

Rough overhead view of Bethel

The 8 different languages the branch Translates for!

Grounds around Bethel

Wood Shop

Different parts of Bethel

Me and Telayna, another sister from Portland!

Patric, in the kichen

Homemade Peanut Butter!!