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