It's hard to believe that we're already nearing 2007 and we've been in Guinea for four months now. We had a great Christmas on Monday. In the morning we woke up to fog(almost the same as snow ;)). The day before, missionary friends from Bantun came by. They had gone to Conakry and picked up our mail for us while they were there. We were so surprised to get gifts from friends and family back home on the 24th! So Christmas morning, we ended up unwrapping a ton of gifts, more than I think I've ever gotten in all my Christmases combined as a kid. We felt tremendously thankful to have such wonderful family and friends that went out of their way to make us feel like we were back home.
We had our Christmas service in the morning at the chapel and invited all the Sambouya and Bilingkoro people to come. Many attended as you can see from the pictures. The children did a great job on their play and our volunteers and workers put together a play in Malinke that was both entertaining and showed the birth of Christ. It was interesting to see and hear the villagers' reactions. The women and children were pretty quiet during the plays and songs, but the men commented and talked loudly throughout the entire service. It was interesting to see roles reversed since we're used to shushing children and not adults.
It's difficult to imagine, but these people have never been to a service before where they're just supposed to:
1. show up on time and
2. sit and listen.
After the service was over we handed out some goodies to everyone that came. It was a little chaotic, but everyone got at least a little candy. Since this is a diaperless region, we had a few puddles on the floor after everyone had left, but we're hopeful that it all had an impact on some of them. It's hard to tell, but at least most of them heard our message and it may have helped lead to some future discussions with those we know well from our villages. More than just being good teachers we want to have a ministry here for the locals. Please pray that our language skills would continue to improve and that the Guinean people would be prepared for the message.
After the service we enjoyed a lunch of fried rice and fish made by our volunteers with the children. In the afternoon we gave the children some coloring books and crayons as Christmas presents. For dinner we ate together with the Kim family and played some games.
All in all it was a wonderful Christmas. We hope that you enjoyed celebrating Christmas back at home too. Happy early New Year and hooray for two more days of school until our break! :)
Love,
Shannon and Carol
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Merry Christmas!
Hey everybody!
Merry Christmas!!! It's strange to be festive when it's still 85 degrees every day and it's been two months without any precipitation, but we're doing the best we can. No Christmas lights, trees or sleigh bells in Guinea, but in the morning you can usually see your breath and we've been rehearsing for our Christmas play. We certainly don't miss all the hustle and bustle, the cheesy tv specials and I can't speak for Carol, but I definitely don't miss Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas". We do miss all of you though! You can replace the food and the gifts, but the people are irreplaceable. We know we are in your thoughts and prayers though and
it's a daily comfort to us. Thank you!
We're also encouraged by the fact that God chose us to come here and serve Him. We really count it a privilege to be doing this work and as we remember the birth of Christ this week we are reminded how much God loved us, that He would send His own son to save us. We feel blessed to do this small service in response to His love.
Everything is well here. We're taking Christmas day off and in the morning we're having a service for all of the Sambouya and Bilingkoro people. They usually come for the gifts (usually just some candies), but it's the biggest service we have all year and we're praying that the villagers would truly come to know why we celebrate Christmas.
This Friday we will head down to Conakry for our two week retreat. We're excited that we'll be able to relax and not teach for a little bit. In Conakry we may even go to an island and go swimming in the ocean. We're not too excited about the eight hour drive, but we know that it'll be worth it once we get there. We won't have the same e-mail restrictions while we're there, so we hope to hear from some of you!
After we come back from Conakry in January, there will be a team coming from California. Mira Ahn, who taught here the past couple years, will also be visiting us! They'll be in Guinea for almost two weeks and during that time they'll be living in various villages for a few days and getting a taste of what M4 missions is like. Both Carol and Jeje got to spend time living with the villagers on their previous visits to Guinea, but this is my first trip here so I'm hoping to join one of the groups and have a true village experience for a few days.
When the team heads back to the States Pastor is also heading back for a month of speaking engagements. Mira has decided to stay until he returns and we're really excited to have the extra pair of hands. It will also be nice to have someone else who can speak Maninka and French pretty well.
Many of you have asked about our passport situation. We're going to get new passports since there hasn't been word of them being found. We'll have to go to the US Embassy in Conakry and Jeje's getting hers through the Korean Embassy in Senegal by mail. Please pray that the whole process would go through smoothly so that we can have passports again before we leave. :)
Everyone's been pretty healthy. Pastor and Caleb both had a short bout with malaria the past couple weeks, but early detection helped them to recover quickly. We had market day on Friday after school. We have been giving the kids and volunteers "money" for doing various things; getting water, doing laundry, delivering things, sweeping classrooms, etc. On Friday they got a chance to spend their money on things like used clothes and toys that were donated, new shoes and backpacks, games and puzzles, and hair accessories among other things. It was a mad house when the selling started and we were put in charge of pricing things and selling them. It would have been an easy job in America, but in a county that uses the barter system and lacks some of the manners that we're accustomed to it was almost too much. But we survived and it was really sweet to see some of the kids buying earrings for their mothers and shoes for their brothers and sisters back home.
We hope that you enjoyed the pictures that we were able to send. I know it gives a better idea of what things look like here. Right now we're able to receive pictures as well, so please feel free to send a couple pictures from home too. And if you're a Skype user we'll probably be online some during the next couple of weeks. Our screen name is shannonandcarol.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year again and God bless!
Love,
Shannon and Carol
November/December Pictures
Lining up for art class!
Mr. Shannon's class in their "party hats"
Lone palm tree in the middle of Sambouya
TMICA's night watchman's son in Sambouya village
Thanksgiving Day! Can you find the teachers?
Jeje and the Kim girls, Chelsea and Christa
Sambouya cuties getting water from the creek
Gathered around Kim dining table (Chelsea's b-day)
Elisabeth and Sia Mariame enjoying Art Day outside
Our wonderful TMICA volunteers and workers(2 are not pictured here)
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Snapshots of Village Life
Boys
Dining Room
Front Door View
Sunrise from our Bedroom
Internet Cafe and Well
Mrs. Carol's Classroom
On our Moto
Ready to Play
Samboya Women to Faranah
Friends
Dry Season Arrives
[Originally written around Thanksgiving, but posted late due to "technical difficulties"]
Hello everyone!
Well, it's already happened. With the first of November came the onset of dry season. It's been 2 1/2 weeks and we haven't even seen a gray cloud. It's hard to believe, but it is supposed to be like this for the next few months. Fortunately the temperature hasn't increased much and it has actually decreased overnight. We had to put the blankets on our bed and start wearing our warmer pajamas. It's still pretty chilly when we wake up in the morning so we bundle up for the walk to school. We're amazed at how much the temperature can fluctuate every day. We don't have a thermometer, but we guess that it gets down to about 40 over night and up to about 90 during the afternoons. Most of the villagers in Bilingkoro got a case of the sniffles, but they've been in good spirits and we think the chilly weather has cooled some of their hot tempers since the arguing suddenly ceased:) It's nice to have jacket weather when we know you're all getting out your warmer clothes too.
Our students have still been much healthier than those first few weeks and we ask for your continued prayer. We actually had a student get seriously ill last week. When they found her in the middle of the night she could not even speak or raise up her arms. They thought at that point that she would not even survive, but after a few days in the hospital she was back and good as new. Also, the wife of the new Sambouya pastor, Rachel, had an appendectomy which is unpleasant in the U.S., but very risky in these hospitals. She came out of it fine though and is now back at home resting up. We praise God for the answered prayers that everyone is back here at TMICA and well!
Here's an interesting fact. You can fit two live, adult oxen and four men in one compact car. It sounds like an old fashioned college prank, but we've witnessed this ourselves. When we were in Faranah at the marketplace we saw a car trying to get up a hill with all of the above. They had somehow stuffed one cow into the open trunk, one cow was strapped to the roof of the car, and the men were pushing and driving the car. I'd like to see more of these real world scenarios taught in our engineering schools.
Personal safety and animal rights aren't issues here. While walking to and from school, we frequently see cars crammed with people inside, on the bumper, and on top of them, along with bags and other things on the car's roof. We're always afraid someone's going to fall off, but it's more important to them that they get a ride than worry about falling off. They seem to number around 15-20 passengers per car, but they drive too fast for us to count.
Major cultural differences seem few, but there are a few minor ones that we have run in to...We gave an older woman a ride from our village to Sambouya and she had no idea how to open a car door from the outside or the inside. Cars are a rarity in the cities, but pretty non-existent in the villages. Teaching our students using American text books has provided us with some interesting teaching moments. Topics include surfing, mailboxes, ice skates (slightly ironic), stop lights and stop signs, baseball, fire trucks, lawn mowers (lawns are dirt), ovens, and so on. Imagine trying to explain these things to someone that's never seen or heard of them before. They don't always believe us, and when we try to explain things, it does make Americans
sound a little strange. Riding a board on waves!? Che!?
We attended a funeral in Bilingkoro a few weeks ago. By chance it was a Saturday and we happened to be around. One of the village men came to our door and told us that someone had died and we should go. We already guessed it was a funeral from the beating drum and the wailing women, but we've heard/seen so many strange things we didn't want to be presumptuous. We put on nice clothes and went out and discovered that there were hundreds of people, mostly visitors. The funeral is nothing at all like our funerals and so it was interesting to attend. They had set up a large awning where the men gathered to sit or stand or talk. (It was nice for me to be in the shade;) The women stay outside and generally sing songs of mourning and wail, so Carol sat with the women. She watched as the women came together in groups from their respective villages wailing and singing funeral songs.
The body was wrapped in cloth and lay in the deceased's house. In the house 10-12 Muslim men sat around reciting prayers from the Koran. I went in for a bit and said my own prayer. Many of the men were carrying money which they sometimes gave to people or pocketed. There were two men standing in the middle shouting things that I did not understand, but they seemed to bein charge. We stayed for about an hour and then we were told that this could go on all day and decided to head to Sambouya.
All of us are still doing very well. Jeje is now confident enough with her English to teach art on her own and even moved to her own classroom. It's very nice for Carol and I to get the break a few times a week. Pastor's family is doing great also. We got to have dinner with them and some other missionaries from the area last weekend. It was nice to have some other adults, and Americans, to chat with.
We're still eating well. We had some of the mac and cheese that my mother sent to us and right now the ladies are trying their hands at making some fried chicken! Carol has mastered French fries and somehow the ladies still make many traditional Korean foods as well. We keep saying that we'll start dieting at the beginning of every month, but so far that keeps getting pushed back...
We said last time that we'd write about some TMICA history. We are so indebted to all the people who came here before us. By no means are we living in luxury, but we definitely have some comforts that we never could have anticipated. And having students who already know how to line up and sit quietly and do their homework and hold their pencils is a blessing we cannot measure. TMICA (Teachus Mission International Christian Academy) opened three years ago. Pastor Joshua, his family, and many supporters planned, raised funds, and built a school that can currently house about 120 students plus staff. The timeline on which all of this happened is so small that nothing less than the hand of God at work could explain it. The continuing vision is to educate these students all the way through college. In addition to the school, TM is also devoted to starting churches and making disciples/disciplers. Benjamin, a native Guinean who has been discipled by Pastor for nearly 3 years just took over the responsibility of preaching the church services in Sambouya. Pastor and his family are relocating to a nearby village to begin their second church in February.
TM is also in the process of beginning a new ministry in Cambodia which broke ground in June and made TMICA truly international. There are 1,581 peoples in the world who have no access to the gospel and TM's vision is to reach all of them.
On a final note, we saw our first real snake a few nights ago. We've seen a couple babies, no bigger than a pencil, but we were walking home at night and came upon it in the road. Fortunately we noticed it before we stepped on it and it slithered away. People here have been killed by them before so you have to take them seriously. This one wasn't huge, only about 3 feet long, but it was as thick around as your upper arm. The villagers that we told afterward warned us about the grave dangers of walking at night and insisted that we take the motos at night.
There's a couple of big events coming up that we would appreciate your prayer for. Urbana is a ginormous Christian gathering that happens every three years and this year it is in St. Louis. TM will have a booth and some representatives there to share our ministry and recruit teachers and missionaries. Please pray that God would use this event to help expand the TM ministry and provide teachers for years to come. Secondly, a group of men and women will be coming from California for M4E in January. They will come to see and learn about village life and the work that is being done at
TMICA.
Thank you for your prayers. We know that God is answering them and we feel blessed everyday because of it.
Love,
Shannon and Carol
Hello everyone!
Well, it's already happened. With the first of November came the onset of dry season. It's been 2 1/2 weeks and we haven't even seen a gray cloud. It's hard to believe, but it is supposed to be like this for the next few months. Fortunately the temperature hasn't increased much and it has actually decreased overnight. We had to put the blankets on our bed and start wearing our warmer pajamas. It's still pretty chilly when we wake up in the morning so we bundle up for the walk to school. We're amazed at how much the temperature can fluctuate every day. We don't have a thermometer, but we guess that it gets down to about 40 over night and up to about 90 during the afternoons. Most of the villagers in Bilingkoro got a case of the sniffles, but they've been in good spirits and we think the chilly weather has cooled some of their hot tempers since the arguing suddenly ceased:) It's nice to have jacket weather when we know you're all getting out your warmer clothes too.
Our students have still been much healthier than those first few weeks and we ask for your continued prayer. We actually had a student get seriously ill last week. When they found her in the middle of the night she could not even speak or raise up her arms. They thought at that point that she would not even survive, but after a few days in the hospital she was back and good as new. Also, the wife of the new Sambouya pastor, Rachel, had an appendectomy which is unpleasant in the U.S., but very risky in these hospitals. She came out of it fine though and is now back at home resting up. We praise God for the answered prayers that everyone is back here at TMICA and well!
Here's an interesting fact. You can fit two live, adult oxen and four men in one compact car. It sounds like an old fashioned college prank, but we've witnessed this ourselves. When we were in Faranah at the marketplace we saw a car trying to get up a hill with all of the above. They had somehow stuffed one cow into the open trunk, one cow was strapped to the roof of the car, and the men were pushing and driving the car. I'd like to see more of these real world scenarios taught in our engineering schools.
Personal safety and animal rights aren't issues here. While walking to and from school, we frequently see cars crammed with people inside, on the bumper, and on top of them, along with bags and other things on the car's roof. We're always afraid someone's going to fall off, but it's more important to them that they get a ride than worry about falling off. They seem to number around 15-20 passengers per car, but they drive too fast for us to count.
Major cultural differences seem few, but there are a few minor ones that we have run in to...We gave an older woman a ride from our village to Sambouya and she had no idea how to open a car door from the outside or the inside. Cars are a rarity in the cities, but pretty non-existent in the villages. Teaching our students using American text books has provided us with some interesting teaching moments. Topics include surfing, mailboxes, ice skates (slightly ironic), stop lights and stop signs, baseball, fire trucks, lawn mowers (lawns are dirt), ovens, and so on. Imagine trying to explain these things to someone that's never seen or heard of them before. They don't always believe us, and when we try to explain things, it does make Americans
sound a little strange. Riding a board on waves!? Che!?
We attended a funeral in Bilingkoro a few weeks ago. By chance it was a Saturday and we happened to be around. One of the village men came to our door and told us that someone had died and we should go. We already guessed it was a funeral from the beating drum and the wailing women, but we've heard/seen so many strange things we didn't want to be presumptuous. We put on nice clothes and went out and discovered that there were hundreds of people, mostly visitors. The funeral is nothing at all like our funerals and so it was interesting to attend. They had set up a large awning where the men gathered to sit or stand or talk. (It was nice for me to be in the shade;) The women stay outside and generally sing songs of mourning and wail, so Carol sat with the women. She watched as the women came together in groups from their respective villages wailing and singing funeral songs.
The body was wrapped in cloth and lay in the deceased's house. In the house 10-12 Muslim men sat around reciting prayers from the Koran. I went in for a bit and said my own prayer. Many of the men were carrying money which they sometimes gave to people or pocketed. There were two men standing in the middle shouting things that I did not understand, but they seemed to bein charge. We stayed for about an hour and then we were told that this could go on all day and decided to head to Sambouya.
All of us are still doing very well. Jeje is now confident enough with her English to teach art on her own and even moved to her own classroom. It's very nice for Carol and I to get the break a few times a week. Pastor's family is doing great also. We got to have dinner with them and some other missionaries from the area last weekend. It was nice to have some other adults, and Americans, to chat with.
We're still eating well. We had some of the mac and cheese that my mother sent to us and right now the ladies are trying their hands at making some fried chicken! Carol has mastered French fries and somehow the ladies still make many traditional Korean foods as well. We keep saying that we'll start dieting at the beginning of every month, but so far that keeps getting pushed back...
We said last time that we'd write about some TMICA history. We are so indebted to all the people who came here before us. By no means are we living in luxury, but we definitely have some comforts that we never could have anticipated. And having students who already know how to line up and sit quietly and do their homework and hold their pencils is a blessing we cannot measure. TMICA (Teachus Mission International Christian Academy) opened three years ago. Pastor Joshua, his family, and many supporters planned, raised funds, and built a school that can currently house about 120 students plus staff. The timeline on which all of this happened is so small that nothing less than the hand of God at work could explain it. The continuing vision is to educate these students all the way through college. In addition to the school, TM is also devoted to starting churches and making disciples/disciplers. Benjamin, a native Guinean who has been discipled by Pastor for nearly 3 years just took over the responsibility of preaching the church services in Sambouya. Pastor and his family are relocating to a nearby village to begin their second church in February.
TM is also in the process of beginning a new ministry in Cambodia which broke ground in June and made TMICA truly international. There are 1,581 peoples in the world who have no access to the gospel and TM's vision is to reach all of them.
On a final note, we saw our first real snake a few nights ago. We've seen a couple babies, no bigger than a pencil, but we were walking home at night and came upon it in the road. Fortunately we noticed it before we stepped on it and it slithered away. People here have been killed by them before so you have to take them seriously. This one wasn't huge, only about 3 feet long, but it was as thick around as your upper arm. The villagers that we told afterward warned us about the grave dangers of walking at night and insisted that we take the motos at night.
There's a couple of big events coming up that we would appreciate your prayer for. Urbana is a ginormous Christian gathering that happens every three years and this year it is in St. Louis. TM will have a booth and some representatives there to share our ministry and recruit teachers and missionaries. Please pray that God would use this event to help expand the TM ministry and provide teachers for years to come. Secondly, a group of men and women will be coming from California for M4E in January. They will come to see and learn about village life and the work that is being done at
TMICA.
Thank you for your prayers. We know that God is answering them and we feel blessed everyday because of it.
Love,
Shannon and Carol
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