Back in Guinea

Hello friends and family!

Here we are again. We are back in Guinea one week and counting. It's amazing how much the landscape can change in just a few short months. We had gotten so used to dry season with all its browns and rusts that it's like seeing green for the first time again. Everything is so beautiful, lush and thick.

Rainy season is delivering on its name. It's raining about twice a day, though most of it is coming after dark. We're happy about our water tanks being full, but drying laundry is risky business. You can never wander too far from the clothes lines or the clothes may end up wetter than you wanted. We had clothes draped over chairs and couches when the sunny afternoon turned into a wet evening the other day. Our trip here was much more uneventful than last year. We got all of our baggage (though we are missing one of our fellow missionaries bags), there are no passports missing, and nobody got car sick on the way here! I even got to try my hand at the stick shift again and managed not to hurt anyone. Praise the Lord for delivering us here safely and all in good health!

Mira and the two guys, Chris and Simon, have already gotten settled into their villages, Bilingkoro and Cabaya. We helped Mira do her cleaning and moving and got to see a lot of our friends again. They asked how you all are doing (I'm transliterating "I dunyo ayea?"). We told them you were all doing fine. We're still waiting for Pastor and his family to move to Manya before we can move into their house, and that should happen in the next week sometime. A lot of the Malinke we forgot over the summer is coming back to us so we're excited to start building on where we left off.

The students arrive on the 15th and we start school on the 16th so we're very busy getting lesson plans ready and our rooms all cleaned up. We also get to set the schedule and calendar for the year which really beats working in the public schools.

A small team from LA is visiting this week to see the school, experience the M4 life and help us get the school year started. In a couple of weeks we have a very large team (13) coming from New York. It should be a very busy and exciting month.

We have two big prayer requests for now. First of all the container is still in New York. We're all doing fine without it, but a lot of our school supplies that we need to start the year are in there. The teams will bring the essentials, but the sooner we can get it the better. Right now they're estimating that it will arrive on October 10.

The second request is for Sarah Saumenim's mother in Korea who is in the hospital. She has some problems and some internal bleeding but the doctors cannot figure out exactly what the problem is.

All is well as we prepare to get settled in and ready for school to start. We hope and pray that all is well for you too. Feel free to send us an e-mail occasionally (plain text only please!) to shannonandcarol@gmail.com.

Love,
Shannon and Carol