Just another day in Liberia

I recieve a few of these a week it seems...but this one was definitely worth sharing. Now keep in mind that this was after meeting someone for 20 seconds:

Text Message received:

"I used to call your line, but you cannot take my call. Why Joni? I have deep love for you. Please accept my love as I am presently suffering for it. From the time I met you at Foya and the base manager introduced me to you, I fell in love for you straight away due to your smiling face and your happiness towards us, up to now I need you so much and I want to be yours, and you be mine.... I have no wife neither child. I need your presence in my life. I will be very much happy if you accept my request. With love from your promising man..."

First of all, this was the longest text I have ever seen, and secondly... I better stop smiling so much ;)

Yay for adult literacy!

Here are a few pics from my women's literacy program! SO inspiring to watch!

This woman recently gave birth to twins. During her class time, she rotates children while keeping up with the lesson!

These women are both in their 70's, and learning to hold a pencil for the first time in their lifetimes! They are both very excited to learn how to read and write their own names. Here they show off the symbols they have been practicing, which is the first step in their literacy lessons.

Currently we have 364 women in Lofa county attending literacy classes, and will be adding another 200 in Gbarpolu County as we do a follow up program from the previous 2 years. Exciting!

Fishponds!

Last month I was able to photograph another harvest of one of our fishponds up in Lofa county. This program works through local churches. The community/church commits to building the fishpond with SP's technical leading, and SP supplies the fingerlings for the ponds. There are six ponds typically in one community, so that each pond can be harvested twice a year, giving the community fish every month of the year for up to thirty years! It is quite a cool project.

This particular fishpond is in Sevelahun. Predominantly a M*slim community, the church only had 25 members when SP came to work there. When the church asked the community for land to build the fishpond, the community gave them a spot that has never been farm-able, and was written off. The chief told the church, "If you succeed here, that will say a lot about your god."

The Sevelahun fishpond is the most plentiful fishpond we have! The church has grown to over 150 members, and the last harvest was 325 kilograms of fish! The church has used the fish to feed the vulnerable in their community, and to sell in order to build a church building for themselves.

As a result of the church growth and the fruitfulness of the fishpond, the Imam of Sevelahun responded with, "I now know that you serve the One, true God!"

The town chief and his wife, leaving the harvest with some of the fish they purchased, carried in his hat.

Blessings

The great thing about our Father is that He doesn't give us more than we can handle, and He blesses us continually throughout each day! I just wanted to share a couple of the blessings I have had recently...

This is Annie! She is our "new" seven year old black lab! A missionary couple was leaving for the States and was not able to take her along, so we gladly adopted her. She's a great dog!

I honestly think that if I lived anywhere else in Monrovia, I wouldn't be able to last very long here. But God knew that I needed to see Him every single day to remind me that He is the reason I am here. This past week was filled with the most GORGEOUS sunsets each evening! I wish you could all witness them first hand with me!

in your anger...

I will fully admit that Liberia brings out the worst in me sometimes. This year I have been a yo-yo going back and forth thinking, "This year will be my last year in Liberia. It's time to move on," or "Man, I love what I do... I am definitely signing on for another year!" Every week it is a different story. I'm not too concerned about making that decision now, since my contract isn't up until January, but the thoughts still cross my mind on what is going to be next.

The past 2 weeks was definitely a "Get me out of here!" attitude.

What got me so riled up? Customer service.

Or should I say the lack there of.

Two quick stories for you. I live in a house with 5 other women. We are blessed to have 24 hour power, a washer and dryer, internet at home, AND satellite television which keeps us entertained and in touch with the outside world. It may be that I am one of the "veterans" in the house, or I'm just good at finding the right people, but whenever something is broken- it could be a knob on our oven or our dryer has blown, I am the one designated to fix it, or find someone to fix it. The last issue was with our DSTV (satellite).

For some reason, our dstv is usually on the fritz... not sure why that is, but more often than not it is not working. This last time, I contacted our assistant at the office who calls the companies to line up repair men, etc. I informed her that our dstv was not working and if they could send out a technician to fix it.

That was EIGHTEEN DAYS ago.

18 days.

Ten plus eight.

Over two weeks.

We called EVERY SINGLE DAY for 18 days and they never ONCE sent out a technician to help us with our problem.

Then one EARLY morning i hear a loud thud on our roof.

Sure enough, there laid our dish on the ground. Great.

More calls... still no response.

I was SO LIVID by this point that I thought all the blood vessels in my head were going to pop. No joke.

We decided to give up on the actual provider and find a random guy who is not employed by dstv to come and fix it.

After a long and painful day making multiple trips into town (2-3 hours each time) our dstv is finally working. And yet we have yet to hear from our actual provider. All the while charging us full price.

T.I.A. (This Is Africa)


Ok story number 2 this week: I am making a trip up country this week to Malawu, and I have been promising the people there that I would bring them pictures printed out of what I have taken the past 2 years. So I burn a disk and drive downtown to the only place I know of in Monrovia that can print out digital photos.

I walk in to this lobby area where there are 6 people sitting on the benches. I stand by the counter for FIVE FULL MINUTES with no one acknowledging me, so I assume that all 6 people are customers waiting. After five full minutes of standing there, one woman looks at me with a look of disgust and says, "what?"

I replied, "I'd like to get some photos printed."

All of a sudden, FOUR of the six get up to work- FOUR of them were EMPLOYEES! I asked about prices, and of course it was going to cost over a dollar to print one 4x6 photo, but they didn't think they had enough paper to do the whole order. So I said ok, print as many as you can. How long will it take? They said one hour, but I had to leave a down payment.

Ok no problem. I'll leave half the amount.

"You need to pay us the full amount."

"But you just said you don't have enough paper to print the whole order. So why would I pay the full amount when you aren't going to print all the pictures?"

"You will get your money back."

Right....

So I get out my money to leave half the amount they want, and of course they don't have change. At this point I just needed to get out of that store before I popped another blood vessel.

If anyone wants to come and train the whole country on customer service, you are most welcome!

Proverbs 29:11
A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.

It's not easy-o...