side story about marley

we're not exactly sure what the cause of this is... but we are guessing that yesterday after church while we were greeting people i was standing in an ant hill. i first noticed tiny red dots on my right foot but didn't think much of them. they weren't itchy and they were small. but then today they seemed to have multiplied and are now on my left foot, are getting bigger, and they are sooo itchy! here is a nice picture of my feet... well as nice as my "african feet" can be! you might need to look really close to see the dots! if you even want to look that close!

putting lancaster to work

our first team, from lancaster, arrived last night! we got them all settled and gave them an awesome orientation and then this morning put them to work cleaning out the hospital's warehouse. not only did we get filthy, we also got rained on... and we all thought we were in gabon's "dry season." they were all really good sports about it and i think we all had a good time!

clearing out the junk

dust masks

all the medicine we moved in

bunk house completed!

today we did the final touches and finished the bunk house! now the guys have somewhere to sleep while they are here. our first team arrives tomorrow, so we finished up just in time! it doesn't look like much now... just wait until the room is filled with air mattresses and it will look more comforting!

before/during

after - so much brighter, isn't it? :)

pointe denis

beach day! we started off our day on a small boat to take us to a beach called pointe denis. we got soaked on our way there and laughed the whole way! we also all got burned but had tons of fun doing it :)

torey, lindsay, danielle, zach, me, hannah

tim, torey, lindsay, danielle, hannah, me, leanne, zach, meredith

our whole family! (minus the pets)

hope house olympics

on wednesday we transported all 19 kids from the orphanage to the bible school soccer field for a special day of olympics! we had 4 corners, relay races, egg on a spoon, 3-legged race, bean bag toss, and limbo for all the kids to do! it was fun and exhausting chasing after the smaller ones who didn't want to stay put! after the olympics we gave them all nibs and walked them back to the stmo center for hot dogs, fries, and cookies!

my entry for yesterday

my apologies... i missed a day! how could i? :)

we had a pretty busy day. we started off doing more work in the bunk house. hannah and i were working on attaching the fan controls to the wall when we both got electrocuted! we are still not sure how it happened... but it passed through hannah first (she was standing on the ladder) and then went through my elbow (i was leaning on the ladder) and out my foot. at first i had no idea what happened. i heard hannah scream first and then i felt something on my foot. i thought there was a huge spider or something! but no... after that tim decided to get an electician to come and work with it! there was no way we were going to again. so we all bult bunk beds and had to sort through all the pieces. we repeated the words "silver silver, bronze bronze" over and over. whoever made them used both silver and bronze screws... so we had to match up the ends and sides with the proper color. it took more thinking than 2 people who just got electocuted could handle! but we did it :)

later in the afternoon we headed out to the beach to sit on some rocks and pray. we were praying for our lancaster team that is coming on sunday! it is going to be a mad house here... a total of 27 people! it was a really good prayer time, coming together as a group and lifting up everything to God. he is the one in control, after all! there were a ton of lizards where we were sitting. i watched one as he was on a tree stump eating ants. it was funny because there were a ton of ants right in front of him but he could only see the ones on the side because that's where his eyes are!

dining hall completed!

today we finished up all of the painting we had to do and were finally able to use our new dining room for the first time! check out the before and after photos!!!

dining hall before...

dining hall after...

dining hall party!

because it's sunday...

after our 3 1/2 hour church service today we have the day off. it's the sabbath! so nothing very interesting is going on today. and so... i will share a random story.

one beautiful summer night at the stmo center in gabon meredith walked into the kitchen. a few seconds later she comes out all grossed out and calls for tim. gentile is eating a huge dead lizard. naturally, we all had to go into the kitchen and take a look at this! and sure enough... meredith wasn't lying! gentile was chewing on a large lizard in the kitchen (i guess the location was appropriate). tim tried to make her drop it but she wouldn't so he picked her up and was going to take her outside. we were all standing in the kitchen door. as soon as we realized what he was doing there was screaming and running to get away from the cat and dead lizard. it was a rather funny experience and i am glad to share it with you! later that night i went outside to go upstairs and i heard her chomping on it. that was gross. and then even later titus was sniffing around there... not cool. not sure if he ate any or not!

bifoun et ebel-abanga

my first village experience of 2009!

we took off friday morning for a weekend village trip. we arrived in bifoun in the afternoon and went straight to work at the medical clinic. meredith, hannah, lindsay, and i were put in charge of filling the prescriptions while zach took people's weight and blood pressure. danielle, torey, and leanne were in doing eye exams. it was sad to see some of the people come through there. it is hard to see those who are suffering and not being able to do anything about it. but they are all in God's hands and he know's what he's doing! we took a break for lunch and lindsay, tim, and i went into town to get some bagettes, cookies, and beef. i must say, those were the toughest sandwiches i have ever had! after lunch we worked for a bit more and then headed to abelabanga to set up for the night!

in abelabanga we pumped up air mattresses and set up mosquito nets. but first... we had to get the line up so we could hang up the nets. that was an adventure all in itself. we had twine that we tried to use but it snapped. there was a really nice man in this village, who we nicknamed monsieur pamplemousse, and he gave use rope. we eventually got everything set up with a lot of laughs in between! and then pastor jacob taught us "this is the day the lord has made" in francais and we sang a bunch of other songs. we had a group of children join us throughout the evening which was really cool. we learned that they were fong, which is a tribe that eats cats! but anyway... we went to bed with the sound of trucks speeding by, roosters crowing, and dogs fighting! it was a very pleasant nights sleep! haha

in the morning we went to work at another clinic. we had our same jobs and worked until lunch - granola bars! and then we moved to another village for our last clinic. that one was not as busy and more relaxed. we talked a bit with mama janine and theo. that was a fun experience seeing as we don't know french! after we filled a few prescriptions we headed home - 3 hours of bumpy and swervy roads. fun!

our mosquito nets

playing dutch blitz in the jungle!

pastor jacob!

front: hannah, torey, me, lindsay

back: _____, theo, zach

hope house

today was our busiest day yet! we didn't have much down time and that makes it more like last year! we were busy all the time.... but that would be because i was there on a team last year. everything is packed into a couple weeks!

in the morning we painted the breezeway and the storage room. naturally, i got paint all over me... on my clothes, face, arms, feet, in my hair, and my hands made it look like i was finger painting! i don't think it is possible for me to not get dirty. good thing it wasn't horrible that we got paint all over the floor!

in the afternoon we made our way to the hope house (orphanage). this is what i have been waiting for the entire time! and they hung on to me like they always did. i can't even describe the love i have for those kids! and it overwhelms me that God loves them so much more (and us)! we were able to sing "head and shoulders, knees and toes" with them and tell them a bible story - where Jesus multiplies the fish and bread. we even demonstrated with real bread and paper fish! they were excited about the bread! we also gave them some sidewalk chalk to play with and we painted the girls nails... and one boy (one of the twins - for those who know who that is). we get to visit them every wednesday so i am sooo excited about that!

mazoonda! ok, i'm not sure how to spell it... but that's how it sounds!

boomba (sp)! this is the twin who wanted his nails painted!

naomie! she hung off of me last year... not much different this year =)


zach had his hands full!

sunny day

for most of our time here so far it has been cloudy. but today we actually felt some sun on our skin! for about 2 minutes and then we went inside a church. we were taking a "before" look at one of the construction projects we will be doing with some of our teams. on this little journey i was introduced to this cool plant. see the leaves in the first picture... they are open. but when you run your fingers on the leaves, they close! it is very cool to see. it is kind of hard to see the closed leaves in the second picture... but trust me - they're there!

gabon round 2 begins

sorry for my lack of regular updates! our internet was cut off for a week. i don't have too much to report on so far, but i will soon!

unlike last year, we got to chill for our first couple of days here. the other interns were in Bongolo, where there is a hospital, so we couldn't really do anything on our own... so what do we do? go to the beach, of course! we spent 2 days hanging out with another missionary family here. it's fun to know another group of people doing the same kind of thing.

we are like our own little family over here. we have tim and meredith, leanne, zach, lindsay, hannah, torey, danielle, me, and we can't forget the dog, titus, and the cats, gentile and bandit. so we are actually more like a very large family! i am excited for the next 2 months i get to spend with all of them!

titus!! our little doberman rottweiler german shepherd cross!

toser and titus after a bath! can you tell which one is which? [they're brothers]

june 8-10 stuck in casablanca

in true marley fashion, something has to go wrong on every trip i go on! this time it happened to be in morocco... which conveniently happens to be a muslim country. we loaded what we thought to be our last plane to get to libreville. no joke, not even 5 minutes later we were told that everyone needed to get off the plane. no explanation. i thought maybe there was something wrong with the plane... i was wrong. turns out the president of gabon died and they shut down all the borders and communication in gabon. not convenient for 2 canadians traveling to gabon! but, to make the story short, we found our way to the hotel where we were supposed to wait until we could fly out - not sure when that would be. the next day, after sleeping for 16 hours (we missed breakfast and lunch unintentionally) our mother's somehow contacted us! they told us that some international workers were coming to pick us up. so, we ended up going to the school where they worked/lived. it was actually pretty cool cause we got to see more of casa! the next day we were able to fly out to libreville!

casablanca airport

this was the hotel we were "stuck" in =)

the school we stayed at for a night