Hello From Ganta!!!

Dear Friends,

I am sitting in Ganta, Liberia which is a nine hour drive from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. I am using a computer that was donated to a pastor of a local church. No one here could get the computer to connect to the internet. The pastor was amazed that I was able to get it up and running. I so much wanted for him to leave the computer here where we are staying so that I could update the blog. I did not want to ask but was delighted when he offered to let all of us from America use it this evening.

The days here have been amazing!! The teaching of the teachers has been incredible. There are over 90 teachers that have come from 54 schools. The teachers are going to take the training we are offering and share it with all of the teachers in their school. One skill we are teaching is how to write a lesson plan, and we are using the Calvert template that I use with my students at school. I teach in the morning from 9:00 to 1:00, and then grab a quick bite for lunch. I head over to the Liberian International Christian College where I am teaching Rick Warren’s 12 Ways to Study the Bible from 1:30 – 4:00. Our conversations at the college have been amazing. They do not have many materials here and were ecstatic to see that we had brought a suitcase full of brand new resource materials like Topical Bibles, exhaustive concordances, study Bibles, and other books.

The internet connection here is very slow (think dial-up) so I cannot add any pictures. I wish I could because the children and the countryside here are both so beautiful. In a land of such poverty and hardship it is heart-wrenching to see such kind generous people who have such beautiful spirits. Like my trip to the Philippines I have been struck by the fact that they do so much with so little, and I have so much and do so little when I am back home.
The pastor has not used the internet much and has never had a computer that could connect to it, so tomorrow night I am going to show him the ropes. I strongly suspect the lesson will continue in every free moment until I leave on Friday. It is wonderful to be able to help spread my love for technology in a country so far away.

The living conditions in Ganta are very sad to see. The houses, which are usually more like what we would consider a shack only have electricity if they have a generator. The house where I am staying is very nice has a generator that is turned on from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM on some nights and 7:00 PM – 6:00 AM on others. My headlamp has come in very handy. We do have running water from a gravity fed tank but the water pressure is non-existent. A shower is only really possible by dumping cold water over you, soaping up, and then rinsing with more water. It is actually very refreshing since it is very hot here. I sleep under mosquito netting which makes it even warmer. I have been exhausted at the end of each day and sleep has not been a problem. I have not had any sickness at all which I am very thankful. Since there are nine others who can’t wait to use the computer I will sign off. I may be able to do a short post when I am helping the pastor learn how to navigate the computer.

I am so happy to be here!!!!!!!!!!!

Morocco!!!!!!

I am in Morocco typing on a keyboard that is unlike any I have ever seen. The keys are all in the wrong places. The good news is that I am here and doing well. The flight over was smooth but we had some problems because our carry ons were checked by four different people with four different standards. Some people had scales while others would merely look at a bag and declare it to be too heavy. All of the things made it which is key. In one hour we will fly to Liberia. The flight takes four hours. I did not sleep on the flight over, but I got a nap today of about three hours. We are all very excited for the adventures that await us. The next two weeks in Liberia will be busy and I have heard that the internet is very scarce. I will update if possible, but may not be able to. The mood and spirit of the team is wonderful and we are all excited to be here.

I just realized that this is a French keyboard. I had no idea that there keys were different. I am sitting at a reception desk, because the other computers were not working and a person came up and asked me a question. Luckily I know French which is spoken quite a bit here, but I did not know the answer to his question. I met a man from France today on a shuttle bus, and we had a great conversation.

I will write more when I have time and internet but must go now.

Pray that the rest of the travel goes well and our health stays good.

What I Will Be Doing in Morocco

Morocco is going to be whirlwind of activity with a lot of travel and a lot of different activities. I will be doing computer training, helping on various building projects, making first contact with a village that has never had a Christian visit it, working with children at a detention center, leading craft classes in a remote village, helping to paint a mural at a cultural arts center (after I'm done they may take the word "arts" out of their name) and a whole host of other things that will come up along the way. During my two weeks I will be staying in Midelt (4 nights) , Outat Alhaj (1), Merzouga (1), Fes (2), Ain Leuh (2), Marrakech (3), and Casablanca (1) (where I will only answer to the name Victor Lazlo).

I do not know exactly what will happen, but I am excited for all of the possibilities which soon will be realities.

Liberia in a Nutshell

There are a lot of websites out there that deal with Liberia. One that is very brief can be seen here. Since some of my students may be following my trip I will not post sites that deal with the wars and other troubles that Liberia has endured. The state of education in Liberia is poor but improving. The president is a huge advocate of education but does not have the necessary funds to completely overhaul the system. Most of the qualified teachers left the country during the times of strife never to return. There are many in Liberia who want to be teachers but they lack the basic training. That is where Compassion Corps comes in.

Updating the Blog

I am led to believe that there is the possibility that I can update this blog from time to time in Liberia. Since electricity is spotty at best throughout most of the country I am a bit skeptical, but we'll see. At the very least I am going to update the blog in Morocco and do final touch-ups and proof reading when I get back. I really hope that I can update it as the days pass, but it will likely be done on the fly if at all, so I apologize for aney speeling arrors inn advants:)

My Responsibilities

Once we get to Liberia we will be spending one week in Ganta, and one week in Monrovia. In the mornings of those two weeks I will be team-teaching with another member of our team named Miranda. Six teachers will be split into three rooms with anywhere from 30 - 50 Liberians in each room. The Liberian teachers we will be working with want to increase their effectiveness in the classroom, and that is what we will be there to help them with. We will teach lesson planning skills, classroom management, and other things needed to be effective as a teacher. Each day we will teach three lessons back to back.

In the afternoon, while the other teachers are working with the Liberian teachers on practicing the skills we went over in the morning, I will head to a local seminary to do a four day workshop. From 1:30 - 4:00 each day I will be leading sessions based on Rick Warren's 12 Ways to Study the Bible. The preparation I have done to get ready for this ten hour workshop has been intense but also very enriching. Just earlier tonight I finished my lessons both for the teacher training and the seminary workshop, and now I am ready to go. For some of the evenings we have programs with the children that should be great. I will be running a soccer game which the children there evidently love to play. I can't wait.

I have other responsibilities on the weekends that I will tell about as the days unfold.

Team Meetings

Early on the morning of April 9th I drove to Delaware for a team meeting (my first, and the second for the others) where I would be meeting the team for the first time. I was a bit nervous as I entered but soon found out that everything was going to work out great. I met the other team members and felt a bond with them from the start. We started talking about the work we would be doing and dividing up the responsibilities, and it has been all that I could ask for. I have now attended about four team meetings and I am completely comfortable with Beth (the other leader), Jan, and the rest of the team.

The Seed is Planted and Quickly Grows

This spring, I took a fantastic, intensive 15 week course at my church called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. It took place on Sunday evenings from 5-8 PM, and I learned a whole lot. On March 27th we had a speaker from Wilmington, Delaware named Jan Bean. She spoke about Global Communities and mentioned her work in Africa. She is one of the people who runs a group called Compassion Corps, sending teams to Egypt, Mali, Senegal, Tunisia, Uganda, Morocco, and Liberia. Jan mentioned that this summer she was leading a team to Liberia to do teacher training. My ears perked up instantly, and I was interested in hearing more. After the meeting, I spoke with Jan and asked her if there was any room on the team for this summer. Not only was there room but they had been hoping that one more person would join to give them a team of ten. They were looking for a teacher who had some technology skills and some seminary training. As it turns out I hit the bulls eye on all three accounts. Within a few days I had applied and been accepted to go on the trip. I signed up to go to Liberia for two weeks (where the teacher training is taking place) but soon heard that some of the team was staying to do some work in Morocco. The nature of the work lines up very well with what I had studied in the Perspectives course so I signed up to stay on for the extra two weeks in Morocco. I leave on June 23rd and get back on July 23rd.