Maryann's Musings

  On day five, our coping mechanisms kicked in. Basically, this means that we nerded out over breakfast and said something along the lines of, "Oh, I wish that we x, then we could do x, " and so on. And for those of you who really want to know, we translated as many elf names from the Lord of the Rings trilogy that we could remember, without the Silmarillion in front of us. In my defense, I am not as nerdy as my dad. Yet. :)   (the above picture is of Tristan and the winner of a game that had over 17 rounds)   With the women Mom did something different. Because we were still (ARE still) working on their project, M. Samuel did all the teaching. Since he is an evangelist, he taught them basic evangelism. The women were very receptive. I was really embarrassed, though, because M. Samuel had asked me to hastily draw some pictures on a piece of paper for him, to help illustrate. After I was finished I felt as if I could have done better, but M. Samuel seemed very pl...

    "If I can just make it to the pastor training school, I can puke in the toilet, lie down, and everyone can let me die quietly." This may sound highly cynical and rather harsh, but riding down a dirt strip that hardly deserves to be called 'a road' with a fever and intense nausea is no picnic. I mean, really. We must have hit every bump and pothole imaginable; and the ones we didn't hit, we swerved sharply away from, making my stomach churn and the pressure in my head explode with fresh violence. My back was not only in an uncomfortable position, but with every pothole, it was jared achily.  MISERABLE!   But enough complaining (there will be more, anyway....). Remember my blog about our ' True Bush Livin' ? This is the story of our return trip. Only this time, we stayed a whole week. And the drainage system backed up completely so we couldn't flush toilets or do dishes, til we finally pulled out what was clogging it (aha! got you interested)....

  CRUNCH - BUMP!  Mom and I clapped and cheered from the back as our chauffeur, Marcellin, navigated the treacherous dirt roads.  We were in our tightly packed van and though no one had leg room the air was on full blast and no one was hot - yet. We were on our way to a village with a pastors' school that my dad was going to teach at and that my mom was going to do women's ministry at. Evangelist Samuel and Pasteur Edouard were also going with us.  A view of our car Skip back: early Sunday morning, everyone in our family got up early and scrambled around in pajamas to finish last minute tasks. Then our team mates arrived.    M. Samuel, le evangelist :) M. Marcellin, le chauffeur  Aidan and I were the photographers; Mom wanted someone else to take pictures so that I would be in some of them, which is funny because Aidan's camera ran out of battery power right after we got settled it. Photographer #1 You...