Gambia!

Here is a little bit about The Gambia and the people God has put in our path.

Gambia
We are successfully in Gambia, as of about 2 a.m. Steven, David Musa's friend, met us at the airport, bless him.  The little bit that Steven told us sounds like something from a missionary story book. He came here with his wife & 4-yr old daughter,  21 years ago. I'm not sure if the church he was referring to was one he began or was part of, but when he first came, they could not meet openly or you would get stoned. They had a church building for a while but when they would begin singing & praising, outsiders would throw rocks on the metal roof. Then a neighbor would bring his karaoke out & play it as loud as he could during the service, & stop as soon as they finished.  That place got attacked so they moved, but still have problems. We have so much to learn from our brothers & sisters here in West Africa.


We are in a nice hotel here in Banjul. Steven says we are not seeing the "real" Gambia; I suspect we will see that when we meet with him tomorrow. That should be very telling. All around here the appearance is outwardly lovely but underneath many things are quite broken.

This morning at breakfast a gentleman from Nigeria came to sit with us - or maybe I should say, more accurately - that God sent him. 😊 His name is Augustine, and we were so encouraged by him. When he was a baby, all the children in his village were dying of typhoid, malaria, measles ... there were no immunizations. (in the 50's)  He was a baby, very ill, expected to die. Some missionaries came to his village, laid their hands on him and prayed for his life in the name of Jesus - and he is here today, a retired medical doctor, working with Christian Business Men's Fellowship. They are having their first-ever conference here in Gambia beginning tonight.

We ventured into the rains & a young man named Moses came to help us. At first we were not really sure, even though the hotel taxi man directed us to him, but he was delightful. He had a "striker" ball cap on , & grinned from ear to ear when I asked him about it. Yes, indeed, he's a striker (football alias soccer in US). He knew just where to take us to get things we need. I think he was more excited than we were when he helped us get a much better deal at a second store. This is how he helps his family, so we just may have him guide us around for a fun adventure like the monkey park. We are taking a few days here for "R & R" before we begin in earnest at the Bible college

This guy was sitting on the railing as we walked to go swim. His tail went nearly to the ground. Yesterday when the sun came out in the morning there were dozens of monkeys everywhere.

Story from Accra
I wanted to share one incident from the airport in Accra. We began talking with a man in "queue " (line) behind us, who was from Ghana. He works with Scripture Union, the same group that David Musa was with in Sierra Leone. He knew T. B. , the man we had stayed with in Accra. In fact he showed us a photo of him & T. B. at a recent lunch. Then he took a picture of the three of us & sent it to T. B. 😊 How encouraging that God continues to put His people across our path!

Also here is a picture of the kids we taught in the Kenema Village - The kids were in GRADE 4 & 5, not 4 and 5 yr old, but there were 28 students in our class.