The kids continued to go to school during the conference but joined us during the afternoons for a kids program. They had a wonderful time making crafts and playing.

I am thankful for this conference because as we return to our normal tasks I find myself thinking about and praying more frequently for our coworkers. I look forward to seeing what God does here in Senegal between now and our conference in 2012!

Please pray for our new friends at the “Rock Beach” as Canaan calls it. We pray that through our love and friendship they would get a glimpse of the love from the one true God!

Check out this sweet ride! Its our new ride! =) God has blessed us with a car. We are so excited to finally be car owners again. We were not planning on getting a car so soon. But the Lord laid it on our hearts and here we are! Its a 1997 Citroen Saxo. I called it our new lemon not because its in bad shape…. but because the brand is Citroen… which is very close to the French word for lemon, citron.

She has a few body problems, has no air conditioning, needs new cushion covers, the headlights don’t work very well and the spedometer isn’t currently working. BUT it has a new motor! She is is great working shape. Its really only the not so important things that are not working.

We really felt it was important for us to buy a car with a few special qualities:

1.Something that we could currently afford with out putting us into debt.

2. Something that did not stand out around us. (None of our friends (Senegalese friends) can afford a car… getting a nice new shiny car would really stand out…)

3. Something that we could take people places.

4. Something that we could learn how to drive with in Africa and not be afraid to scrape up!

We are loving the freedoms of having our own car! Having to flag down and discuss the price for a taxi every time we went somewhere was very tiring. No taxis have seat belts and the majority of taxis are running only by a miracle. Have no idea how some of the cars we have driven it are actually moving.

There are a bunch of places now that we are ready to discover. There is a nice fruit market near our house. But we never had the chance to go there… so we hope to go soon. We are able to quickly drive to a near by restaurant to find local foods incase of need!

Please pray for us… especially Norm, as he is learning how to drive safely in Dakar. Its crazy driving here and on top of that its a manuel car. So Norm is working on getting use to it. He is doing a great job. But it is still nerve wracking since its all so new. Pray for safety and that God would use our car for his honor and ministry!

Its finally here!! After 9 months its finally with us. Its pretty funny looking at some of the expiration dates on all the food… Most of it so far has been great still… Some of the chips have lost their crispiness… but other than that, everything seems pretty good. We had lots of pepperoni in there too. It all looks great still! Praise Jesus! There was also a bar of Velveta cheese (it was supposed to be an experiment to see if it would last the trip) Well after 9 months its still great! There was also a Boboli pizza crust… It expired last October. It tasted great! Haha!

Here are some pics of it coming, being opened, carried up to the fourth floor and enjoyed! There was stuff in there for two other families. But the majority in the big crate was ours. (at least 60%)

THANK YOU EVERYONE! YOU GUYS ARE AMAZING!!!!!!!

Hundreds of screws removed by hand!

8 month expired! Still good!

Enjoying some new toys!

The old TP holder!

The new TP holder!!

Organizing!!!

Check out the rest of the pics at flickr.com/n0rm_debra.

Senegalese dryers (roof tops).

We plug everything into these voltage regulators, there are often spikes in the electricity, these protect the things that are plugged into it. We have one in every room.

This is the UPS. It is a voltage regulator and a battery back-up. If the power were to dip for even a second the computer would immediately shut off. This gives us a few minutes to save everything and shut down.

Our water turns off multiple times a day, sometimes for a few hours a day.

This is our water storage for dishes, bathing, toilets, and everything else while the water is off.

I hate having my hands all dirty only to find out there is no water. I have started keeping water next to the sinks for hand washing. This is the kitchen sink. I have a big pitcher here for washing hands or rinsing dishes, I have been in the middle of washing something when the water went out. Thus stuck with a clean but soapy dish.

This is the bathroom sink. We have a few options, hand sanitizer, which I really don’t like using but Canaan loves it. Then their is also a little a liter of water ready for use!  I make sure to keep them filled all the time. It gets used everyday! Its doing little things like this that make life seem normal here. If we were constantly stuck with dirty hands hunting down some water (never at a good moment) it gets frustrating. But finding little things to make like go smoothly are such life savers.

This is our water filter. We have to make sure we keep as much water going in as there is coming out! We put the water in the top bucket and it goes through 3 ceramic filters. This makes our water safe to drink.

This is my fruit stand. I took this picture from our balcony. We go here to buy apples, bananas, mangoes, oranges and also little crackers that the kids eat regularly. You can also buy lollipops, soap, travel size tissues, matches and some other random things like that.

You can also see the pharmacy that we go to and right behind the stand is the woodworker we have started using!

Hope you enjoyed seeing a few things from our daily life! Thanks for checking in.

Boy style tea party!

This was our first American style meal here in Dakar. Our hosts are still cooking our meals for us. Which is good and bad all at the same time! haha! We miss familiar food. But the time together and the culture learning is so valuable. This is egg salad sandwiches on sub style bread we buy at a bakery down the road. The potatoes are actually white sweet potatoes that a lady downstairs fries up and sell each evening. They are so good. We ate those in Guinea, too! And note the best part… Chick-fil-a BBQ sauce!!!! =)

What a mess!!!

I was asked to teach these ladies how to bake a cake. So I agreed… even though I always bake cakes from a box! haha! I didn’t realize I was agreeing to a 4 hour long marathon of making at least 20 cakes! We cooked Senegalese style… which means on the floor! You wouldn’t believe what a mess it was at the end!!! It ended up being a great time of language learning and relationship building! It was exhausting but good! (This is what I did for Mother’s Day!) Notice Emmaus is testing the batter while we are all distracted taking a picture. What a mess he made! =)

Our work space. This was towards the beginning. The mess got much worse! And don’t forget the 4 cockroaches I smashed while we were doing this! =)  They were such good learners. Except I just simply could not get them to add the ingredients in the right order. The baking powder was always forgotten and added in last! haha!

The first cake that Banna ever made in her whole life! She did a pretty good job!

Canaan's fort!

Canaan showing me his fort!

Banna and Lellie!

The kids new bigger bath buckets! They like bath time! =)

I (Deb) was throwing up again last night… not fun! Instead of having a super busy day today… I had to lay around and do nothing. Kinda nice, kinda not! Haha! Hope you enjoyed the pics. I was so bored just laying here, so I thought I would try to get something done! =)

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the pics!

Last night was so very productive. We spent the entire day packing and organizing. Then after dinner and after the kids were in bed, we brought all our suit cases to the living room and told my sisters and dad that I needed them to pack them in for me in an organized fashion and to really watch the weight. It was the most incredible thing they could have done for me. I got everything ready to go and to be packed and they packed it in for us. It was so amazing. Thank you so much. You have no idea how amazing that was! =)

Then this morning, my sisters and Canaan and Emmaus and I went our for a morning/afternoon of adventuring! It was a much needed time of just having fun, spending time together and spoiling the boys. First we went to Bright Child (a huge indoor playground). We stayed there for a few hours. The kids had a blast. It was a perfect morning to go. There were hardly any people there. Which was an amazing blessing, Emmaus get very overwhelmed in any situation with lots of people. It was so fun! Here are some pictures from our time at Bright Child:

All of us!

Our little builder!

Emmaus is loving it!

Next we went to lunch at Panera Bread! I love Panera Bread and will miss it so much! After lunch we went to Old Navy, it was right next door. =) Kathleen and Gregg and Christy  have sponsored some Senegalese children. Kathleen and Gregg sponsored a little 3 year old boy and Christy sponsored a 5 year old girl. We picked up some clothes for them. We figured we would take the gifts over with us and either drop it off at the World Vision headquarters in Dakar or mail it to them. After Old Navy, we went to the little play place right outside of Old Navy. The kids really enjoyed that. I have no idea what is so fun about those mall play places, but the kids loved it! Here are some pics!

My sweet boys!

Emmaus having fun!

Happy!

After the play place we headed to our car and spotted the water fountain thing. Of course we had to top off a fun day with some water play. This was super fun. Both the kids and the aunties ended up pretty wet! Luckily we had extra clothes for the kids in the car. Fun was definitely had by all!

Canaan

The water is about to come out of there!

Now for the rest of the day we are going to try to finish up all the loose ends, finish laundry, packing up the stuff we haven’t been able to pack yet, because we are using it! Tomorrow morning we are going to have a nice little brunch as a family. Having brunch as a family brings back so many memories of holidays and fun times. We will be headed to the airport sometime after lunch. We want to be there really early since the airlines are all still trying to get back to normal from the Volcano. We plan on getting there and doing an official weigh in on our bags, do any shifting that needs to be done and then seal them up.  We will have a 12 hour flight from LAX to Paris. Then a too short 2 hour layover in Paris and then a 6 hour flight down to Dakar. Please pray especially for Emmaus. This is going to be tough with him, he is at the age that we can’t explain to him why we have to stay in our seat for 12 hours and why he can’t go running down the aisle anytime he wants or why he can’t move around much because of the person sitting in front of us. He does NOT sleep well on planes. Not at all! Please pray he will sleep and that he will be calm during the long flights. We only have 3 actual paid for seats. And with the volcano… we are assuming the flights will be booked solid. I don’t have much hope for an extra seat… but we serve the God of miracles… so PLEASE pray for a MIRACLE! =)

We covet your prayers during this time of transition and leaving our families. You can pray for the kids! What a tough thing to go through at such a young age. And you can pray for me (Debra). I am emotionally really struggling with going back. Our three months in Guinea were a real whirlwind trip for us. We went through culture shock, malaria, parasites, civil unrest, loneliness from being under house arrest and ultimately having to leave everything behind and come home.  I know things wont be quite as crazy this time around. But its still a tough thing to go back. Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. We are so so blessed to be serving such an incredible loving GOD! What a privilege it is!

We can’t wait to update you all from the other side of the world. We are hoping to get internet up and running soon! It could be a couple days to a couple weeks! You just never know is Africa!!

We love you so much!