Ghana

Today was a day of transition. We said goodbye to Dr. Peter and Ineke this morning in Burkina Faso to begin our travels to Sierra Leone where our final two surveys will take place. We prayed during devotions this morning that God would give us favor with our luggage for our flights to Ghana. Every bag we were traveling with was overweight and we were flying on a small aircraft. He answered that prayer. Not one word was said and the all bags passed through without a problem.

We arrived in Accra where we will spend the night before flying to Freetown, Sierra Leone tomorrow. We couldn’t help but notice as we landed in Accra that the standard of living is much better than Burkina Faso. Ghana has a very stable government and the people are at peace. We were blessed that our taxi driver was listening to a Christian radio station during our forty minute ride to our hotel. Having the evening free gave us an opportunity to connect with a family from Gene’s home church in Lancaster County, Pa. We met at Papa Ye’s, a traditional Ghanaian restaurant. It was excellent food and we had a good visit as well.

We feel blessed tonight to be staying in a room that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. There’s something about the sound of water crashing the shore that is peaceful to the soul. Isaiah 51:15 says “for I am Jehovah thy God who stirreth up the sea, so that the waves thereof roar: Jehovah of hosts is his name.”

Posted today by Gene

Last Day in Burkina Faso

We were privileged to attend the International Church service this morning held in a large room of the SIL Mission here in Burkina Faso. Matt Durkee was gave a good message from God's Word and we celebrated communion with these folks, which was a blessing. We met missionaries from all over this part of Africa, and it was good to speak with our Friends In Action friends as well.

After the church service we went to a local restaurant that served most of us Mexican food, which was a treat to be found in Africa. The food service was a bit slow, but the food was very good.

When we came back to our guest house, we again worked on sketches for the beginning of the electrical layout here for the hospital project. We will be working on a firm estimate for this job in the next few weeks, and are confident that God is behind it, so this will be a great ministry to the people of Ouagadougou.

We had dinner with our hosts again this evening, and enjoyed fellowshiping with them. We are looking forward to working together with them on this project sometime in the future.

We will be leaving here Tuesday morning for Accra, Ghana. We arrive in Ghana about an hour after the normal plane leaves for Sierra Leone, so we are forced to remain there overnight to catch the flight to Sierra Leone on Wednesday.

If you wish to check in on the Spot tomorrow, we will again turn it on when we arrive in Ghana. If you care to see what I mean by the Spot, check out the following link:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=12.37819,-1.49042&ll=12.37819,-1.49042&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

You will need to paste it into your browser as it doesn't show here as a hyperlink.

We are anticipating that with an additional piece of luggage we will all be within the airline's limits. We just need to get up early enough to finish packing (I mean I do..)

Another Saturday in Africa

Today we spent a great deal of time going over the drawings from this survey in Burkina Faso as well as the previous survey in Cameroon. We requisitioned another piece of old luggage that we will use to divide up our baggage and hopefully get it all within the limits of our ext flight on Monday.

We visited a place where there were some artisans selling their wares from BK just before lunch. We have not had any slack time since the start of the trip and an hour or so of walking the streets was helpful. We met some Touareg men. This tribe of people operated the caravan trade routes across the Sahara Desert for over 2000 years. In their culture the men must have their faces mostly covered, but their women do not have to do this - quite different from other Muslim cultures.
We did some minor repairs to the electrical system here at the Van Dingenen residence. Hopefully the circuit breaker for the house will not trip any more. We did experience several hours of power outage again today, but the battery and inverter backup system on the house is very impressive in its ability to keep things going.

We met Dr. Jacob for the first time this evening, and we went over some of the details of the proposed electrical system for the new hospital with him and Ismael and Dr. Peter.

In a few hours we will be getting up and going to church with our hosts, then we are hoping to take them out to lunch, perhaps at a Mexican restaurant.
We keep hearing of snow back in Pennsylvania. We wish some of it could be here as it has been very hot. We trust you all are well back home and wherever you are following us from. Thanks again for your prayers and notes of encouragement.

At the Hospital Site

Today we visited the new hospital site with Dr. Peter. It is a very nice site of about 23 acres in size. Power presently runs into a neighbor's building that looks like a man. We spent much more time discussing the needs with Dr. Peter and determining what might be the best plan for providing power to the site. We ate both lunch and dinner with the Van Dingenen's and enjoyed some casual conversation around the table with them. They are special people who have a real servant heart and a love for these people here in Burkina Faso.
Only a few pictures today, perhaps more tomorrow. Keep checking in. Thanks for following along.

Friends In Action in Burkina Faso

This is Thursday morning. After emerging from our mosquito net cocoons we had breakfast at our guest house kitchen. We spent the better part of the morning with Mark Collier and Matt Durkee. We visited FIAINTL's new office and then went out to the school site where the well drilling equipment is located for the Water Of Life well-drilling that is going on here in Burkina. This was equipment that I last saw at Jake Hitz's shop when it was getting worked on a number of years ago. It was good to learn from Mark & Matt the methods they use in their drilling and how well the equipment is holding up. The generator on the accessory trailer quit producing voltage this week and we did a little examining of it to see if we could determine what might be wrong. Eventually we removed it from the trailer to place it on the ground in a location where it can be worked on. Hopefully we will get to learn a bit about what might be wrong with it, and perhaps even get it fixed before we leave on Monday or give some guidance to Mark and Matt as to what to do with it.

We are going to have lunch soon and will get to meet Dr. Jacob and Dr. Peter later this afternoon. We will then begin looking at the possibilities for projects here in Burkina Faso. There are great opportunities here to share the love of Jesus with these people.

Leg 2 of our Survey Trip

I just posted some pictures from yesterday, but thought it might be good to post some from BK, so that you can see a little of it. The last pics are of the SIM headquarters, not far from Dr. Peter's home where we are staying. More to follow in the next few days.
I will say that it is cool here now, according to Mark. It is a cool 39 Deg. C, which by my calculation is 102 F. It is pretty intense, but inside the buildings it is comfortable. Mark says April is the hot month when it normally gets to around 50 C. You can calculate that...

Moving On

Tuesday was Travel Day from Mbingo Hospital back to Douala. After going over some last-minute discussions and tours we parted company from the Schotanus's and Doug, Hugh, Earl, and Jerry. Our driver, Hygenous, took us along with a large piece of equipment and we began the journey. Along the way in the high country we had to take a detour through the bush because there was an accident blocking the road ahead. This was a rough road and we followed a bus that had gear piled so high on its roof that it looked like it would tip on some of the ruts. Once we got past it we encountered some other traffic that might have had even more problems. But we were happy to get back to paved road.

Coming down off the high country is very impressive, as you zig-zag down the mountain. Once we were on more level land, we stopped to grab a quick snack. We ate some cow meat and goat meat. The goat meat was pretty peppery, but tasty. We left the digestive part of this in God's hands.

As I sit and write this we are in Douala and none of us have any after-effects yet. We saw much culture along the way and some of the photos will give you a feel for it. How about that truckload of logs, Ernie???

We arrived in Douala later than we had hoped, but before dark. Hygenous joined us for dinner at a local restaurant. The three of us had Spaghetti Bolognese and it was pretty good. After walking back to the rest house we worked on positioning some data onto the maps of the hospital complex while it was still fresh in our minds.

I am writing this in the Douala Airport and we are now waiting for our plane to Ouagadougou to load in about 1/2 hour. The sign says there is Internet and there are many hookup cables but none of them seem to get us on line, so this post is going to go live after we reach Burkina Faso. It doesn't yet look like the plane will be too full, but who knows. Getting checked in at this airport was not really fun, to say the least. A guy helped us get our baggage through Ok without paying extra, but he felt he was owed a lot of money for doing it. Tom finally threatened to call Security if he would no let us alone and he fled from us and we then proceeded through the checkpoints to the gate. I will add more to this post in Burkina Faso.

We arrived ahead of schedule in Ouagadougou and made it OK through customs. No one was there to pick us up when we got out of the terminal and while we were waiting a gentleman tried to help us out, including making 4 calls including one to the US Embassy. While we were waiting, Mark Collier from Friends In Action showed up to pick us up. He had Ismael with him, who works directly with Dr. Peter VanDinginen and Paam Laafi Association, who we are here to assist with an electrical survey. After checking in at the VanDingenen guest house, Mark took us to the SIM Burkina Faso headquarters where we got some cool drinks. We chatted briefly and Mark promised to take us out to the local well drill site where FIAI is drilling in the morning, so we will get to see the operation here and the well driller that has not been seen by any of us since it left the US a number of years ago. I will post some pictures of that tomorrow.

While we wait for Dr. Peter to get back from a mobile clinic he is holding about 150 kilometers from here, we will catch up on our work from Cameroon.

Monday

Today, there were 7 of us working here along side of some of the missionaries and local workers. We started out the day with breakfast at the hostel and then a meeting with the leaders of the mission hospital. Hugh started off explaining the extent of the project as relates to the hydroelectric portion, and some of us explained what we were working on as far as the electrical power portion of the project. The hospital is expecting to grow considerably in the next 5-15 years, so we are sharpening our pencils. After the meeting Tom, Gene, Hugh, Earl, and Jerry went to the area where the power plant is expected to be built. Gary and Doug teamed up wit Jesse, the head Electrician for Mbingo, and we went to the sub-station to do some voltage and current readings. We then traced the six feeder circuits to the various buildings and in the afternoon we worked on the existing CAD drawing from the hospital to draw in the existing path and sizes of all the main wiring. It took hours to do and will be useful, both to the hospital for their existing maintenance issues, as well as for determining how we will run the new wiring to re-feed all of the buildings. In the process, Tom ended up getting some major dirt in his eyes. Since we were in the right place at the right time, the Lord provided an Ophthalmologist who could treat him right away with no later effects.
This evening we watched a recording of the Steelers beating the Jets to advance to the Super Bowl. Tom, Gen, and I will miss the Super Bowl as we will be in Sierra Leone that weekend. Will have to watch another DVR recording, I guess...
Tomorrow morning three of us (Tom, Gene, and Gary) will be finishing up our time here at Mbingo Hospital, and will be riding back to Douala. We will have to make an early flight on Wednesday to Ghana and then on to Burkina Faso on some local African airline, so we will have to be on our toes to make sure we have enough time to get our tickets at the airport, as they can't be printed out ahead of time.