Dieu est bon!

God is good! The pastor at church this morning told us to say this as we were greeting one another. It really is true...God is so, so good! Before I blog about this weekend, I wanted to post a few prayer requests. I appreciate all those praying for me and the team here in Gabon. I figured some specific prayer requests would be helpful:

1. The Hope House (the orphanage) here in Libreville is in need of a new house. They are renting now, and the owner decided to sell the property. So now, Pastor Israel and his wife (the couple who run the house) needs a new place for the orphans! They need to find something within 2 months. Pray that God would provide a place and the financial means to rent/buy it.

2. The first team is coming out next Sunday! They are from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Pray that they have a safe trip, and that everything goes smoothly (and all their luggage gets here! :]).

3. Gabon is still in a transition period with it's government. An election should take place in a couple of months, so pray that God's hand would be in that.

4. Pray for health for the interns and teams. A lot of us have been getting sick and having health problems (I had pink eye last week...ugh!).



Again, I'm SO very appreciative for all of you who have committed to pray for me this summer!!



So...here is what's been happening over here in Gabon:

This past week we worked a lot on the house, and we are almost finished! We have one more room to paint, and then it will be ready for the first team! It looks really great! Friday, we left to go on a medical caravan to a village about 3 hours away. After that caravan, we went to another village about 15 minutes down the road to set up camp for the night. A man met us who helped us get set up. He was like the chief's right-hand man. We nicknamed him Mr. Pamplemousse (Mr. Grapefruit), because he gave us lots of grapefruit from his trees haha. A lot of people pitched in to help us blow up mattresses and hang mosquito nets from the trees. After we set up, Pastor Jacob played guitar and we all sang songs. He taught us a few French songs. A lot of kids came and sang with us too. They were so cute!! We went to bed around 9 (we were exhausted). It was pretty hard to sleep, because there were roosters and dogs making noise all night. Not to mention we were right beside a road, so trucks drove by all night. But nevertheless, I did manage to sleep a few hours! The next morning we bathed off in a river. We did another caravan in that village, and then came home. I was so happy to get a real shower! Today we went to a church really close to our house. It lasted 3 1/2 hours....the usual. It's so crazy how long the services are here! I will never complain about the service going longer than an hour EVER again. I never knew how good I had it until I had to sit for 3-4 hours with no AC, sweating my butt off, and only understanding about 5% of what the pastor is saying! I have no excuse to complain about ANYTHING when I get back to Foothills :).

My make-shift bed in the jungle :)