Saturday, August 6, 2016
I spent Thursday and Friday working
on reports, and on Saturday Jim and I worked together writing and sending our
reports; I’m happy to say that we are finally caught up. We got to say goodbye one more time to
Amarachi as she had to take a bus here to drive Jonathan back home; he has been
slow to recover from malaria. E/S Carley
came by so that we could visit one last time before we left for Liberia and
discuss some of the water projects that he will be doing as area initiatives.
E/S Miner, the office couple,
took us to Church in the morning. We
attended the 9-12 meeting, and returned to the hotel, ordered lunch for all of
us, and finished last-minute packing and changing of clothes for our travel
back over the water and then on a plane to Liberia. We had a lovely visit, getting to know them a
little bit. At the beginning (at Church)
of the meeting they had confirmed a young man, another man a little older, and
an older lady, members of the Church.
The Church is exploding here!
Sunday school went 20 minutes over, and then it was R.S. We left right at 12 though because we had to
get to the boat dock and they tend to not care how long the meetings go—they don’t
have much else to do on Sundays.
Elder & Sister
Miner at the boat dock.
Did I tell you how much I dislike
our travel days? This one was even worse
than I expected. Miner’s drove us
quickly to the boat dock after departing from the hotel at 1:30—I was sad! I loved that hotel room and the food! When we arrived at the boat dock it was
pouring rain, but men were there with large umbrellas to get us inside without us
getting too wet. We were supposed to
leave at 2, but it left by 2:30. The sea
was still rough, and this one African woman was freaking out—they are terrified
of water because many do not swim and she wanted them to slow down. It was a little stuffy in there with all the
plastic on the windows to keep us dry, and I could tell some were a little
seasick, but it only takes 30 minutes now with the newer boats.
After our journey across the
water it became an uncomfortable experience.
It was very hot and humid and even though they have stand-alone cooler
units, they didn’t seem to be on or couldn’t get ahead of the stifling heat and
too many hot bodies. Jim had his little
piece of cloth like they use here for sweat, and he was whipping his face and
body continually. I could see that he
had sweated right through his shirt. We
waited in endless lines but finally got to the check-in desk. Jim showed them our itinerary and they said
someone had cancelled our tickets! I
guess they expected us to check-in online.
I don’t know why—they refuse to assign seats until you check in
personally. Thankfully they had room for
us, and then we were trying to get our seats; she couldn’t understand us and we
couldn’t understand her. It was also
very noisy in there. So I ended up on an
aisle seat at the back of the plane, the very last row. Jim ended up in the bulkhead at the front of
the section—he has all the luck...
After we had gone through the
check, they took my empty water bottle.
Another guy asked why they did that because Jim got to keep his. Then we
bought another bottle of water right where you go out to get on the plane. Then they checked our carry-on and took THAT
bottle away too. I was so annoyed! We had just bought the bottle in the same
room!
We were on a Brussels Airline
flight to Liberia that was just under an hour.
After the flight we were last to check in with our passports to get into
Liberia because Jim had to wait for me to catch up to him. The flight was short but so were our tempers…you
have to realize that I write in this journal/letter to vent my frustrations. It helps a lot to make me see the funny side
of things.
It was otherwise a nice flight in
a larger plane than we thought it would be.
When we finally got out of the airport we saw that two couples had come
to pick us up. The Wollenzien’s were
there since they are the humanitarian couple, but the Mission President and his
wife were also there and we wondered why.
It was because another couple was on the same plane that we never
saw. They will be doing MLS. I think they lost some luggage so it took
them forever to get out of the airport.
Luckily we got to leave with Wollenzien’s for our hotel. We are expected to be ready at 8 AM tomorrow so
that Water Aid can convince us to be donors for a water and sanitation project that
they want to do here in Liberia.
Wollenzien’s drove us to the Palm
Spring Resort Hotel somewhere in between the airport and Monrovia proper. They had told us that others were staying at
a better hotel in Monrovia, but we declined, even though they said that the
Palm Spring had deteriorated and was not as good as it used to be; we decided
to stay there anyway because of a significant difference in the price. It will just have to do. But I sorely miss the hotel in Freetown, with
its chefs and wonderful food and American mattress and American bathroom—it was
a lovely place to stay and so pristine—and with the Church discount is was more
than reasonable.
One of our favorite
dishes at the Brookfields Hotel restaurant.
All the food looked pretty, and tasted as good as it looked.
We arrived after 10 PM, so we had
a lot to do to get unpacked and ready for bed so as to be up in time to get
ready in the morning. I am glad we are
here long enough to unpack! We went to
sleep very late.
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