Digging stage 1 complete!

A quick update on the church building...

Stage 1 of the foundation digging process is now complete and the shape of the church can be seen! :-)



There's a small entrance hall at the front with storage rooms on each side. The small room completely on the left will be for crying babies and the small room completely on the right will be the sound control room.

There will be a baptistery in the middle at the far end of the church, with preparation rooms on each side.

Please keep this project and the workers in your prayers!

Do it anyway

This is a poem we received recently from Marianne Hollister at the AFM office. It came at a very apt time! Hope you are as encouraged by it as I was...

Do it anyway

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere, people may cheat you;
Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give your best anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

(Kent Keith)

Happy Sabbath to you all :-)

Looks like we've been living in miserable land!

Etienne found this little article on BBC news today: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32443396

It seems Bénin is a miserable place!

To be fair, the people moan about as much as the British. The weather is never right: either too hot or too cold. The utilities are unreliable (in the UK we moan about the cost of utilities instead). Nobody ever has enough money...

It's a bit of a home from home!!

Despite all the moaning, I wouldn't say Bénin is a terribly unhappy place. People are laughing and joking and gladly helping each other out all the time.

Happiness polls are funny things...

"Avion!"

We're currently at home: I'm preparing for a Bible study tonight with Pastor Raoul's neighbour and Etienne's doing some calculations to work out how much cement and iron we need to buy for the next stage of the building.

Outside, there are small children running up and down the street shouting "Avion! Avion! Avion!" The faint buzz of a helicopter can be heard...

It's funny how unremarkable a plane or helicopter sounds to us, and yet here, the sight of something flying around high in the sky is cause for excitement. Such occurances are so rare that the kids don't know the difference between planes and helicopters !

Sunday is election day here so the President, Dr Yayi Boni, has flown in to drum up some more support for his party. There is a mass of people, including many students, gathering in the stadium near CEG1 to hear his words. People here love their politics!!

Water?

So yesterday was the third day without water... That makes life somewhat smelly considering the temperatures here. Wet wipe washes only go so far in terms of sweat and grime removal...
Fortunately, the lack of water isn't currently holding up the building project and the workers continue to dig their trenches.





Now Etienne has the unenviable task of negotiating the labour costs with the workers... Rather him than me! Please pray that God will give him the wisdom to handle this situation, well, wisely.

Oh, and yesterday evening, we had the pleasure of water at the Badé home for about an hour!



We made the most of the opportunity to fill up all of our water bottles, even if it was nearly 11pm!

God is faithful!

What a wonderful surprise we had when we arrived at church this evening...



The smiling face of Prospère was there!!

We've been praying for several months that God will work a miracle and allow him to finish work in time to come to church.

Our God is faithful!

Thank you all for your prayers! Happy Sabbath :-D

Interactive map of Kandi

I've used PowerPoint to create an interactive map of Kandi. It's not amazing but it will give you some idea of where we live and the places we frequent... Click on the link below to download the file:

Map of Kandi

Since everything is so temporary here, the map is already out of date! We have just moved to a new (third) football pitch for our Sunday games and Frère Parfait moved house on Wednesday! Never mind...

Enjoy exploring!

Ground-breaking!

We just went to visit the building site and a few grubby guys were hard at work, throwing their pick-axes at the ground, shovelling rubble out of the trenches and flinging it over their shoulders...









At least most of them were busy working. One guy was refusing to work and moaning about something or other. Etienne thought he was saying to Papa Antoine that he wanted his lunch bought for him... I wonder how long he'll last on the project...

It's very exciting to see how things are moving forward. The next step is to buy all the iron that will be needed to create the foundations and pillars and posts. Antoine and Etienne have already started calculating what they'll need...



I get the impression I won't be seeing much of my husband over the next couple of months!!! Oh well, at least it can help us prepare mentally for any home extensions we might do in the future!

Let the build begin!

After many weeks of talking and planning, the footprint of the foundations for the new church building have been marked out!





The digging should be starting tomorrow. Exciting times!!! :-D

(Sorry for the lack of blog updates recently... Will try to rectify the situation soon!)

Two years ago...

...On a cold and slightly snowy April fool's day, I was walking down the aisle to marry the most wonderful Frenchman in the world, surrounded by so many lovely friends and family!!

And now we're in a totally different country, with temperatures of over 30 degrees every day of the year, and we haven't seen friends or family for over 7 months...!

We thank the Lord that we have each other (and the Internet)!!! :-D

And we also thank Him for the way He has blessed our relationship over the last two years, helping us learn to live with each other despite some differences in living habits (Etienne and his 'staging' of clothes, me and my inability to get out of bed in the morning!) and helping us learn to support and serve each other in sickness and in health (and there's been a lot of sickness over the last 7 months!)...

Time to celebrate!



(The unidentifiable packet on the right is none other than very dark Lindt chocolate, yum yum!)
Thank you all for your friendship and love and support of our marriage! :-)

Have a wonderful April fool's day!!

PS We just asked Elmire if people do any April fools here... Apparently people pretend that their parents have died. Nice... I'm our European pranks are much less sadistic!