Today was a good day. Actually, this weekend was a good weekend. The fact that I hardly did any work probably helped, although I did spend a fair amount of time getting the car sorted. At least a friend did most of the work and we had fun chatting while getting the job done.
Saturday afternoon I went to a bridal shower for a friend who is traveling home to get married. It was good fun and it was a special time with some long-term friends here. Fortunately it wasn’t a goodbye since she will come back with her husband-to-be in January. Yay.
Sunday school today was amazing. For the first time we split the children into three classes: 2-5 years, 6-10 years and above 10 years. Georgiana and I will be teaching the 6-10 years olds and I have to say, what a brilliant class. I taught them for the first time today and I have to say it was very pleasant teaching a group of children that listened and joined in. Up until now I taught the 2-8 year olds, and that was just too big of an age difference. The small children rarely sat still throughout the class, and every 5 minutes another child was asking to be excused to go pee or get a drink of water. It was nice not to have so many distractions today! We are a bit further away from the church, which means less noise and distractions, and we meet on a big soccer field, which means more space to play! I led them around the field with their eyes closed as we made our way through an obstacle course of chairs. We then had an interactive talk about trusting God and others. It was great. We then did a craft and seeing as we had no idea how the service was progressing, we ended up playing games until we realized people were walking up the road meaning church was out. The kids taught me how to play a Sierra Leonean game called ‘Basket’ which involved quite a lot of jumping. I might need to alter my church attire when teaching Sunday school! Anyway, I am excited about this new class and the potential to teach these children. Plus I think we’ll have a lot of fun too.
After church I walked to a junction about 20 minutes away and met up with a friend and taxi driver Farah. His taxi is in the garage, but he said he’d walk with me up to the next junction where I had arranged to meet Alusine, the Welbodi driver. So, Farah, his son Michael and I trekked up the hill and met up with Alusine about 10 minutes later. We then continued with the 4 of us for another 20 minutes or so down a rocky road to Alusine’s house, a pan body. Much to my surprise, Alusine’s son Momoh ran up to me when I arrived. I was surprised because up until today he had been afraid of me! Maybe the fact that he knew I was bringing him a little toy car helped. It was fun to spend some time with them. I even drank some ‘atya’, which is actually green Chinese gunpowder tea with quite a bit of sugar added to it. I hear that some people even add marijuana to it but was assured this tea had no additives! After another two hours of sitting and chatting about Islam, gardening, and school for the children, etc, it was time to set out. We ended up climbing the hill up to SS Camp, which was a good 20 minutes climb up a rocky path. This is a walk that Alusine makes every morning in order to get a taxi to meet us in Wilberforce where the car is parked. After reaching the top, I said farewell and hopped in a taxi down to Wilberforce.
After a few hours at home, I again got in a taxi and headed to Aberdeen for the monthly international service. It was a nice service followed by a good potluck dinner. And now, it’s 10 pm and I am ready for bed. I have to be up at 6:20 am.
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