Four days to go…

Today is our last Friday in Congo. We are driving away from the Elikya Center at around 4:30 AM next Wednesday morning. We will arrive in Bangui that evening, spend the night and leave late the following night. We land first in Paris for a 5-hour layover then fly to Copenhagen to catch our connecting flight to Chicago. We should arrive in O'Hare at around 5:30 PM on Friday.

All four of us here are excited about our return to the US. We look forward to spending time with friends and family and also to sharing about the Elikya Center and the work that is happening here in Congo. We are looking forward to the little things too- 2% milk, orange juice, being able to go grocery shopping, being able to speak English, enjoying the freedom that comes with having a car and highways at our disposal, etc.

Learning Lingala has been a constant drain on the brain, as learning any language is. We are encouraged by the progress we've made while at the same time realizing that when we return next year it will be much the same at first: slow, steady, not without effort and infinitely rewarding.

Our last week here has been a busy one. On Monday we were at the house of the President of CECU (Congolese Free Church) for lunch. On Tuesday we got pineapple plants, plantain and banana trees for planting, burned the stubble in our garden and went to Mama Susa's (she works with the widows as a teacher) for lunch. On Wednesday we were back at the mission as Nicole (the girls' Lingala teacher) left for university in Kinshasa. We were then at the house of Mama Francoise (accountant for Global Fingerprints, a child sponsorship program administered by CECU). On Thursday we made the 2 ½ hour trip to Bwamanda and back for a look at the work of CDI (Centre de Développement Intégral),which does a great deal of agricultural, water resources and infrastructure development in the region. Today we were at the house of Guylain (our other Lingala teacher) for his birthday celebration. With all the walking we did it turns into a nearly all day affair. Tomorrow we are planting our garden. On Sunday we are singing a song and giving our testimonies in Lingala in the church service. That brings us back to Monday and we begin packing and preparing for the long trip home.

Once we arrive in the US we will have about four days respite before we are to attend PT Live in Minneapolis. This is something akin to a final training before our mission term begins. We will be attending with several other ReachGlobal missionaries in their final months before departure for their respective fields.