Nervous...Excited...Jittery...Ack

Crazy title is due to the fact that I am not sure what I am feeling right now.  We are in Conakry, Guinea.  We are finally in West Africa, and right now I am still on the ship.  The boys are ready to get off and explore.  Oh how I wish I had the spirit and lack of fear that comes so easily to my three boys.  I am glad they are here for many reasons, but right now I know that they will push us to get out and be a part of this country.

Mark and I have been many places in this amazing world God created, but most of the time it was just him, just me, or just us.  The only other time I have been somewhere questionable with my boys was a trip to Egypt in 2008.  I can laugh about that trip now because we are no longer there, and we are all still alive.  I have fears.  I fear they will eat bad food and get sick.   I fear that they will play in dirty water and get cholera.  I fear they will get lost.  I know these fears do not come from God.  So I ask that you come along side me and pray that I will be able to cast these fears aside and live abundantly for our Lord.  A few prayers that these things won't happen couldn't hurt either.

So my verse for today is Philippians 4:8, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.

Some of the amazing, lovely, excellent and praiseworthy things that have happened in the last week are:

Jacob had two Gold Star days in  row at school...we discovered that he didn't realize getting his name on the board was a bad thing.  He is now setting his goal at not getting his name on the board.  Yea Jacob!

We had an amazing Thursday evening.  The kids were great during Community Meeting and there was ice cream afterwards.  Yea for ice cream!

I was able to get two eggs on Friday, and that let me make brownies with the boys after school.  We read in the crew kitchen while we baked, and learned about robotic insects.  We were able to download Cars II (it took 7 hours) and we had three lovely children join our three awesome children for family movie night.  We even had popcorn!

Saturday morning it was raining so we pushed back our outing and had coffee and homemade banana bread with our great neighbor Lisa.  The boys played with her 2 girls, Zodie and Else, and two more boys joined in the fun.  It was an awesome living in community morning.  The rain took a break, and we were able to make it off the ship.  Six adults and five children ventured out into Conakry. On our short walk we found the dental clinic where Mark will be working.  The security guard, Mome', took us around the dental clinic, and by the time we were finished with our tour we had about 15 Africans who had joined our tour.  We chatted as best we could in our broken french, and their pretty good English.  The people are very excited about us being here.  They are ready for us to get to work.

We also met a lovely man, Abdoula, who spoke excellent English, and wanted to be our personal boat driver.  He wouldn't let us move on until we took down his name and phone number.  There are some islands that we are hoping to visit, and he said he would be able to take us there.  We aren't that adventurous yet. 

All and all it was a wonderful morning, and a good first outing into West Africa.