Today, our most ‘urgent’ pray request is that we have no water! There was a main waterline break in our supply from the city, and our water tower/well which we use as a backup is dry because of the dry season. We are told that ‘specialists’ are coming from Abidjan (4 hours south) to fix it and water should be restored sometime later today – but we will be very pleasantly surprised if this happens. Needless to say, this creates some hardships as well as creating health problems. In the states, school would be canceled – we don’t have that option. And there is nowhere around with ‘safe’ water…
As mentioned last week, we are presently preparing to take about 48 staff and students to a town called Toulepleu which is located on the Cote d’Ivoire/Liberia border. We have a busy schedule ahead of us, but God has blessed us as a school and we are looking forward to passing on that blessing (which started with you) to other schools which have far less than we do .We are going to be building as well as doing evangelism. This will be a very unusual outreach weekend for us because we will be able to minister in English. Our focus will be the Liberian refugees in this area. There are at least 5000 in the Toulepleu area. There are also two Liberian refugee schools who are members of ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International). We have already sent some text books to these schools. This weekend we are taking up some more books and several computers and we will roof a number of classrooms at the Christ the King School. Right now most of their classrooms have thatch roofs and they have to cancel school when it rains as the roofs leak badly. Since this school is located in the rain forest region of Cote d’Ivoire and the rainy season is approaching, this project will be a big blessing to them.
There is a lot of planning that has to go into this weekend since we will all be camping and we will not have any missionaries in the area to get everything ready like we did at Sikasso. Four staff men will be going up today to get things ready for the majority of the group that will be leaving Friday morning at 5:00 to make the long trip. We will be taking vans and four wheel drive vehicles. There are about 60 kilometers of dirt road so please pray that our travels will be safe and that we will not get stuck.
Bob and I will be deviating from the weekend schedule slightly to visit with Jim and Rosie Johnson, missionaries supported by our home church in a little village about 1 1/2 hours east of Toulepleu. We hope to attend Sunday morning services in their village. We covet your prayers for this weekend.