First Day in Sierra Leone

I had a great night’s sleep at the hotel. Where we are staying there are multiple buildings of rooms. Each of us has our own room and bathroom. I was honestly blown away with the accommodations. As I mentioned to my wife, I was humbled by the accommodations compared to living conditions we passed by on our drive to the hotel the previous evening.

After breakfast, which included eggs, toast, fruit, and a hotdog, we loaded up in the World Hope vehicles on our way to Kethirie for church.

It was so amazing to experience worship with the people of Kathirie and listen to the pastor and children’s ministry teacher give messages. What impacted my the most was seeing the people of Kathirie giving offerings for not only the church in general but to both a building fund and missions. Here are a group of people that have so little and yet even they are giving out of what God has blessed them with. It saddens me that we Americans spend money on so many things but fall short with the impact we could be making in the lives of those in need. We could be doing infinitely more with what we have to share the Good News and show love to our world.

I was asked to prepare a message to share during the service. I was blessed that God brought the National Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church in Sierra Leone to the service and he himself was my translator.

After the service we got to hang out with some of the kids and see the well that Daybreak helped put it. We all had an amazing time in Kathirie and can’t wait to go back on Wednesday to do the kids day camp.

After returning to the hotel we had some downtime to hang out as well as had a late lunch provided by the hotel. They prepared a very good meal that included baked chicken and spicy rice with vegetables.

We’ll be heading out to some other villages tomorrow that we are supporting with clean water through all the money the Hope Water Team raised last year.

Please pray for our team, especially Curtis as he was not feeling well this afternoon and took some time to rest. He felt like he had signs of either heat exhaustion or dehydration.