Finished Liberia Photos

I was able to finish some of the photos I took on my trip to Liberia, and they are now on Flickr. I'll slowly move them over to Dubland after I finish some maintenance issue with the site. In the meantime enjoy these photos. Tonight I am supposed to meet with the Liberia team to share our photos and video. More to come!

Say What??

Sorry for the lack of posts of late but the last two weeks have been quite a roller coaster. I found out last Tuesday, only three days after getting home from Liberia that my hours and pay were being cut in half effective April 1st due to slow business. And potentially I could be let go altogether if work doesn't pick up in the next couple of months. Quite a jolt! Especially with a baby on the way and Heidi going to part-time work afterwards. Thankfully my boss did give me a sizable bonus to help offset the reduced pay but that only goes so far.

I have gone through the whole gamut of emotions. Multitudes of questions are creeping in my mind. Can I make my mortgage payment? Will be able to find a comparable job? You get the picture. On top of that I have been spending most my days of late rapidly working on the new web site for my work during the day, and my own site/resume in the evenings as well. So much to do in what seems to be very little time. I think the whole situation has really worn me out.

But then I remember how I have been through far worse (maybe not financially) and God didn't abandon me then. And part of me is eager to see where He leads me. Heidi and I are doing some serious praying and searching to see where we go now.

So it might be awhile longer before I can post my Liberia pictures and some of my thoughts and stories from the trip. But I do intend to post them.

Back Home

Well I am back in the States after a very taxing trip back. We left the ABC campus Thursday morning and didn't reach home til Saturday night. We did spent most of Friday seeing the sights in Monrovia which was quite fascinating and sobering. Then we took off from Monrovia around 9:30 PM and landing in Brussels around 4AM. Then a seven hour layover there, followed by flight to DC, and finally our last connecting flight to LA which touched down just before 7PM.

In the midst of the mental haze I can say for sure it was a great and enriching trip. One, I am sure, I remember the rest of my life. It was so rewarding to see the library finished and seeing the beaming smile on Grandpa's (Verl's) face as the library was getting dedicated was great to see. I know it was a very satisfying and emotional trip for him. And to top it off he was made a chief of the county by the ABC professors (more on that in a later blog entry).


It was quite humbling and eye-opening to see what the Liberians have gone through and are still going through as a result of the 20 years of civil war. Seeing how excited the students, and professors were to have books to read and a place to read, you realize how much we as Americans take for granted. Most of the current students at ABC have had little to no access to books up to now. For the whole two weeks we had students and workers saying, "Thank you" as we passed.


I will post more later this week as get more time to work through my thoughts and reflections on the trip and a little more coherent. With more photos and hopefully video in the near future.

Finishing Touches

Well believe it or not we are almost done with the library. We are putting in the last shelves and books, and I am double-checking all the network lines to make sure they work. After that we clean up and make everything look good. So hard to believe we are almost done. And with time to spare. Not a whole lot,we leave Thursday morning, but it's nice not to have to hurry things through.

As for the lost computers, it looks like the school lost 31 computers. Thankfully we have 18 to help absorb some of that loss. Still working on recovering some of the data on a few of the key computers.

Tomorrow I should have photos to post of the finished library. Back to work.

Out Exploring

This entry was supposed to go out Saturday, but time just slipped away.



Moving past the computer fiasco (looks like about 20 or so are gone) we finally went out and explored the area a bit. Joni, our Samaritan's Purse leader, took us out to see a few sights in Yekepa.

We first stopped at a nearby orphanage. Man, talk about humbling, seeing what little these kids had. The orphanage was a collection of all the orphans in the county, from toddler age to 16 years old. As soon as we got out of the car the kids instantly ran up and started shaking our hands and hugging us. They then took us on a tour of their facilities, including a newly built living area, the local school building, and the church where they worship. Our hearts break seeing these kids bantering for our attention. The most heartbreaking was the older kids who, you could tell, don't get the attention that the younger kids get from visitors. We could almost see the tension in their eyes how they so wanted love and affection, but at the same time were so guarded, as though they'd been hardened over all the years in the orphanage.



Afterwards, we went to a plot of land the contractor who had helped with the rebuilding of ABC last year had purchased for all the workers that had worked with him. He bought it with the expectation that the workers would use the skills they had learned working on ABC to build their own little town, start their own shops, and start practicing their trades. Pretty amazing. I never met the guy but everyone here has high praise for him.

We then went to an abandoned train yard that the mining company had used before the civil war. Man it was incredible. I could have spent a month there taking pictures. It was so surreal seeing all those locomotives stripped down and abandoned. I guess they were all only a year old when the civil war broke out. Once I get back I will have a whole series of shots from this place, I am sure.