Day 4 in Liberia

 

               Today was a special day celebrating the orphans. Our plan for the day was to work construction for 3 hours in the morning, eat lunch, and then have an orphan celebration program. The morning construction started off with more of the same. We again hauled sand across campus with bags on our heads. We also started hauling rocks, the same distance, in the wheelbarrows. For a good hour and a half, we worked hard at hauling these materials in order to mix them for concrete. When we had enough down there, a majority of us started shoveling dirt around the foundation walls the Liberians finished the day before. Others of us started to mix the concrete. We mixed the concrete by first getting a pile of sand and dumping bags of concrete powder on it and mixing the two together. Once that is mixed, we added the rocks and did the same thing. Finally, we added water and the concrete was ready to be poured. This was very hard work mixing concrete and shoveling the huge piles of dirt back around the foundation. Although it was much more strenuous, many of us enjoyed it a lot more because we were working more closely with our Liberian friends. We finished up when all the concrete was poured and went to lunch covered in sand, dirt, and wet concrete.

               After lunch, we had the orphan celebration. The kids organized a whole program for us and most of it involved worshiping the Lord. It was amazing to see these kids, ages ranging from 3-17, pour their heart out in worship. They had a lot of fun getting us to dance and sing with them. We then got to feed them a special meal of chicken and fried rice and give them their choice of soda. While the kids there are never starved for food, they rarely get a well-cooked meal like this one. When they finished eating, we began the games. We had multiple games going on in the church with the kids. Many of the young kids preferred musical chairs, while the older kids want to flip a bottle to win a piece of fruit, or a common game that they play where they set up 3 different color bottles and a leader quickly shouts a color and the players have to jump to that color. In the game if you miss jump, you are out. While it was a great time playing games with the kids, we did see glimpses of how hard it is to be an orphan. In the game where they flipped a bottle to win fruit, there was a lot of pushing and shoving and cutting in line. Some kids were fighting for more, and more often than not; it was the younger, little kids that got pushed to the side. It was hard but good for us to see this because we often see the best when we are around the orphans. They are typically so excited to see us that we don’t see them fighting. Until we saw this, we didn’t fully understand how hard it is to be an orphan.

               After we left for the day, we had a few hours to enjoy the beach before going out to eat at Sam’s BQQ. This was a local restaurant that served primarily grilled chicken. They also had a lot of baked goods that the guys enjoyed. It was cool to get off of the resort and experiences different parts of Liberia. After dinner we were blessed to have Pastor Emmanuel and his wife Fatu join our debrief. We heard many stories from him and got to ask him questions. He told us the story of how he met his wife Fatu. He said when he met her, he was not looking for a wife. He was with his friend, and they needed to go see his friend’s sister. When they went inside to see her, he told us he saw a woman sitting, getting her hair done. He could not see her face, but he said he heard a voice telling him, “That is your wife”. Pastor Emmanuel said he went back a week later and told this woman, Fatu, that God told him she would be his wife and asked her to marry her. After a little while Fatu said yes and they have been married ever since. This was a very cool story of listening to God’s voice and being obedient to it. Asking Pastor Emmanuel questions and learning from him was very eye opening. The three biggest things we learned from this discussion were hearing God’s voice, being bold for Christ, and growing in our desire to be with Him. Pastor Emmanuel is a well of wisdom and we felt very grateful that he stayed up 3 hours past his bedtime to come talk to us. One of the core pillars of our football program is Build Men. This trip is unlike anything else we do, especially when it comes to Building Men. The guys that went on the last trip have been proof of that, by the way many of them had a noticeable shifts in their faith walk because of this trip. Already, there is evidence that the same will be true of the guys on this year’s trip.