Beginning of our Trip- Posted by Amy

Sorry it has taken awhile to get any posts up about our trip. We all had a great time and loved hanging out with Christie. The first few days after we got to Bo, we just relaxed and took some time to get to know the kids and staff at JCC and see how things work in Sierra Leone.
Here is mom and me with a few kids they day we got there. They were all so welcoming

Living in Sierra Leone is like being on a long camping trip. There is no electricity or running water, we were able to turn a generator on a couple times for some light though which was nice. The kids were still in school for the first few days we were there. They would go to school until about 1pm or 2pm so that was our time to go into town and see what Bo was like, cook some food, wash dishes and get some laundry done. Of course when they kids were finished with school they were more than willing to help us with any of those.

Every school day all the kids line up according to grade and have devotions and sing their national anthem, then they start class. The JCC school is open to kids outside the orphanage also.

Willie, the bus driver, goes out into town to pick up students. They fit as many kids on that bus as possible and Willie has to go out 2 times before school and after school so he can pick up and drop off everyone.

All of the kids just loved grandma!

Every morning at 8:30 we went to staff devotions. It was a great time to sing songs and worship God with everyone that works at JCC. Then after devotions everyone would go about their jobs and we were able to walk around and visit with them and see what they do.

One of the projects we helped out with at JCC was painting one of the houses. They are breaking the big building into 3 different houses so there is more of a family feel to the orphanage. They will have 5 houses in all, each house with 1 house mom and about 10 kids and a house auntie will come in every day to help take care of the kids. They already have 2 houses finished and it seems to be working great. The house we painted was the yellow house, my mom's favorite color. It was a fun time and we really enjoyed spending that time with the carpenters and getting to know them better.

This is the kitchen for the big house still, in time each house will have their own kitchen.

Here we are helping Auntie Fatty and Jenae cut potato leaf, they make it look alot easier than it is. Small Christie and Jeffta are also helping us. Potato leaf is a sauce they make to put on rice.

I don't know how they go so fast and don't cut their hands but they are good. Christie and I took our time and did not cut ourselve but we did shave a little skin off our hands.

Sometimes we ate what everyone else was eating and sometimes we decided to do our own cooking. Christie has really figured things out there. She has a small coal pot that works great for cooking everything.

Auntie Kudie is washing dishes, it wasn't too bad hand washing all of our dishes and letting them sit out to dry on the jeep but I think we are all thankful we have dishwashers.

Everynight things are pretty relaxed so we were able to just hang out with the kids. This was one of my favorite times. They are all so much fun.

Christie doing some more cooking with Lorie and grams helping. She has decided she might need the carpenters to make her ledge a little wider so it is easier to cook, we did manage to fit everything we needed on that little ledge though.

There were a few times when Christie and I did the cooking so mom, grams and Lorie washed the dishes.

Around 8:30 at night there is evening prayer/devotions which is lead by the kids. It is a lot of fun to go worship with them and hear the lesson one of the kids has prepared. Then they take prayer requests and pray out loud at the same time. There really is nothing like it, it is amazing to hear. They pray for their sponsors and our families back here and each other its just amazing.

They are all pretty helpfull at JCC so here are some of the older girls helping Lorie with our laundry.

We did a lot of traveling so we were not at JCC as much as we would have liked but we really enjoyed the time we had there and each time we came back from a different trip they all came running to the jeep to greet us. We all felt very loved and cared for.