After the longest day/s of my life I finally made it to Africa! Man, those flights are hard! We arrived at the Lungi Airport in Sierra Leone and hour early - but being Africa...our transport was 2 hours late. We were thrown into the African atmosphere very quickly and drove through the city at night. Can you believe I fell asleep on the poda poda (travel van with benches)? This is VERY hard to do in Africa - the roads here are....well, I can see why this country is the second from the bottom on the Human development scale and still recovering from war. You can see the signs of war every where and the poverty is on a level all it's own.
We are staying in an amazingly wonderful place (for Sierra Leone). Yams Farm is located in a small village outside of Sierra Leone. We have electricity from 7 pm - 7 am and there are ceiling fans, running water (but we can't brush our teeth with it), showers and toilets. I couldn't ask for more.
So far I have been to the beach, church, market place, and working on construction.
I hurt myself on Tuesday at the work site. Don't worry, I am fine. I was stepping over a large hole from the newly made foundation onto the dirt ground. The ground gave way and I fell halfway into the hole. I scraped my leg and arm and twisted my ankle pretty good. I'm recovery well and have a slight limp.
I am amazed at the friendliness of the people here. I have been told by an elder lady in the village that I am now her daughter and they visit me every day as I work and teach me Krio and how to make their local food. They have shown me their home and I have held their 3 month old baby girl quite often. Remind me to tell you more about this later on.
I love you all! I wish you could be here but I can tell you....it is very hard to see what I have seen. I am exactly where God wants me to be but the amount of poverty, deformities, death, etc I've seen in the last week can be very hard to handle. However, through it all, I am doing extremely well.
Hi- This is Christina (Nicole's sister) updating you on behalf of Nicole. I send out Nicole's newsletter and will, from time to time, update her blog and supporters for her. If you have questions, feel free to contact me at christina.byrd@gmail.com.
My mom and I got a surprise call from Nicole this afternoon. She was on the ship for a few hours tonight for their ship community church service. She will be back in a week and will be able to connect online more and hopefully upload a few pictures for us all to see. During the few minuets on the satellite connection there was noise everywhere around her. It must have been the buzz of everyone on the ship talking to friends and connecting. She was excited to tell us her stories and how she was doing. She also talked about doing dental screenings yesterday that led into using her newly found crowd control skills with four unhappy men and other issues that came up. Other highlights of our conversation: enjoying cold showers for the first time in her life, the frustration of the language barrier, squatty potties with a twisted ankle, 100% humidity, the children shy away from her skin color but are facinated by her hair color, the expeince of being socially checked for lice in her hair and many other things.
This was the short update she was able to send to me via facebook. Be looking for her update in a week or two with fascinating God stories. Keep praying for her boldness to share the gospel through love and service, for the healing of her injuries and continued health in the extreme conditions, and God's work through her as she finishes up the second half of her field service!
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