Incoming!!!

If you've ever talked with me on Skype, or plan to in the future, there is a good chance that our conversation has been & will continue to be interrupted by the loud noise of an airplane landing at the nearby Dakar airport. I found out pretty quickly my first night here in Dakar that the airplanes fly VERY close to the house as they approach the landing strip. I've been wanting to take a video of this so that you all can see just how close these planes are to my house. Unfortunately, my little digital camera doesn't have the capability to capture the VERY LOUD sound these planes make as they pass overhead, but if you want to Skype sometime, I'm sure you'll find out....

Some of My Favorite Things

In the spirit of Thanksgiving this week, I'm thanking God for each one of these...

Justin

Leah

Madox

(w/ a soft pretzel stuffed in his mouth!)

Mikayla

and.... Grace (of course!)

I miss them all so much!

Pictures from my trip to Europe... finally!

Last month Sheri & I spent two weeks in Europe. Our first day of travel on our way to Geneva we had an 11 hour layover in Lisbon, Portugal. Amazingly, I actually have friends in Portugal, so we got to see them and didn't have to spend all day in the airport, which was a huge blessing! I met Steve & Julie at my language acquisition training in Colorado this past May. They are in Portugal doing their language training to learn Portuguese before they move on to another part of Africa themselves. Anyway, it was truly a picture of God's Sovereignty & Providence because they were able to meet us at the airport and then took us downtown so we could actually experience & see some of Lisbon. So cool!

After our long layover, we were on our way to spending the 1st week in France. We had a blast driving around the eastern part of France that lies right along the border of Switzerland. A missionary couple who lives in a quaint town there invited us to come for a week and visit this beautiful part of the world. Sheri & I had such a great time exploring on our own, driving along Lake Geneva, and just simply relishing the fact that we got to see France in the fall - it was beautiful!

The 2nd week we spent in a small town at the top of the Alps in Switzerland to attend CrossWorld's All Europe Conference. Now I know you're probably wondering why we were attending the All Europe Conference since Senegal is very obviously NOT in Europe. Well, since we have yet to coordinate an All Africa Conference, we were blessed to be invited to share in this conference... and who would deny this opportunity... especially since it was in Switzerland! The mountains were absolutely breath-taking and there was many a time that I found myself walking around just completely amazed at the fact that I was in Switzerland! It was also so great to be able to meet so many wonderful people who have such big hearts to serve God. They were all so inspiring and truly encouraging... especially for me, since I'm just starting out. What a gift & a blessing!! Hope you enjoy my pictures.

Make a Smilebox photobook

No Running Water

I just wanted to post some pictures to give you an idea of what we had to do those couple of days when our water reserve decided to temporarily cease replenishing itself with fresh water...

First, we were filling these 10 liter jugs and carrying them up 3 flights of stairs to the roof to fill the tank over and over again...

then, Sheri, being the bright girl she is, figured out a way so that we didn't have to keep going all the way down there to fill up the water jugs

and then back up these stairs to the roof

...introducing Mighty Woman!...

Needless to say, you can imagine how delighted we both were when we saw the water tank full of water once again after 5 days!