We Made It!

After four days of traveling we finally arrived in Gemena on Friday night around 10PM. Although we were all very tired (especially after the 7 ½ hour truck ride on the extremely rough Congo roads) we were pleased to get here.

We spent our first full day in Gemena at the Elikya Center and met many new people. We want to do our best to remember all the people we meet, so Sarah is keeping a log of all the names along with descriptions of the people. We are amazed by our new home! The masonry students here at Elikya built a duplex for us and the Larsens. Although we had seen photos, we are still surprised by how nice it is. It has been fully furnished and there is even a gravity-fed toilet in each home. We are taking "bucket showers" as we call them, but we still get clean. And the view from our front porch is fantastic! This place is beautiful.

We have eaten some very tasty food since our arrival, too. We eat rice almost every meal and either chicken or goat. Today we ate an eel-type fish that even Sarah (who hates seafood) liked! Sarah has also had the pleasure of tasting pondu and fuku for the first time. Pondu is very similar to cooked spinach and is quite good. Fuku is rather interesting and won't go into a "favorite food" category…but it is tolerable.

It is a huge blessing to finally be at the Elikya Center after praying and talking about it for about a year. It is great to meet the widows and the orphans who have been living and working here. Please continue to pray for us as we begin our language training on Monday and while we are excited about it, we are also a little intimidated.