Hospitality of the Nations: August 2012

Hospitality Training

What Venture trip would be complete without some good ole' southern hospitality. Our last day there I held a Hospitality training session for the teens who work at our Guest house. The neat thing about the ministry in Sierra Leone is that so many of the children live on property in our children's homes. It is a bitter-sweet thing. Their stories are sad, because if they live in full time care it means they lost their families; many due to the war. The redemption is that God has placed them into these loving homes where they have new families and a place to belong. They are growing up happy and healthy. About ten or so of the teens from these homes work in our guest house in Hospitality roles. They cook, clean and serve the teams. They are doing a fantastic job! Our training sessions consisted of Food Safety and Sanitation, Food Prep and Etiquette, and Housekeeping. I was a bit anxious leading up to the training, because how interested can teenagers really be in this type of thing? It was great though! They all paid close attention, answered the follow up questions correctly, and asked questions of their own. I only wish I could have done the training earlier in the week to see how they did with all the new information.

Teens working around the guest house

Around the guest house

The wonderful people who supported this trip made it possible. You loved children, taught them arts and crafts, gave them fun and games, shared stories of the love of God, taught them valuable life skills. Venture teams cannot exist without the generous people who give of themselves through finances, prayer, and anything else to make it happen. Look what you did! So many lives have been affected. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed hearing about our time in the Dominican and Sierra Leone. We enjoyed being there. :)

Waynes World 2 meets Sierra Leone

My favorite movie is Waynes World 2. The first one is good, don't get me wrong. The second one is just so funny, though. One of my favorite lines is when Wayne is explaining his idea for Waynestock, a music festival. He is asked "Who's going to be there?" So Wayne and Garth, scrambling to make up an answer, look around the room at band posters and use their names.

"Aerosmith and Pearl Jam"
"Who else"
"Me and Wayne"
"and?"
"and... Van Halen"
"Yeah, who else?"
".. and old man fashioning a kayak out of a log..? no! no! I mean Rip Taylor!"

If you've seen it, you are laughing right now. One of our last days in Sierra Leone we were taken to a village called Mokpangumba, and there is when we saw an old man, actually fashioning a kayak out of a log. I made the joke, but I don't think anyone there got it. So now I am sharing with you.

Wayne's World

Sierra Leone

To get to Mokpangumba we had to walk about an hour and a half through the jungle. Single file, we followed a skinny path through streams, lines of army ants, and bush. After the walk, we had to take a canoe ride across a river to finally reach our destination. Alternative name for our destination? The best behavied COTN children I have ever seen! The children in our program are all pretty well behavied. We have great teachers and principals instilling the right values in them - but wow! These kids are fantastic. We were there in the summer, so they all walked into school in their cute school uniforms to put on this sweet welcome presentation for us. They introduced themselves, quoted bible verses, nursery rhymes, showed us how they can do the Engligh alphabet forward and backward. It was so incredibly nice, and all of this was just to spend an hour of time with us. Due to how far away the village was, we only had about an hour to spend with them and they made it such a huge priority. Another awesome thing was that one of our team members got to meet his sponsor child for the first time. I love when that happens. I have put pictures from our Makpangumba experience below.

A special thanks to Ethan Kalebaugh for sharing the majority of these Sierra Leone photos. All of the ones that look professional and awesome are Ethan's work.

Youth camp in Sierra Leone is apparently like Harry Potter

Everyone is divided into Houses, and you do days of competition to see which house will win it all. This youth camp consistested of four house: The Green House, The Blue house, the Yellow House and the Red House. Spoiler alert: I was in the Red House and we came in dead last. The events are organized by someone they call the Eegway. An Eegway is a cross between an M.C. and a god. Weird, right? So the Eegway runs the whole camp, and awards points to teams for the competitions and just for whatever they feel like. On top of that, in an attempt to get extra points, the teams will continually run up to the Eegway and bow down chanting "Eegway, Eegway" as they praise them. Well, guess who got to be the Eegway. I'll give you a clue - they called him "Cheezgway."

Cheezgway was accompanied by seasoned Sierra Leone Venture participant Tim Dikun, our second Eegway. Cheez has since told a number of people that this was his favorite project he's done on a Venture trip. He claims it is because he loves youth camps. I think its because he loved hundreds of people bowing down to him.

The purpose of camp was to share the love and teachings of Jesus Christ with the teenagers. Many of them live in the children's homes on property. Others walked for miles from other villages to join. We heard sermons from Uncle Mark Drennan each morning, and from our very own team members in the afternoon. There were skits to act out the bible verses, and as mentioned before - lots of competitions. Don't worry, we have video coming of all this stuff.

Now enjoy the pictures from youth camp.