Back Here in City-J

We've been back in City-J for now about two and a half weeks. Things have begun to wind down as we only have less than two weeks left here and one more week of debriefing in Perth. We're all relieved to be back, for the most part. I think that a few of my team mates are dealing with the difficulty of our setting: the culture, the environment, and the food.

I, myself, am happy to be back here. Every Monday we have our free day which normally we use to go to one of the large local malls. You can't imagine how we look forward to our free days. The guys usually get together and eat all the junk food we can get: A&W, crepe-ice cream cones, donuts, nachos and candy at the movie theaters. Our day usually looks like this: get lunch and ice cream, shop, spend an hour or so in the local arcade, see a movie (these theaters are nice and cheap. only $2 a ticket), get dinner and relax back at home for the rest of the evening.

We also have our new house to look forward to. As some of you may have read we were first living in an apartment inside a auto repair shop. Since we came back from Ethiopia, we now live in a two-story house in a gated community (and when I say gated I mean that there's just a large gate that locks in front of our neighborhood). The house is fairly nice and big compared to the tiny apartment we were first in. So, it's been a huge blessing to us. The only problem is that the taxi drivers have been having a hard time finding it and we've run into a couple of times where we've spent the better part of an hour trying to get to our new home.

We also have added one member to our team, Clara from Germany. Clara and I were good friends during our school and I speak to her in German sometimes. She'll be staying with us until we leave.

Most of our ministry has been going to churches, preaching, giving testimonies and performing our drama. We've also had the opportunity to teach English at a local prison here. I explained months ago that this opportunity was totally provided by God. We're on such good terms with our contact who works in the prison that he just invited us to his wedding this Sunday.