1.5 years in Brazzaville....Time Flies!

This May will be the 1.5 year mark in Brazzaville for Nate and I. We still can't believe it! God has been so good to us. He has used this time in Congo to grow many aspects of our lives. The past few months have been busy, productive, and very hot. January to April is the hot season here and it has lived up to its name! We have enjoyed getting to know some new friends in Brazzaville from the UN and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). We have started playing volleyball several times a week. Nate and I are really enjoying this! We frequent Lifoula Sit on the weekends which has a beach vball court, good food, and a small river to swim in. One of my french tutors and friend, Améde, took Nate and I around Brazzaville one Saturday. The whole day we spoke in French! It was great for us and Améde was very patient. He took us to the Brazzaville Zoo (Which was really depressing. I didn't put any pictures because the animals lived in really bad conditions.), a horse ranch, and to place with a great view of the Congo River.
Jim and Patty's church is partnering with the Brazzaville Nazarene church and in January, donated money to help construct a building for the church. Pastor Antoine started the construction at the end of January and things have come a long way in 3 months! The building is up and services are now being held. There are some finishing touches to be done still. The congregation is so excited and proud of their new structure. It is a lot bigger, in a better location (more visible to the main road and away from a garbage dump), and has a cement floor so things won't get muddy when it rains.
Sarah and I have continued to work at the orphanage. We bring the older girls to my house 1 Saturday a month to do a Bible study, a craft, and eat snacks. The younger kids come over on Tuesday evenings for dinner and an activity. We bring the younger kids in groups 8 and just rotate between the boys and girls. It is a good time for us to be able to really focus on them and get to know them better.
Sarah and I are French tutoring 3 times a week together. We both really enjoy learning French and want to study as much as we can while we are living in Congo. I still do not speak great, but I am understanding more and more when I am out and about. I can usually get across what I need, it just isn't pretty! haha
Things at HOPE are going well. Nate is enjoying his job and is happy to have a new director here! It was just him and the operations manager for a few months and they were both getting tired of the extra work load. He spent a week in Belgium last week at a HOPE Methodology conference. It was his first time to visit Europe. They had 3 free days so He, Micah, and Jon went to Bruges, Belgium which is a tourist city known as "The Venice of the North". Nate has some really cool pictures. He will put them up and tell about his trip soon.
While he was gone I spent 4 days in Point Noire which is 2nd largest city in Congo. It is located on the coast and has some pretty beaches. I went with 3 German girlfriends. We had a great time! We took the train on a 15 hour cross country trek. We saw beautiful landscapes the whole way. We went through fields, mountains, and forests. We also passed through villages where people would come up and wave to us. We got to see the city and eat at a really good restaurant. We also walked along the fishing beach where a lot of fisherman from Benin work. We also went to a beautiful beach 30 min north of the city to swim and spend an afternoon.
The HOPE Leadership Summit is coming up in May and we are looking forward to taking a few weeks vacation! We will leave May 12th and spend 3 days in Paris on our way to the conference. I'm so pumped for this! I have already planned out our time and cant wait to see all the sights. We will spend a quick 2 days in Nashville to see some friends and family. Then finish our last week in St. Augustine with my family, Nate's parents, and Miley!
For those that don't know already, I will be pursuing my Master's in Social Work at UNC Chapel Hill starting this August! I am very ready to begin this degree. I want to focus on international social work, especially working with refugees and immigrants. Nate and I will live in the Raleigh-Durham area for 2 years while Im in school. I will move back to the US in August to start school, but Nate will have to stay here in Brazza until November 1st. It isn't ideal and I dread the separation, but we decided it was best for our situation. God has given both of us a peace about this decision and we look forward to this next step! On the other hand, saying goodbye to all of our friends here will be extremely difficult. We have grown so close to the HOPE staff and expat community.
Here are some pictures from the past few months!

The boardwalk to the fisherman's beach. All those white things in the trees are birds!

Fisherman taking out a boat to fish.

Women come down to the beach to buy fresh fish to sell in the market.

Ann, Annikah, and Johanna

The beautiful beach!

Missionary friends who took us up north to the nice beach.

Annikah and Johanna

Took this picture from the train. That is a giant mound of bananas from the village!

Boys playing soccer at my place

My mom gave these cute flowers to make with the girls. They loved them!

Us and our friend Améde

Pastor Antoine preaching Sunday morning in the new building

The new building! Still not finished, but looking good!

Christmas with the Hill's

Nate and I had a wonderful Christmas holiday with Jim and Patty! It really felt like Christmas even though it was 90 degrees. Patty brought stockings and we had presents to open on Christmas morning. I even had a small Christmas tree, nativity, and small strand of blinking lights as decorations! They were here in Brazzaville for 10 action packed days. We did something different everyday! We canoed down the Congo to the the "Mysterious Bluffs" and stopped at an island to have lunch and play botchee ball and a board game. We had numerous meals with good friends, including Chris, Barb, and Ann. We visited a lazy river site that was an hour drive out of the city. We got to see beautiful views of the countryside and Congo river. Patty and I cooked Christmas goodies and Patty cooked some good meals for us full of all the good stuff like chicken, bacon, hot sauce, and a bunch of cheese! We were able to visit 2 orphanages where we played a game with the kids and got to hold precious babies. On Christmas eve we went caroling in the back of Chris' (our friend who works at the US embassy) pick-up truck. We were a spectacle to all the Congolese who were trying to figure out what we were doing. We stopped to sing to the US ambassador, some chinese friends, and other random friends. We took a small canoe ride out to see where the big rapids are on the Congo and got to see Kinshasa right across the river. After that we enjoyed a coke and fanta under a tiki hut on the shore. Patty brought a fun craft for the older girls that Sarah and I work with at the orphanage to do. They made bracelets and iced christmas cookies that Patty prepared. They loved it and ended up being better at making those bracelets than me and Patty were! I took them shopping to 2 crazy Congolese markets and they were troopers! Even in the mud, crazy crowds, and weird smells they kept a smile on their face. We bought "pagnes" (Africa fabric) and visited the tailor to get hand made skirts, pants, and shirts. Jim and Patty were also able to bring money that their home church in Raleigh raised to help the local Nazarene church here build a church. They visited the church one Sunday and went out to the see church plot where the Nazarene church hopes to build a training center in the future. The pastor was so encouraged by their visit and help in creating a long-term partnership between his church and the church in Raleigh. 

I am so blessed to have such wonderful in-laws who would sacrifice a lot of money and time to come see Nate and I in Africa. Nate and I were encouraged and recharged by their visit. Both of Nate and I's parents have been so supportive throughout out entire journey to and in Congo. God has blessed us emmensely. He has give us his presence, a community of friends here in Brazzaville, and a supportive family to sustain us through the ups and downs of living in a developing country. May God continue to use our lives to accomplish his great mission. We pray that everything we do would point people to their creator and savior. To God be all the glory.

Jim had to get a picture with this "African looking" tree!

Making goodies

Swimming in the lazy river....hopefully not contracting a parasite!

Love these kids!

Precious babies!

This little guy loved Jim and his name was Nathan!

Caroling in the truck

Family picture on Christmas Day

keeping our balance on this rocky canoe on the Congo!

My kids. Love them.

Matching African pants!

Ready to ride up the Congo with friends

enjoying a coke by the Congo

Patty with Sarah and I's girls

Playing botchee ball on the island

Checking out the Nazarene church plot

Seeing a HOPE meeting

Spending time with the girls and Barb

Patty cross stitching with her feet in the river

First Annual Client Assembly and Orphanage updates

Well, we did it!! HOPE Congo had it's first Annual Client Assembly this past Friday. This was the first time all the HOPE Clients have had the opportunity to gather and meet one another. HOPE Congo has received many requests from clients for a gathering like this. It took several months to plan and a lot of work! HOPE has around 4,000 clients currently and all were invited. We did not know how many were actually going to come....which was the stressful part. We had to plan for 4,000, but didn't even know if 500 would come. We rented out a large church that could hold 2,000 and then rented plastic chairs and a large screen for outside in case of overflow. In all we had around 2,000 clients attend on Friday! We were so happy that so many decided to come as coming to the assembly would be time away from their business and a loss of income. Precy, our Spiritual Integration Officer, planned the event and did a great job! The choir from the church led worship and Precy preached. The Regional Director, Rodger Morgan, was here and gave a talk about the vision of HOPE and what the future holds. At the end we gave out awards for different accomplishments like most savings, longest active client, etc. The clients were hilarious. Many of them danced their way to the stage to received their award. Then we gave out sandwiches and juice bottles at the end. They seemed to really enjoy the assembly. All in all it was a good and tiring day! Here are some pictures from the Assembly.

The stage and choir at the church.

Nate and Clement, the HOPE accountant.

Precy, the Spiritual Integration Officer

A church full of HOPE Clients. (The roof is currently being repaired. It was damaged during the explosions in March.)

Sarah and I (Allie) took a group of young girls from an orphanage to lunch at La Mandarine, a restaurant near our house. They were so excited to go as we have been mainly working with the older girls in the orphanage. They either got pizza or a hamburger and little to go cakes at the end. We brought them back to my apartment and ate our cake and hung out. We asked them all kinds of questions and were just overwhelmed by how previous these little girls are! We hope to do a small bible study with this age as well in the coming months. They are 9-12 years old and are quickly growing up! I remember this was the age I started having a lot of questions about my body, growing up, and boys. It breaks my hear to think they don't have mama's to talk with them about these things, to show them how to do their hair, paint their nails, and do fun girly stuff with them. Sarah and I hope to be surrogate big sisters to them throughout the next year. Please be praying for the continued health and development of these beautiful girls!

Dorcas, me, and Grace

Swinging at SIL (my compound)

Sweet little girls.

Hanging out at my place and eating cake.

This past Saturday was the last Saturday of our 8 week mentor program with the teenage girls at the orphanage. If you haven't read my previous blog, each Saturday we have 8 girls over to our houses to have a bible study, eat snacks, and do a fun activity. We hoped to create friendships with these girls and create an atmosphere where they felt safe to talk about their lives. Over the past 2 months they have certainly opened up to us and are now very comfortable to ask us anything (sometime a little too comfortable haha). They start school today and we decided during the school year we would get together just 1 Saturday a month. They were sad, but understand. We told them we would still get together at different times as well. Sarah ordered the Twilight movies recently and was able to get the French version! We are going to have a Twilight girls night soon! :) Here are some recent pictures from one of our Saturdays. 

Working with Sarah at the orphanage has been such a blessing to me. It has definitely kindled the desire of adoption in my heart. I am eternally grateful God decided to adopt me as his own, and I can't wait to do what I have learned from my heavenly father one day. Please pray that God will use me in any way to love these girls and attract them not to myself but to Him. I pray that these girls will find true joy in the Lord because as we missionaries come and go from their lives often, he will never leave them. 

Sarah and the girls

Yvette, she is our Diva for sure. Yvette is a Rwandan genocide refugee.