Terrific Tuesday

A detail we forgot to touch on, we are on a Bible College campus called WAAST , West Africa Advanced School of Theology. It has 600 students that mostly attend remote campuses in 20 countries in west and central Africa. Students come to the main campus here in Lome for their final semester of studies for Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees. Dr. Mary Ballanger, the president, joined us for dinner Monday evening. She is originally from Kalispell, Montana. She has been doing the Lord’s work here in Africa for 40 years. Her first 20 years was spent in the country of Senegal and she has been at WAAST since 1995. After dinner Dr. Ballanger spoke to us for more than an hour. She is extremely charismatic, has a great sense of humor, and is very humble. We were riveted by her many stories of God’s miracles she has witnessed in Africa.

We made good progress today. Heat and humidity was similar to Monday, one team member had to retire for a few hours in the middle of the day to heat exhaustion. Work was concentrated on digging the 21 holes for the concrete footings that will support the 3 new floors for the building. We had many obstacles to overcome as a majority of the holes are surrounded by multiple live electrical wires, water and sewage pipes. Also, very large blocks of concrete that need broken out with sledge hammers, diamond saws or by any means. The last one we pulled out at the end of the day weighed approx. 350lbs. Ditch Obstacles:

Sweaty Greg Digging Hole for Concrete Footing:

That's a Big Hole:

Mango Tree at Job-Site:

The highlight of the day came around 5:30 in the evening we were told to immediately drop our tools and walk to the chapel nearby. All twelve of us walked in filthy dirty (after working in 90 degree heat and humidity for 10 hours). We were greeted with a room of 100 graduating students, the president, head pastor and other missionaries all dressed in their Sunday best. We felt like fish out of water. We were directed to sit in the front row and the pastor spoke in French and was interpreted in English (which is the norm for this bilingual school) by our host missionary and began telling the congregation our team story, where we came from and that we spent our own vacation time and money to come all the way to Africa to work at their school. A rounding applause commenced. The pastor asked Ron Bickford to come up and introduce each one of us. We were then asked to stand in front of the congregation and be recognized. This was followed by the most amazing prayer. The entire congregation came forward, laid hands on us and prayed simultaneously, out loud in English, French and various tribal languages. It was truly amazing and a blessing for the entire team. 10 minutes later we were back working and pulled out the 350lb block of cement with only 10 swings of the sledge hammer. We had been working on that block of cement for 4 hours!