Mels birthday party!

Talk about a party. The girls and I had some cake and danced the night away. Got some phone calls from home (make my heart smile!) and some wonderful emails. I even got a package in the mail!!! Made me feel so loved! Just wanted to share some pics with everyone and say thanks! Love and miss you all!

p.s. we got a little crazy but no harm done and yes, I am a nerd. With that said, enjoy the show.

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CWF

During the middle of October we had some very unique visitors staying at our hostel. A ton of ginormous guys who couldn’t hear anything stayed upstairs and kept us up all hours of the night. These guys were here to share Jesus through wrestling, professional wrestling. That’s right, we had a group of Professional Wrestlers, who happen to all be Christians, staying at our place. Nigerians love professional wrestling so tons of kids and adults would come to their shows and many got saved! We became great friends with all of them, stayed up laughing all night long, and had some of the best times ever! You could say it was some summer of ’69 times!

The pictures and stories below are dedicated to the CWF. We each want to share some of our favorite moments. Sorry for those who don’t understand, so much is inside jokes.

Melanie: I want to tell you a story. My story is about the little puppy who lost his way, no wait that’s a completely different story and has nothing to do with the wrestlers. Nevermind. From my time with the wrestlers I have learned a few things. 1) There are a few things in life that are better than peanut butter and ladies but I won't get into that. 2) Shoots are always the way to go. 3) 59 is a fantastic number, we're all pretty thankful for that. 4) We do have pasteurized milk in Nigeria. You won't get sick from eating the ice cream. 5) I love having favorites! All in all God did some amazing things in and through these guys and I can't wait for them to come back!

Katy: Well you know we learned so much from them like Batman's superpower is being able to summon bats ("Aaaahhh!!!") and how the right president can "change" the "problems" in Nigeria. But I made sure that they knew of our fantastic characteristics and I let them in on my plans to take over the world. They are probably cool enough to serve as some of my advisors in the future.

Anna:
If you didn’t know already, Oreos are a rare treasure around here. We don’t get them often and Nigerians don’t know the meaning of the word “munch” or “snack”. So they don’t have things as good as Oreos for us Americans to get by on. So my mom was wonderfully gracious and sent me a package of Oreos. I was thrilled beyond measure and I decided that I would share them with the CWF. It was there last night here and Mel and I were up talking late with Albert, JT and Phil. I had a small amount of battery left on my camera and I am a picture maniac so I had to get pictures of the CWF eating my Oreos and Mel and I had to be in the picture too, of course. Nobody else to take the picture but me, so I held up the camera and took it of the five of us all holding our Oreos. Not everyone was in the picture (I won’t mention any names JT) so…TAKE 2! Hmmmmmm, same problem. So I just said “ok third times a charm, everybody squeeze and pretend to love each other!” I don’t really think that they were my exact words but something similar is what I was thinking. So sure enough, we got all in the picture! Yippee! Fun times! But that’s not the end. The Oreos were nearing the end of the package and I wanted an Oreo picture with Albert and JT (separately). There were three Oreos left. Albert held his and him and I took our picture. JT held his that was half eaten and as were getting ready to take the picture HE LEANS OVER AND LICKS MY OREO! I couldn’t believe what had just happened. My prized “munchy snack” had been licked by a CWF wrestler and I was about ready to take him out. I didn’t care that he was bigger that I was and had the capability of tearing me in two, we are talking about an Oreo people! Thankfully, Albert didn’t want his so he gave it to me…untouched, virtually saving JT’s life. All the while Phil and Melanie are getting the best laugh of their lives out of the “show” that JT decided to put on. Good job JT! I can’t blame him, he got two Oreos out of the deal!

Papa Smurf

The first two weeks of October Sara’s dad, brother, and friend came to visit and do some work. We (Sara and Melanie) took them out to the bush to research Sara’s tribes. We met up with a Nigerian who knew of all the tribes and where they were located and he had a plan for getting it all done. It looked like it might only take a couple of days and we could come home early. Our first day was spent driving in the bush. It took us all day and we did not make it to a single tribe. We stopped to visit with some pastors along the way but no tribes. We got stuck in the mud once. It was still pretty muddy everywhere we went which made driving interesting. The second day we went to look for a tribe but the river was too bad and the truck couldn’t get across so Sara and her dad took motorcycles while the rest of us waited. They got back in a couple of hours and so we had lunch and headed to the next tribe. They said the road was okay to get there but that wasn’t true. We hit quicksand and after getting out of that we just decided to head out. We drove and drove and drove some more. We camped out and then on the third day we headed to the other two tribes. We had heard from multiple people that there were churches in these two tribes but we had to go and verify. After more driving through rocky mountains and corn fields we made it. The people are almost all Christian, which was a time of rejoicing and Sara’s dad even got to speak at one of the churches where several people rededicated their lives or turned to Jesus! So all in all we spent around 15 hours of bush driving and 5 hours of paved road driving over three days (this is a generous number). We researched three tribes and will have to go back for the other one. We had a long, fun, and stressful time. We have new brothers and sisters whom we will see again in heaven!

The truck where we spent most of our time, a group shot at the church, Sara’s family, and the white people

Just some of the fun obstacles we run in to while driving in the bush!