What it really looked like the night the lights went out at the mission home.

Misleading flash photo. We were sitting in the dark because we had power problems at the mission home.

New Waterloo Branch leaders. EQ pres, Joseph Adams, Branch pres, Sulaiman Kamara, First Counselor, Richard Carlos.

First meeting of new Waterloo Branch in their new building in Waterloo on the 28th of April, 2013.

Assistants, Elders Liufau and Otaniyuwa moving the president's table.

Making room for the tile workers.

Repairmen heating a makeshift soldering iron to try to repair Sister Roggia's refrigerator circuit board. After five visits ... success.

Departing elders, Dyngee, Purcell, Rochester and Wuthrich.

Mission home slowly progressing.  No work done in over a week due to a difference of opinion about the bitumen used on foundation walls.

Transporting lumber Sierra Leone style.

Stuck behind a firewood truck on the road in front of the mission office.

The reason for the power outage at the mission home.

We have had two brief downpours in the last couple of weeks. Crocuses at the mission office hail the end of the dry season. These flowers just popped up this week. Everything has been very dusty and brown. The blossoms are a metaphor of the Lord's work in Sierra Leone. It really is a miracle.

 Another kitchen gecko. They are fun to watch as they gobble up bugs.

The new mission home is progressing. They hammer the big granite boulders into small ones and then into chunks small enough to carry. Then they break them into gravel, one hammer blow at a time, and that is what they are using to make all of the concrete.

 This is what you dream of when you have been in Africa for ten months. Katie and Spencer put together a care package for us. We are savoring it.

 I like that smile.

A very hard working and dedicated couple. The Randalls left us last week. 

Went shopping along the street by the mission home this evening.  I bought units for my phone from from Alhasan.  Further up the street we bought cucumbers, Sierra Leone apples and onions.  Up another street we bought ground nuts (peanuts) and black tumblers.  In the picture the pink fruit is the Sierra Leone apple ... has a flavor like the mild fragrance of a flower.  It's moist and tender but softly crisp.  You can taste sweet and tart but it's neither. The skin is very thin and smooth.  You eat the whole thing ... no core.  The small red seeds are black tumblers.  They are stone hard black seeds with a red soft fuzzy edible skin.  Slightly sweet and tart at the same time.  Mostly a waste of time.  The ground nuts are roasted over a charcoal fire and are very tasty.

 Picked up a pepperoni pizza on our way home from the office today.  It's Isa's Pizza shop, made of sticks, corrugated tin and tarps.  The shack was all by itself at the side of an old schoolyard.  We weren't sure what we were going to get.

Here's the pizza.  It even came in a box that said "Pizza" on it.  Amazing!  The burn marks on the edges were a little sooty and sandy but the pizza tasted pretty good.  The pepperoni tasted a lot like salami.  In the middle you can see a tiny plastic bag of oil to spread on top.  We liked it.  Maybe we have been in Africa too long.