Follow the adventures of our family around the world

March 1, 2006  I cant believe it is already March 1st. The year is flying by, and the outreach. We have started back up with plastic surgery. We have this new plastic surgeon from Canada, and he is wonderful. Today we had this baby and mom that came all of the way from Sierra Leone and in an hour procedure this 6 month old baby had a new smile. It was beautiful. These guys are such artists. We have this girl here named Mary. She has been here for 3 months now. She came in with what is called a noma, a bacteria that pretty much ate away her entire upper lip and the septum of her nose.  After 4 surgeries (I think), she has a new upper lip and looks like a different person. She will have one more procedure. She is 12 years old. She could not read or write when she came to us, and today I went down and she was writing the alphabet. She writes my name everyday at some point. A few days ago she prayed to accept the Lord and was so excited to show us how she was thankful to the Lord for her food. She loves Jessie and Cailin, they visit her often. Tonight we were on the dock and heard someone calling our names and it was Mary from the ship. So Cailin rushed inside to see Mary. Then several of the girls from the ship played go-fish with her.

Today there were more riots in town. It has been a different time this trip to liberia. There is so many unsettled places in the city. There have been lots of riots. Often we are restricted in our travel into town. The NGOs are starting to pull out of here, and it will be interesting to see what happens next. We have become so accustomed to seeing tanks and soldiers in the streets. I often wonder what the girls will think when we go home to normal roads with no beggars at the grocery store.

Mark has been asked to go on the final sail of the Anastasis, possibly to Turkey. So we have lots to pray about because the girls and I cannot go with him. It would be great if he could go. He says it is special as a seaman to go on the last sail of such a fabulous vessel. So we will see.