Looking Back: One Year Ago Today– Out and About, Soaking Up Culture

Sunday, Oct. 31, 2010

We went to Pastor Peter’s church again this morning. Ohmygoodness, was it hot! I thought Blake was going to dissolve, he was sweating so much. We adults were, too. I enjoyed worship again but it was harder to focus, just because it was so very hot. There was no air movement in there. And some guy stood up to give a week in review and talked for about 20 minutes. Whew. Barb got up and said some nice things about how much we appreciated all the church has done for us, and also mentioned that we’re praying that we get our letters Monday so we can fly to America on Wednesday. The DGM guy was there again. He told Pastor Peter we’d get (or hopefully get? - translation differences) our letters on Monday. That’d be awesome!!! 

After we enjoyed another cold drink, we drove home and fed the kiddos. Then we sat around and talked about cars for our ever growing family. The people who run the guest house have a Hyundai H1 and that would be perfect for us, but it doesn’t look like it’s available in the States.

At 3:00, Gretchen (an American missionary) came by and took us on an outing to the Congo River. It was beautiful! I’m so glad we went. The area was super nice - it was where all the Ambassadors to the foreign embassies live. Up unto that point, we hadn’t really seen any “nice” parts to Kinshasa. We walked for a couple of miles along the Congo river and then back among the gated houses to our driver. The river is very wide. There were some dug out canoes on it – Gretchen guessed they were fisherman.

I found this photo of the Kinshasa River Walk on Google.  It really is beautiful!

There were armed guards along points of the walk. Gretchen would just walk up to them and say hello and that we were families who were adopting orphans. They’d all smile and it was no big deal. Seemed strange to me because we have had to be so cautious the whole time we’re here about telling people why we’re here. Thankfully, these armed guards didn’t have a problem with us adopting! 

On the way back to the guest house, Gretchen drove us by her home. It was nice as well, but more modest of course than the Ambassadors’ riverfront homes. I hate that we can’t take pictures. I’m hoping to get home and Google pictures of Kinshasa. Maybe someone else was more daring than us and risked it to snap some photos. : )

(I just spent way too much time looking through Google for more pictures, and I’m surprised by what I see.  There really isn’t much out there that gives an accurate picture of Kinshasa.  Here are two pics I found…one of the airport, and one of a roadside.)

We have 23 minutes to dinner. Fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Probably my favorite dinner of the week. We have them all memorized now. Sun - fried chicken, Mon - spaghetti, Tues - hamburgers, Wed - pork chops, Thurs - beef and vegetables with rice, Fri - sausage/green peppers/onions, Sat - pizza. Breakfasts are Sun - cinnamon roll and granola, Mon – omelet (just an egg…no cheese or anything with it), Tues - French toast, Wed - oatmeal, Thurs – omelet (same as Mon.), Fri - pancakes, Sat - bread and cheese. Just about every lunch is rice with some sort of meat and a sauce. That got pretty old, so we’ve been skipping our lunches and eating power bars instead.