Hi! I hope you all (who read this) are doing well!

I'm sorry that I haven't posted on here recently. I really wanted to put some pictures on for you all to see a bit about my life here in Nigeria, but that has proved to be more difficult than I had imagined. But nevertheless, finally, here are some pictures of my time!

This first one is of some of the kids at a carehome about an hour outside of Jos called Gyero. The kids here may or may not be orphans, depending on the situation of their family. We went out there to do some vaccinations (of which I was no part of) and so while there they took us on a tour and we got to see the kids, and have fun with them. It was a really neat experience! And the kids are so cute. It's hard to feel sorry for kids that don't seem to feel sorry for themselves. These are some of the girls at the place. This facility is actually an extension of another home called Transition House that is here in Jos. TH got too full, so they opened up Gyero. It's really neat what they're doing for the kids.

This next picture is a scene of chaos from our backyard! Anna Beth, myself, Luke and my Aunt Adena have a kid's club called Back Gate Kids (since they come through our back gate) on Saturdays where the kids come and play on the little playground my Uncle made, and then after a while we take them to the back yard where we teach them some Bible stories, about how God loves them so much and about Jesus and why he came to earth. It's really neat, and for those of you who know me and know that I've never been a teacher, and I never thought I wanted to be a teacher, well, I'm teaching! And I actually kind of enjoy it! :)

Anyway, this specific picture came when I decided that I needed a pic of these adorable (and sometimes rascally) kids! But the minute that they realized that, they came away from the playground to be in the picture. That was fine, except that they all wanted to be in the first row, which meant that they kept on moving quickly toward me as the front row kept on changing!! So I finally thought, just take a picture!!! Don't wait for them to stop moving. You can see Anna Beth in the background laughing at their antics. Then, when I went to show them the picture I had taken, they just about broke my camera, trying to pull it to where they could see it best!! Crazy! They are such a hoot, but we really enjoy having them every Saturday. You can pray, though, that God would give us wisdom to know how work with them. Two weeks ago, we had 70 kids! That's a few too many, considering at the beginning of the summer we said we'd only let 25 in each week. This past week we only let the first half in, so then the second half can come next week. But there are constantly new kids as well, which is hard to tell them that they can't come. But we want these kids to be regulars so that they understand what we're teaching them. And you can also pray for Anna Beth and myself as we teach them, that God would give us wisdom to know best how to connect with them and to explain about Jesus to them in a way that they will understand but also that will be real to them. Christianity is somewhat nominal here, so while there might be many kids who know these stories, they don't really know Jesus, and they might never know what it is to have a real relationship with him. Many are not Christians as well.

And this last picture is when the Wildmans and myself went to a place called Sherry Hills (sp?) for an afternoon of hiking. Amazing place! We even saw some mountain goats!