Robertsport

What a weekend we had at Robertsport! It started out with a 3-hour taxi ride Saturday morning. The first half of the trip was on the best road I’ve been on in Liberia, so I thought it would be no problem. However, the second part was pretty bumpy. I had to put away my letter that I’d been working on or else it would have been quite illegible! ☺ We were entertained by the car door that came open every thirty seconds or so as the taxi jerked along at 30 km/hour.
When we finally got to the town on the seashore, our taxi driver didn’t know where to take us. Also, there was no cell phone reception for a while, so we were a bit lost. However, it seems the locals knew where we were headed and they pointed us in the right direction. Eight of us joined four others who had arrived the day before, to make a dozen: 7 girls, 5 boys. We slept in tents on stilts with mosquito nets, and electricity at night. We even had a fan! Thank God for the fan, with 7 girls sleeping in a stuffy tent! However, we were disturbed at 2 am by someone saying our fan was needed elsewhere, and depriving us of its comforting breeze! We would have resisted this theft a bit more had any of us been even slightly alert.
I spent as much time as possible of the next two days in the ocean. It was a true paradise! I would have never thought you’d find a place like that in Liberia! The beach was beautiful with lovely soft sand, crashing waves, crabs scurrying here and there, and “plenty-plenty” sunshine! The days were filled with body surfing, boogie boarding, swimming in clear water that felt like a bathtub, exploring rocks down the beach, walking down the beach, wading in the water, a bit of laying in the sun, and eating good food. I got out of the ocean when the sun went down, and we built a bonfire, sang worship songs and watched shooting stars. Sounds unreal? It felt that way too. It was quite wonderful! Our own private, barely developed, peaceful, natural, fabulous piece of God’s creation! A place like Robertsport in the western world would be overrun with expensive hotels and people everywhere.
Sunday I got to hang out with some of the local kids as they body surfed with me in the crashing waves. One guy had a makeshift boogie board – a piece of driftwood. It worked quite well! I just wouldn’t want the splinters you could get from it if the waves sent you tumbling!
Sunday ended with our taxis being over 2 hours late to take us home, reminding us we were on African time, but we had an impromptu worship service in our tent, which was refreshing. Katelyn and I took one final walk down the beach in the pouring rain, which meant I rode home in drenched clothing, but it was worth it! We didn’t get back to the ship until almost 9 pm, and hurriedly showered, ate dinner, threw on some laundry, and crashed! I slept like a rock after the sea, sand and sun for two days. I woke up to my alarm this morning, dragged from the deepest of deep sleeps, where I thought my dreams were reality, and wished I could keep on sleeping for another 8 hours!
This afternoon I led ward nurse devotions, and shared what God has been working on in me lately. Thinking about it made me realize how much God is really working in my life. He is so good. I’ll have to share more with you when I get home. I’ll leave you with a foretaste of some of the verses that have been precious to me in this time: Matthew 6:25-34; Mark 8:34-38; Psalm 63:1-5; and Isaiah 40: 29-31. Also, my favourite song is now “I Belong” by Kathryn Scott. It’s a good one! Enjoy!