The last 3-ish weeks...

Dan typing...

The surgeon had to remove some teeth in order
to get to the tumor he was trying to remove
(This is the least gruesome picture Alicia had).

In mid-March, we spent a week down in Bongolo with the Straw family. We were able to move a good portion of our stuff into the house we will be living in for the next year.  We were also able to re-arrange  much of the house in anticipation for our big move from Libreville on April 18^th.   (Before and After pictures to be posted soon.)  Alicia got a chance to observe several surgeries (which she loved) and I was able to spend a day shadowing Paul Davis.  Paul manages the hospital facilities and has a lot of work to do.  I was able to get a feel for the maintenance needs there and begin formulating how I can help in my down time and coordinate projects when we have teams.

The big reason for us to be in Bongolo that week was to attend the Gabon Field Prayer Retreat Friday and Saturday. We were encouraged and blessed by the opportunity to be updated on and pray for the work going on in the hospital, around Gabon, and beyond.

Alicia typing…

When we arrived home from Bongolo, we were also arriving home to a brand-new French instructor named Jean Jacque.  (Our previous instructor took a new job in Franceville.)  Our instructor started off the class speaking entirely in French, and maybe spoke 10 words total of English the entire time.  Whoa!  Let’s just talk about being overwhelmed.  We left French class super frustrated, but as it turns out, his approach to teaching us has really helped us out.  Although, having French class entirely in French seemed horrible at first…our understanding of the French language has totally sky-rocketed in the last couple of weeks.  This is also due to the fact that we decided to start hanging out more with our Gabonese friends, with the intention of practicing our French.  It has been so awesome to finally be able to communicate and ask questions to our friends here.  J 

French class will be ending this Saturday, and Dan and I are still kind of nervous.  We have decided to continue with Rosetta Stone and have considered hiring a tutor down in Bongolo. 

 Dan typing...

Dan working at the Guest House

This past week a team of 12 men from New Jersey were here in Libreville doing a whirlwind of construction projects, medical missions, and connecting with Gabonese. I was able to help out the team as they re-modeled a Guest House located at the National Church Seminary.  The team helped build windows, created holes in the walls for windows and doors, and helped hang cupboards and ceilings. 

Alicia at Cssni

Alicia was able to finally return to Cssni clinic where she spent most of her time here in 2009.  She was able to help the team's Doctor and Physician Assistant quickly adapt to the Gabonese medical system.  She said it felt really great to be back at the clinic, and being able to finally communicate (in French) with the people she worked so closely with in 2009.  

Dan mixing up some concrete

We were also able to help as the team put in four concrete posts establishing a boundary on a new 65-acre piece of property that will eventually be used as the new location of Hope House, the Libreville Envision center, a new medical clinic, and a school.  This property will also house other social ministries of the national church.  The team was full of very 

hard-working, fun-hearted men of God that really got a LOT done in their seven days here. They were the first big team to arrive since we have been here and it was good for us to be able to help host a big team before we get our first team all on our own! 

Our finished product!
L to R: Papa John, Shannon (a new intern),
 Pastor Hypolite, Alicia, and Dan

Alicia packing down the dirt

There were also crabs everywhere!

Alicia typing…

For part of the time the team was here we took care of the Guest House for the Straw Family while they were away at Cameroon and Ghana.  They are a really cool family and You can check out their blog HERE.  It was a lot of fun staying at their house.  We were able to get some shopping done for our move down to Bongolo.  We also bought some fresh anana (pineapple), papaye (papaya), and pamplemouse (grapefruit). 

Alicia and her accidental dress and successful purse

While at the market buying fruit, I decided to assess how much a dress would be to buy here.  When I went over to ask (in French), the vendor told me it was 14,000 CFA (about $28).  Well, this started up the bargaining side of me.  My final offer was 8,000 CFA (about $16), which he was not having.  So, I decided to pack up and leave, when all of sudden, he told me to hand him the money, which i did without really thinking!  Looks like I accidentally bought a dress, which I am modeling in the picture to the right. 

I am also modeling the purse I got made.  The purse came out exactly how I explained it to the tailor…in French.  It was definitely a “whoo hoo” moment.

We are officially moving down to Bongolo to start our work on Monday, April 18th.  We are super excite and cannot wait to join the team down there; however, we are very sad to leave the team in Libreville.  Please pray for safe travels and easy transitions.  

We love you all and miss you dearly!  

Alicia and Dan Lewan

les araignee, et les beignets, et les reins...Oui-o! (Spiders, and Doughnuts, and Kidneys...Oh My!)

Alicia Typing…Just thought we would share our week with you.  We are missing everyone and since we cannot be there, we thought we would share some pictures as if you were here.  Enjoy :)

Look closely at the towel!

Zoomed in picture!

I was taking a shower this morning, and I think this "little" guy decided he would try to join me.  By "little," I mean huge spider was waiting on top of my towel.  I don't think this picture does the spider justice.  I believe it would have been about 5 inches across with its legs outstretched.  Thank God Dan decided to brush his teeth and saw the spider before I tried to grab my towel.  This was my little reality check that yes, we are indeed living in Africa.  Don't worry (mom!) because A. Dan killed the spider and B.  This spider is not poisonous :).  It makes you wonder when that spider got into our bathroom last night.  It kind of makes my skin crawl to think that these spiders a scurrying around at night when we are sleeping.  Just food for thought....

Yes! Those are doughnuts!

 Can you tell Dan was excited?  We were actually able to celebrate Fat Tuesday this year.  Dan MADE the doughnuts from scratch...and they were sooo good!  More on Dan, Dan, the Baker Man in later posts...

Pito wanted a picture of our French class...

This picture pretty much describes our lives this past month.  We are not in our usual classroom, since Pito has been coming to our house to teach us this week.  It has been nice to have a little extra time in our day (since traveling to and from French can take 2-3 hours roundtrip).  This picture is posed...in case you couldn't tell.   I am pretty sure we are looking at the word: “le reins” which is “kidney” in French.  haha.  Today we learned body parts and sicknesses (les maladies).  Best day in French EVER (at least for me that is.)  After this class, Dan made sure to ask Pito if we could have a day of learning about different tools.  Things like this remind me of how amazing God is to have put us together and how much we are compliments to each other. 

A la plage...

We have had some requests to post some sunny pictures to give hope to all those stuck in the snowy weather in the states.  We went to the beach in the afternoon on Wednesday to swim, rest, and study French.  Thought we would send a little sunshine your way...

That is all for now.   Please pray for safe travels this weekend as we head down to Bongolo again with the Straws. 

Love,

Alicia and Dan

Mystery Vans, Driving, and Passe Compose

Dan in our Land Cruiser.
Please take not of the snorkel on the Right side of the car.
This car was made for the rough terrain of Africa.  

Driver's Ed (Africa Style)

(Dan Typing)

In the months leading up to our departure to Gabon one of the challenges I knew I would be facing would be learning how to drive a stick shift… Now I had “learned” how to drive a stick from my buddy Eric in his Honda Accord about four years ago, it was a great introductory lesson and I appreciate Eric letting me abuse his clutch for an afternoon. Let’s just say I had a hard time getting out of first gear and never graduated out of the parking lot…

Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago and I find myself in a similar training situation, this time my instructor is Steve Straw the pilot for Bongolo’s medical aviation program and my training vehicle is our 20 year old Toyota Landcruiser. This thing is a beast! It’s got a straight 6 diesel engine, a heavy-duty leaf-spring suspension, four-wheel drive with independently locking differentials, a winch, and a snorkel. Essentially this thing was built to go over and through anything and is built more like a truck than an SUV. After a brief demonstration by Steve I took the wheel and picked it up very quickly, I still stalled out a few times but overall left the lesson feeling very confident, especially after stopping and starting on a hill!

Now after Driving a few hours on the journey to and from Bongolo (where much to my embarrassment I stalled at a police check-point) and a day criss-crossing Libreville in congested traffic I feel like I have been driving a manual for years! I feel very blessed to have had such an easy time learning and have already told Alicia that we should get a manual when we get back to the states, I love it!

Mystery Machine

We had our first hamburger while here in Gabon.  We bought if from the "Mystery Machine" (pictured above)...it looked very similar to the van in Scooby Doo.  The "restaurant" was right on the ocean, and the hamburgers we had were very...interesting.  Apparently the Gabonese picked up the French way of putting an egg on their hamburger.  Good news: no one got sick!

This is our first sunset we have ever seen in Gabon,
because when we were here in July/August 2009 it was overcast
the entire time (since it was their winter).  Absolutely gorgeous!

Just another trip to Hope House.

Carolyn Thorson is one of the nurses at Bongolo hospital that was up in Libreville for a visit.  The kids are (from L. to R.) Grace, Josue, and Jeremy

 Update on Bongolo

Alicia typing…

Last week we traveled down to Bongolo (our future home come April 18^th).  The roads are getting a lot better, and as Dan already mentioned…he got a lot of good practice driving.  It was really fun to meet our future co-workers/friends/family members J

Besides meetings, we got to do a few fun things while we were down there.  We spent some hours chipping away the paint of the mission pool that has been out-of-service for a year.  In about an hour of non-stop work, we decided that one person could chip away about a square foot of paint.  Oh man, is it going to be a long process getting that pool up and running.  Let me tell you though, it will definitely be worth it. 

(As a side note right now…it is about 6 PM here in Libreville and it is over 90 degrees with humidity so thick you could cut it with a knife.)

Anyways, we also got to tube along a river for 3 hours in the middle of the rainforest.  (For those that went to CMU, think Chip River, except 10x cooler).  This float along the river was strictly business (that is a lie)…because we were scoping the river out as a potential fieldtrip for Bongolo hospital visitors J.  For the record…there will definitely be more river floats in the future. 

Other updates:

French is starting to click....a little.  We are understanding more and more every day, and we are learning A LOT.  We are working on past tense (passe compose), imperfect (imparfait), and future (futur) verbs.

We have officially been here for as long as we were here for our past trip to Gabon (40 days).  Isn't that crazy?  It seems like we just got here.  Last time in 2009, by day 30, we were getting ready to go home and see our family and friends.  As history repeats itself, needless to say, we are really starting to miss our family and friends again.  I think reality is starting to settle in that we are going to be here for awhile....

Thank you for following our blog, we are encouraged by the numbers we see of those who are viewing our pages.  (We have 2,500 views so far).  It really helps us to know how many people love us,  support us, and praying for us.

Love,
Dan & Alicia

Field Trips, Christmas, and Aubergines (pronounced: Oh-Burr-Jeans)

Back Row (L to R): JR, Olivia (the intern), Pito
Front Row: Alicia, Dan

Written by Alicia:

We officially went on our first field trip with Pito (our French Instructor) on Friday.  We went to one of the huge markets here in Libreville.  We usually take teams there to expose them to the culture, but it was a lot different having Pito and JR there to point out and name off different things for us in French.  Interesting French vocab word:  A potato is called “une pomme de terre,” which means “an apple of the earth.”  We learned lots of new names for fruits and vegetables.  We saw traditional medications (aka: herbs and spices) that some Gabonaise still use being sold.  We spotted pheasants, ducks, and chickens getting ready to meet their doom. We practiced our bargaining skills in French, and I bought a nice pair of aviator sunglasses for 2,500 CFA or about $5.00.  It was a lot of fun, but very HOT and humid!  We ended up having a huge storm that night, which cooled things down…for a little while. 

Dinner with Friends

We had a lot of our long lost Gabonaise friends over for dinner on Saturday. We had a potluck, which included chicken, rice, beans, aubergines (a purple and green vegetable), plantains, and lasagna (made by us).   They were so excited that it was our first time hanging out again since we’ve gotten back, and that Dan and I were finally married.  (Everyone here seems to love that concept.)  Don’t worry, as usual, they prayed for us to be blessed with many children in the near future.  They are big on kids here!  They loved looking at our photo albums from the wedding.  One of the nurses (Arican) is always talking about trying to find a wife, and Maman Jeanine (another nurse) slyly suggested that he should marry the woman who caught the bouquet at our wedding!  Haha.  (So, Trisha …if you are reading this, you have a potential husband waiting here in Africa if you ever want one J). 

Operation Christmas Child

Dan Typing

Some people have the Christmas tradition of filling up a shoebox with toys, coloring books, and toothbrushes to be sent around the world to a young boy or girl in the developing world through Operation Christmas Child. The Gabonese Christian and Missionary Alliance Church distributes these boxes through its 60 churches in cities and villages across the country. In our blog from our previous trip, http://www.gabon2009.blogspot.com/ we shared a story about how the generosity of Operation Christmas Child opened doors for a church to be planted in a village that had previously been skeptical of Christians. This year we saw the boxes in the warehouse at the Alliance Seminary and were in awe at the amount of boxes! This year they were given three shipping containers full of them to distribute! There are going to be a lot of very happy kids in the next few weeks!

 Half of the boxes had already been distributed when the picture above was taken, and we are hoping to see some of the boxes being distributed in person.

A few other updates:

Alicia Typing...

French is going….well.  We worked a lot on sentence structure and vocab this past week.  Dan and I are officially residents of Gabon.  We received our Carte de Sejour’s (essentially a Green Card) on Saturday.  We went to the beach on Friday, and I successfully ordered my first plate of fries on my own in French.  We are traveling down to Bongolo on Wednesday.  Bongolo is the hospital site we will be moving to in the middle of April.  Pray for safe travels and no motion sicknesses on the 8-hour car voyage.

Love,

Dan & Alicia Lewan

Bonjour Mon Amis!

Written by Alicia:

Well…we started French this past week.  We have come to conclusion that learning French makes our brain feel like they have been repeatedly punched, taken out and stepped on, and then put in a blender.  Learning a new language, as an adult is gruesome…especially a language that makes many noises that we have never heard or have made in our lifetimes.  With that being said, we are learning A LOT, and we can say that we recognized 10 x more words in the church service we attended this morning than in past services.  This is a small victory in and of itself.  It is crazy how fast and how much we are learning.  A week ago, we could barely mutter a few phrases, but now we can introduce ourselves and others, tell them we are married, talk about our family, and tell people where we are from.  J

Our instructor is really awesome.  His name is Pito, which is Spanish for whistle…really random, I know.  The week before he started teaching us French, he taught a Japanese couple, who spoke no English, how to speak French fairly well.  He is definitely an awesome teacher.  He also likes to teach us little “gabonisms” throughout our French lessons, so we are learning lots of things about the culture here.

Speaking of culture, let’s just talk about the driving here.  It is intense!  The horn is not just used for emergency purposes but also, to say, “hey, I’m here,” “move out of my way,” or “hey, I know you!”  Driving can be stressful, especially when a two-lane road quickly becomes a 4 or 5-lane road, and pedestrians cross the road whenever see fit.  (For the record, Dan and I haven’t started driving out here, so we have a driver/business agent, JR, who drives us everywhere). 

Anyways, we were on our way to the airport yesterday, and our car overheated and broke down.  We ended up blocking traffic in a congested bottleneck construction zone on Libreville’s busiest road.  So people are already honking their way through and trying to combine their cars into one lane (aka: about 2-lanes), while JR valiantly was trying to resuscitate the car.  Leanne and Hannah (our housemates) came to our rescue in our Land Cruiser. Dan, Hannah, and JR pushed the car to the nearest gas station while I steered.  (I guess all those spring break trips driving 15-passenger vans are starting to pay off.)  People were honking at us the whole time.  Not sure if they were saying, “hey, move out of the way” or “better luck next time”.  We are never really sure what the Gabonaise are trying to communicate with those car honks.

We went to Nzeng Ayong for church this morning.  This is where we helped a lot with building their new church last time we were here.  When we arrived, the pastor recognized us and asked if Dan and I were finally married.  We said, “Oui” and everyone cheered and they made us stand up and they continued to clap for us.  They were excited that we had finally tied the knot.  It was really cute, especially since we had our matching ensembles on.  :)


Au revoir!
Alicia & Dan

The Real Work is About to Begin!!!!

Written by Dan:

After a week of getting settled in…

Alicia and I will begin our French training. We met with out teacher on Sunday for a course orientation and an assessment that determines what learning style we have.  (Surprisingly, Alicia and I have the same learning style.) Our teacher spent ten years working with the American peace corps and has assured us that after a our two months of training we will be able to speak, write, read, and understand French. Class will be 3 hours a day 5 days a week!  We are excited that it includes life application field trips that let us go out with the instructor to buy things in the market, grab a taxi, go to the post office, and eat at restaurants! The program is supposed to be very application-based which I think is very cool!

This week we also got to help the Libreville Envision team host a small film crew from the CMA, they are on a three-week journey documenting the work and mission of the CMA in the Congo, Gabon, and Burkina Faso. Yesterday we accompanied them to Hope House, an orphanage operated by the church here. It was great to see the kids again and play some soccer in the front yard with them. When Alicia and I were here in 2009 we spent a lot of time at Hope House and were very pleased that their new house is MUCH better than their previous residence.

We are settling in well, and wish us luck with learning French! J

Birthday

Written by Alicia:

Today was my Birthday!  It was really fun and interesting spending my birthday in Africa.  I missed having my friends and family around, but my new friends and family here helped me celebrate.  We had some fellow missionary friends come over (Alace and Sam Straw).  Leanne and Hannah are our roommates and fellow associates in Libreville.  They also helped me celebrate my dinner.  They helped cook taco salad dinner (one of my favorite meals).  Dinner was followed by a home-made cake made by my wonderful hubby J. 

Our time in Africa has been…very relaxing so far.  In fact we have already gone to the beach twice.  Dan got to help out some locals bring in a huge net from the sea.  It took about two hours of hard work, but they brought in a lot of fish!  Dan was really excited about it!

This past week we have  been working on learning French using Rosetta Stone.  We are officially beginning our French lessons on Monday with our Gabonese tutor.  It will be good to finally begin!  We cannot wait to start being able to communicate with the people here.

Peace and Love,

Dan and Alicia Lewan