I arrived last Tuesday and was picked up by my roommate Ian, who is from England and has been working here in the city setting up a project street children in the city. We are sharing a house together just a little outside downtown Lubumbashi. Well after Ian picked me up I was able to take a short nap before heading over for dinner with the other 2 MAF families working here in the city. The other families are Dan and Karen Carlson, with 2 of their kids at home (Tim & Caleb), and Nate and Terra Birkemo with their daughter Grace. The Birkemo's are actually headed back to the US as I right this to take their furlough for 7 months. They will return in March so until then I will just be working with the Carlson family. It was great to meet them and get to know them both over this week. I'm excited to work alongside Dan and look forward to Nate's return in March.
On my first full day in the city I spent the morning talking to Papa Lomami. He is one of our house helps that works around the house during the day. He is a kind friendly old man and very curious about everything and loves to chat with you. Unfortunately he does not speak any english and my french is not very good. So it takes us a long time to have a conversation about a simple subject. In the afternoon I went out with Ian for lunch and took a tour of the city. We walked around downtown and explored some of the shops and markets and then drove around the other side of the city to see where the governor lives and where the president's lubumbashi house is. The president happened to be in town this week so his street was all blocked off. The downtown part of the city is quite busy. There is just so many people out and about and walking in the streets. The traffic is a little chaotic but incredibly horrible. I've driven a couple times since I've been here and managed fine but I haven't yet attempted to drive downtown.
The rest of the week I have been out meeting lots of new people. Ian works with the Anglican church on his street kid project so we went and visiting the site where they will be building a new project house for the kids to stay at, as well as met a lot of the people he works with at the Anglican church. I also have been getting to know Binene and Patrick, 2 of the national staff that work for MAF and that I will be working with a lot. We also had a BBQ where I met a handful of missionary people, teachers, and other expats working in the city. It has been hard to keep straight who everyone is. I've also been going around to visit some of the organizations in town that MAF flies for such as World Vision, World Concern, Doctors without Borders, and some mining companies. Dan and Nate were really busy the first week I was here doing tons of flights for different people. It is good to see that we are busy here.
Besides that I have been out shopping a few times downtown. I haven't really bought much yet but it has been good to get downtown several times to see where to go to buy certain things. I also went to church on Sunday with the Carlsons and Birkemos. We went to an International community church. I really enjoyed it and the pastor seemed to be a really good guy. It was also in English, which was nice. So far that language has been my only frustration. My lack of french is obvious and really limits a lot of the things I can directly do. I will be studying a lot of french while I'm here and be working with our local MAF staff on french conversational lessons as well. So hopefully my high school french will come back to me soon and I can manage a little more on my own soon enough.
I am really looking forward to this next year now that I am here in the city. I'm excited to see the work that MAF is doing here and how I will be apart of it, as well as other opportunities and ministries that I may be able to be involved in. So far it has been a good transition and I am not homesick yet.
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