Our first two weeks in Dakar

View from the roof where we are staying

It has been a busy few weeks back in Senegal. LaRae and I have been working on finishing up a class to teach English as a second language. The class has a lot of good information and has challenged us in our knowledge of our own language. As we have been asking around we have found that there are many places where we can teach English once we are done with the online portion of the class. In addition to working for area schools, we have found that we might also be able to develop some classes at the SDA school. We are excited about all the options we have and look forward to seeing how God will lead us. Teaching English is not the reason we came to Senegal, but will help to put bread on the table as we work to develop our health outreach programs.

When not working on our ESL classwork we have been trying to get our local residency paperwork together. God has been good and we have been able to gather most of the things we need, but we still lack a few more and hope to get those this coming week. Our things from the US should also arrive this coming week, so we'll be busy trying to get everything done. We are so grateful for the last 7 years that we worked for the Adventist church. We were well taken care of and now that we are having to do things on our own we really appreciate all the help we had over the years. 

Once we get our things out of the port and finalize our residency permits we are hoping to travel south to Ziguinchor. In Ziguinchor we will be reunited with Lika and the family she has been staying with who are our special friends. We are also looking forward to going to Niaguis, the village we lived in for 3.5 years, to see our friends and the state of the village. We want to get as much done up here in Dakar before going to the south so that we can be free to visit our friends down in the south at leisure. Everything in Africa takes longer, so we are preparing with this in mind. :) 

We have been staying with our friends in Dakar and have really appreciated their hospitality. Though we are praying for direction as to where to live permanently. We are heavily leaning towards living in the countryside near Dakar where several of our friends have property. The kids would have more space to play outside and we would be able to garden and have space to develop a training school. If we do end up moving out to the country we'll need to buy a car so that we can get into town to buy supplies and get to class to teach. We are praying about what to do, wether to get the truck that we feel we'll need in the long term or to get a smaller car. Conversely we could rent a place in town and focus on helping the churches and start to teach in area schools. Lots of options and at this point no real clear idea of which will ultimately be better. We know God has the answers and are waiting on Him to show us the path we should take.

~~Boaz