Ladies Camp!!!

Way back when we were still in the States I saw a friend’s blog post about going to a church ladies camp…and I knew, “Someday I want to do that too!” And last weekend that day finally came!

It was ladies from 2 churches here in town, that are sister churches, one of which is our church, and we also had ladies from the village, who belong to the Serer people group. Some of them didn’t speak much French, so everything was translated from French into Serer or Wolof.

Me all ready to go, you can spot the missionaries easily…we’re the ones with giant back packs and water bottles.

Friday, me and a couple of neighbors shared a taxi down to the hospital where we were going to meet the other ladies and load up in the Ndiaga Ndiaye (kinda like a bus).

After awhile the Ndiaga Ndiaye arrived, we got the luggage up on the roof, and ourselves seated inside. Ladies with nursing babies brought them along. The poor little baby that sat in front of me cried when she saw my pale white toubab face (toubab is the Wolof word used for white people)! Thankfully by the end of the weekend I had babies smiling at me and even letting me whole them, so that encouraged me. J

On the way to the site, we stopped and picked up the village ladies and their babies.

This is the room I stayed in with 2 Serer ladies. Me and a lady named Elisabette shared the double bed. I was pleasantly surprised to see the rooms had sheets, mosquito nets and even a fan!

Elisabette is the one on he left with the orange and green dress. She was usually the one who read the Bible verses out loud in Serer.

We walked to a nearby beach a couple of times to do games, exercises and swim.

We had to cross this water in order to get to the beautiful beach on the other side.

Women anywhere seem to get a little goofy when they’re in a big group. 🙂

This is the kitchen where our delicious meals were prepared. It was a beautiful little camp ground with chickens, pigeons, pigs, cats and even a donkey walking around.

Here we are making a flower craft from fabric.
The cutest thing in the whole world is little babies on their mama’s backs.

I enjoyed every meal and even got to try my hand at eating with my hand one meal (pun very much intended).

Ladies with babies recieved baby blankets.

We sang along to the beat of the drum.

And even got a little dancing in.

One of the things our speaker shared on was the 5 love languages.

When we went home, we stopped at a church to get something. It wasn’t until they started bringing out Samaratin’s purse Christmas child boxes, that I realized what we were getting! After helping carry a couple of boxes I texted Cameron and told him, that I was finally a real missionary since I helped carry Christmas child boxes! Lol It was really cool seeing them on this side of the world.

Going on this ladies camp was one of the highlights of our time here so far! I’m so thankful I got to go!