New Missionaries

Our next task was to welcome 2 new missionary women to our field.  Welcoming people to the field is always a joy as there is a great need for more workers.  There is, however, a lot that goes into welcoming new missionaries to our field…

• First of all we need to get housing ready, which includes signing contracts, setting up furniture, cleaning and making lots of small repairs.
• Next there is the matter of actually getting them from the airport
• Then there are meals to think about for the first week as they get set up and familiar with things like shopping and cooking
• We have multiple orientations that need to be done, including security, finances, health, language, our program in general and so on.
• There is paperwork that needs to be done to allow us to stay in Senegal, which requires health certificates, translated birth certificates and the likes.
• Finally there is just the need to be available to help get people around and get what they need until they are familiar enough with life to do it on their own.

To help make this possible, Joel and I stayed in Dakar for about 5 days with the boys before their school started.  That way we were there to welcome them to the field face to face and also around if they needed anything.  We brought our host families oldest daughter to come a long and help with the kids during the week as we had a lot of running around to do.  I was also cooking dinners for all those who were still at the mission working on their literacy materials.  We decided to maximize that by inviting a different family to dinner each night, so that we could see how things were going.  It all added up to a crazy week, but very successful.

We ended the week with a welcome party for our two new missionaries.  We put together a welcome basket for them, had them share their testimony and then all ate together as a mission.  It is always a joy to see new members joining our team.  It is something worth taking time to celebrate.  There is a long journey ahead of them as they adjust and adapt, but time and time again God proves to be faithful through it all.