{"id":1217,"date":"2012-07-10T20:06:57","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T20:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2012-07-10T20:06:57","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T20:06:57","slug":"an-unpaid-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/2012\/07\/10\/an-unpaid-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unpaid Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Meet our New neighbor (hanging out in front of our house with Joel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When we first arrived to this country the only people who were patient enough to spend time with us were people we paid to spend time with us or people from the church who wanted to see us grow in culture and language. \u00a0This might sound really sad (and it is) but it is just the reality of life. \u00a0Just recently, however God sent us a new neighbor who speaks really good French, has lots of stories to tell and is often just sitting outside his house. \u00a0On top of that when Joel saw that he was moving in he went over and welcomed him to the neighborhood. \u00a0Still to this day our neighbor won’t stop talking about how unusual it is that the foreigner was the first to greet him. \u00a0This was not anything we intentionally did, so we are just thankful to God that Joel made that move. \u00a0This has especially been a great blessing for Joel who is at a point in language where he is really trying to explore into the Senegalese culture and it is not easy to find people with a good enough level of French to do that with. \u00a0Yet here is someone, just next door, who loves to share his live and culture with Joel. \u00a0Thank you God!<\/p>\n

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Some of our other neighbors<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Who we are slowly but surely connecting with more and more<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And learning how to relate to in a meaningful way<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mosquito Update<\/strong><\/p>\n

We got rain this past week, which was really nice, but also a slight challenge with our roof situation. \u00a0Today we came to an agreement with our landlord that we are going to take over paying for the construction and then we will stop paying rent until we have recovered the money. \u00a0It means that we will be putting more money upfront, but it is worth it to close up our roof and we will eventually gain that money back from not paying rent. \u00a0The nice part is that we are directing what part of the construction is getting done first, which of course is our roof and the mosquito screen. \u00a0They tell us it will be done in 2 weeks, and although I am not holding my breathe for that, it is nice to at least see things starting in the right direction. \u00a0Poor Ethan has been the one who has really suffered through this. \u00a0The mosquitoes love him and he is just covered with bites. \u00a0We leave for Dakar in two weeks and we are hoping by then that at least the screens will be done, because we think that is causing most of the problem. \u00a0Until then we are spraying constantly and practicing our mosquito smashing techniques.<\/p>\n

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Other than the mosquitoes, we are doing really well!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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You know just the usual...cooking homemade play dough on a cardboard stove<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And jumping over the obsticals of life<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we first arrived to this country the only people who were patient enough to spend time with us were people we paid to spend time with us or people from the church who wanted to see us grow in culture and language. \u00a0This might sound really sad (and it is) but it is just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":830,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2545],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-updates-and-news","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/830"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/joel-mcmartin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}