Air traffic controllers on strike!

Well, it is 10pm and I am just now starting to write…so this may be short. Today we had another busy morning of cholesterol and CBC tests from 6am to 8:30 am. I am proud to say that we stayed on schedule and had 22 people’s labs run in that time! We were able to join them for worship again this morning which continued to be a blessing. The speaker is a young seminary professor from Southwestern – he has brought several great and encouraging messages. The choir continues to teach the M’s new praise songs – but most of them are not new to me. It’s funny how slow those kind of things trickle over here.
Once again we had several patients during the breaks, but not too bad. I decided to take a little nap instead of going to lunch today because I just didn’t seem to have an appetite for the kind of food I knew we would have. This afternoon we helped Dr. Rick pack up his stuff and get ourselves organized for his departure. Tonight was “Night off” for the parents/adults. They had childcare provided by the host church so they could go into town for dinner. We were able to go to dinner with Nurse Cindy (from Senegal) and her husband. We went to a quaint little Lebanese restaurant about 15 minutes away. As most of you know, I can be a picky eater so I was worried I wouldn’t like it…but it was delicious!! I can’t even tell you what we ordered because it was all in another language, but we had many different things for the table to share. And we had really great French Fries!! It was fun to be out of the hotel in the streets of Abidjan. After dinner they drove us past the IMB headquarters here and then we took Dr. Rick to the airport. It was great to see more of the town – so many people are out on the streets…very interesting but sad conditions. When we arrived back at the hotel we had a call from Dr. Rick to come pick him up from the airport because there was a strike among the air traffic controllers and no flights were leaving or coming from Abidjan!! This apparently started at 1pm today and by law has to be finished by 72 hours. SO…who knows if we will be able to fly out Thursday from here?! The only airline that has permission to fly in and out is Air France because they are under a different controlling mechanism. P lease pray that Dr. Rick will be able to fly out tomorrow – either the strike stops or he is able to transfer over to Air France. I hope things end soon or all the flights will be backed up and it will be difficult for us to get home. Well, I don’t have all t he pictures from tonight – but I will post them in the morning. Here is a few from the last few days. Also tomorrow I want to share about the “One Story” team and ministry here in West Africa…stay tuned!

I tried to upload pictures, but it is not working. I'll try again in the morning.