every time i sit down to write here I don't know what to say. Sorry it always takes me so long. this week was better than last week was-- thank you for your prayers. I have really felt God's peace. I truly feel content in him. I feel like I'm where God wants me to be right now, and i feel like he's revealing alot to me about future decisions I need to make. It's truly incedible. I'm not going to lie, as you all know... it's really hard here sometimes. I really miss people from home at points, but over all i really love it. I'm so glad i came. okay so now i suppose I'll tell you what i did this week--

Hospitality Center

Before the ship opened for surgery in Benin a church team came and set up the hospitality center. They basicaly cleared out the entire warehouse and put beds in it, and electricity... it's a home for the people that have to travel a long way to have surgeries--or for the families of those recieving medical attention. We can visit the hospitality center whenever we want to. We can just visit with the different people there, or play with the children. It's strange, before now I always thought that my greatest ministry would be playing with the children. Since I've been here though I've really felt more led to talk with the women ( or attempt to talk.. with the tiny amount of french I've picked up) We usually just laugh together, and dance, and watch the kids.. laughing at the ridiculous things they do. I used to make fun of the people using signs to talk to each other because they had a language barrier.. but that's me everyday here. :) i'm drawing pictures in the dirt, playing charades, speaking in spanish (ha.. not that it really helps, but sometimes the words sound more similar than in english) all of which usually ends with laughter. I'm going to attempt to describe the hospitality center to you, and the road it's on. We walk there, down dirt or rock roads. It's only about ten minutes away from the ship. We pass "shops" along the way... which consist of little shacks usually. or open buildings (there's three walls) everything here is dirty. I don't know how else to describe it. You get used to it really fast, if you are a believer in germ X application every ten seconds i woulnd't suggest coming here, even the air is dirty. people use the restroom in the streets, i dont think i need to describe that. people on the ship have started jokes about the smells here now though. One girl suggested we make scented candles with the lovely smell of cotonue.. we have fresh urine, sun baked urine, or stale urine. I apologize.. I know that's discusting, and probably not very funny to you. Anyways.. people always click at you to get your attention, or just full on yell "yovo!" but you just keep walking, unless it's a child.. then you can play with them if you want to. anyways, we walked for a little while down the street and turn into an alley-- a dirt road in between two concrete buildings that leads to a fence.. we walked through the gate of the fence and we were at the hospitality center! hooray! there's a concrete slab out front that we usually play with the kids on-- we bring chalk, and coloring books, and our selves. Theres a few rows of benches with a tent over it people can sit on and talk under or whatever they want to do. There's usually a few mothers nursing there.. It's still really hard for me to get used to-- mothers just nursing away in public. I've also had to realize that my standards for modesty aren't neccsarily the whole worlds standards for modesty. For example, in America of course it would be considered innapropriate to walk around topless... but we don't worry about showing our knees. Here walking around topless is okay.. but if you show your knees it's really innappropriate. I wore shorts when we got to the beach and i felt so strange. ha. I felt like i was being so premiscous. I'm going to come home and be so shocked to see everyones knees! o dear! ha. Okay, so I didn't actually go inside the hospitality center, I just looked in. There are alot of beds lined up, and big tents for different families to stay in. It was pretty nice. It's always awkward when you first arrive somewhere-- on one of the mercy ministry sites.. because you don't quite know what to do. You just want to say, "hello! i'm here to bless you." that sounds quite ridiculous doesn't it? but that's the mindset i tend to have. I'm not really sure what i'm actually accomplishing through all of this. Anyways, I arrived and looked around really awkwardly after i said my "bonjour"s and then i was attacked by the children. First I colored with a little boy named benjamin- he was having surgery on his foot. He taught me the colors in french, and how to say crayon. There was a lady nursing next to me. I attempted to talk to her, but was dragged away by benjamin.. wanting to color with chalk. Since i can't speak french the children and i tend to just make random noises with our mouths (clicking noises) back and forth.. basicaly competing to have the strangest one. It's pretty entertaining for a little while. The women laugh at me. Not in a mean way, they think it's funny. I would laugh at me too. There was one little boy there named Theopil and he had had surgery on his eye-- so he had a big patch over it, and another boy named freddy who had surgery on his hand. there was a little girl there about three who had had surgery on her hand. we all colored together.. and the little girl just ran around singing "do dee da do dee da doe dee da" at the top of her lungs. I joined her of course.. and she made me go stand by the wall. I don't know why. she just pushed me up against the wall and told me not to move. ha. i think i was being punished for ruining her song. Theopil was a really good artist. most of the little boys just scribbled but he was drawing really good detailed things in chalk. when i told he and freddy my name they misunderstood and called me Beningen. Freddy drew an elephant and put my "name" in it. i dont quite know if he's calling me an elephant... or what. I then decided to go sit with the ladies.. and we just watched and laughed. They always want to hold your hand, and show you to their friends.. like you're a prize. It's interesting. The men there decided they should test out cheslea's math skills. So they wrote out these really big multiplication problems for her to do. Math i suppose is a universal language. ha. i hate math (sorry Mr. Walker). It was funny though, they were very entertained watching her work out these multiplication problems. They were all so excited when she got it right. well, the time finaly came for us to leave. The sun was setting. I can see the sunset now which is nice. it's beautiful. somehow when the sun goes down over this dirty city, over the broken down buildings and discusting streets it's so breath taking. I keep taking mental pictures in my mind because i don't think a camera could to anything i see here justice. I feel like I can try as hard as i possibly can to explain all of this to you, but it's still never going to make complete sense. I wish i could just transplant all of you here for a little while to show you what im talking about..

Camping!

well, last week i thought i was going to go to Togo, but we found out Visas are $50 for Americans, and I didn't want to (nor could i) pay that. So instead we went west. We took a taxi two hours west of Cotonue to grand popo. It was so great. I was feeling so trapped here on the ship, here in this city. I dunno, i just haven't seen green in a really long time, so I was slightly freaking out. I need to see the sky, I need to see a field, or a tree that's still alive at least once a month to function i believe. We started driving and about an hour out of the city I saw a field of green grass and a row of trees and i almost cried. I know that's so dramatic but I was so happy to see God's creation. We arrived at Grand Popo and sat by the beach for a while, we got to see the people bringing in the fishing nets which was really cool. We set up our lovely mosquito net and then sat around and read and wrote and listened to music all day. It was so nice. so relaxing. I could actually breathe out here. It was reallycool to sleep on the ground with a mosquito net under the beautiful night sky. I'm going to try to put up some pictures.. i need to get back to work soon. o! random fact: the night we got back people from the ship were having a bonfire down by the beach so i got to go to that, it was really nice. I'm glad I went. I hope you all have a blessed week!