Meeting with Ministry of Education

Hello all,
It has been a good, busy week so far. I have met the students at the school, and almost have all 40 some names down. Hopefully I will have them down by the end of the week. I have just been doing some observing of the classes, to see how the teachers manage their classroom, and to assess what level the students are working at.

This week, we also were supposed to meet with the Minister of Education of Liberia. Unfortunately, the minister's plans changed, but I was still able to meet with the second in command, the Deputy Minister of Administration. This was after being stuck in traffic, walking the rest of the way, climbing to the 6th floor where her office is, and hearing that she had just left because we were late. Fortunately, she came back while we were still in the area, and I had to climb the 6th floors again. I am sure I did not smell the best. Her name is Hawah Goll-Kotchi. I was able to ask her questions about Liberia's education system, and the plans they have for special education.

Overall, Liberia's education system is in desperate need. After the war, the few schools that remained in tact, are jam packed. Overflowing with students. There are few teachers left, since most fled during the war. The children who grew up during the war, are now illiterate adults. And there are a countless amount of children who are now physically disabled with no hands or legs.

The hardest thing for me to swallo, is that there is no special education in place. None. They have established an office and a "department," but there are no trained people to work in it. There is no training for special ed teachers at the university, and no laws to protect the many people with special needs, including the deaf.

There is hope. The ministry is starting to rebuild their education system. And the hope for the deaf, lie in the hands of the few Liberian who are willing to fight for their education and their acceptance, as well as the deaf Liberians themselves. I am working with these kinds of people now, and am encouraged daily by their faith and their determination.


Well, that is what I have been doing. Aaron will post soon about his buisness. I am still working on pictures. Our connection is not very good so it takes a long time!

Peace,

Outside the Compound

This weekend we really got to see a little bit of life here in Monrovia outside the UMC compound where we are staying. We took a trip to a local pizza place and went into a few markets and grocery stores. Then later on in the afternoon we got a walking tour of the Sinkor neighborhood in Monrovia (where the compound is). Then last we we out for dinner and to a small party at a friend of Joel's.

This morning we attended church with Joel. It was a lively service, much more so than we are used to. Although the preacher this morning was from California, go figure.

We are starting to pick up a bit of Liberian culture, the handshake, some lingo, it's a lot of fun.

Tomorow our work begins, we are very excited but don't really know what to expect. We will let you know how it goes.

We are in Africa!

We arrived in Monrovia Wednesay afternoon around 4:30, after almost a full 24 hours of traveling. We were happy to be in Liberia, but exhausted from the trip and out bodies have still yet to adjust to the new time zone, and of course, the heat. Especially Aaron's body.

At our connection flight in Brussels, we met up with a Liberian woman we had met in the states. She was our livesaver at the Liberian airport, helping us get through immigration smoothly, and finding our luggage admist the chaos. We got out of the airport without hassle and were greeted joyously by David Worlobah, his assistant, Eric, and Joel, our host.

Our trip to Monrovia from the airport was about 30 minutes, and we arrived at the UMC compound around 6:00pm. Our home for the next couple of months is nice. We have our own room with a bathroom, which includes running water and a shower. It was a pleasant surprise. We also have electricity for part of the day, starting at 6:30pm until 9:00am. Which means no fans in the afternoon, but we are surviving. We at least have them when we sleep.

So far, we have met all of our neighbors, including a man from the states. We also got a driving tour of the city today. We hope to see more tomorrow, and hopefully will get our phones to contact you back home more easily. Well, we need to go have dinner. Our first meal was spaghetti and barbecue chicken, we will see what it is tonight.

Hope all is well in the states!
Peace.

We Leave Tomorow

Our flight leaves from Chicago tomorrow afternoon and we will arrive in Liberia on Wednesday at about 5 pm local time. We can't believe this day has actually come, it still somehow seems like it's far away.

I just wanted to post once more before we left and let everyone know that we should be able to regularly update the blog from Liberia. It will be much easier for me to post everything here, rather than sending emails. So if you know anyone who wants updates on what we are, this is the place to send them.

We are unbelievably excited about this trip, and have had such a great time so far in the past few months, as busy as they have been. We want to thank everyone for all of your support, and let you know that it's not too late to contribute to our work as we have expenses to pay still, and will have to repay some of what we borrowed for the trip .

We already have several meetings scheduled to share our stories when we are back in August. If you want to come see us, or have us visit just send us an email, or leave a comment. We should have no trouble using our gmail accounts, but just in case I have set up a Yahoo! account for us to use while we are there. The address is lautersinliberia@yahoo.com, we will check this regularly while we are in Liberia.

I could write a lot more about how I excited we are and everything we are doing, but I will save the rest for after we arrive. Check back often, send us emails, pray for us, see you when we get back!

Hope for the Deaf School

Hello All!
I have recently received some pictures from the school I will be working at in Liberia. The pictures are of students I will be teaching and the staff I will working with. I am glad to see some of the faces I will be meeting. It brings me great excitement to our ever closer departure date. I have also received an draft itinerary while I am there. David has me meeting some education officials, along with teaching several classes. I am a little nervous, but know it will be a life changing opportunity.

Enjoy the pictures, and if you have any questions, please let us know.

Peace.

Back to work--AND NEW STUFF!

Well the vacation went by quickly, and I didn't do quite as much work as I thought, but it was a good vacation. I am extremely relaxed right now. Tonight we are driving to Denver and I fly back tomorrow. We are still going to Pikes Peak today though, which should be a lot of fun.

You will notice a few new things along the side of this page. First of all I started using twitter (sort of) and there's a box for that. More importantly, there are a couple of Liberia related news feeds. One is from allafrica.com and the other is from Google News. You can go to those pages and subscribe to those feeds yourself, or you can simply follow them from this page. This will be a good way for everyone to learn more about the situation that we are heading to, and possibly the best way to keep track of what is happening in Liberia while we are away.

Also, I am going to try and start offering some of Tricia's excellent photography for sale as a way to help cover some outstanding trip cost and then in the long run, support the people of Liberia, specifically we would love to raise some money to help send kids to school, and also help the School for the Deaf that Tricia is going to be working at. The site for this shop is stil VERY much in its infancy but you can find it at www.cafepress.com/tricia_aaron

We are starting with photography, but plan on adding more in the future.

I have another new page, also VERY much in its infancy. I'm not sure exactly what I am going to do with it, but my vision is a less personal view of the work we are doing in Liberia. I hope to add more objective views of the situation in Liberia and some of the institutions that are working there. That page can be found at www.squidoo.com/liberia2008. Squidoo looks like a very neat site, so I encourage you to look around and possibly get involved.

Finally, you will notice a button at the bottom of this post to email it to anyone you think might be interested, and you are invited to do so.

I think that is all for now, I am writing this in a bit of a rush, as I am already late to pick up Tricia from school, I can fix the grammar mistakes later. Thanks to everyone who contacted to me to let me know that you are reading...it was very encouraging.

'till next time.

Break Time

I am trying to post more regularly now that the trip is coming up in just over a month. Tricia and I have been pretty busy putting together the details of the trip and what we are going to do when we get back. I plan on posting some details about that later.

As some of you might know, Tricia has been student teaching in Colorado Springs for about a month and a half now, and she will be there until she graduates on May 10. I've been home by myself while she has been away, but I was able to come out visit this week. If you haven't ever been out to Colorado it's pretty amazing. We spent the weekend at a nice little resort town just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park, and did some hiking yesterday. Everywhere you look you can see something stunning, I love it.

Tricia is still teaching during the week so I am just wandering around Colorado Springs enjoying my vacation, and seeing what there is to see.

So how is this post related to Liberia? Well first of all, I wanted to remind you all about Tricia's teaching experience and the awesome professional opportunity that this trip is for her. And also remember the expertise and experience that Tricia will bring to the School for the Deaf while we are in Liberia.

This is week is going to be a great opportunity for me to relax and think creatively about the work that Tricia and I are doing in Liberia and the type of life we would like to have after we get back. I am also doing some brainstorming about how we can do the work we want to do, most effectively. Hopefully this week I will post some sort of insightful ideas that occur to me this week.

Finally, I would like to ask a favor of anyone who reads this. I am not sure how many of you there are out there, so please feel free to email me or leave a comment, even an anonymous one. Since I have been posting so irregularly you can subscribe to this blog (Google Reader is a really neat program for this, I love it.) But you should definitely expect for frequent posting from me. At least until we get to Liberia, I have no idea what to expect as far as Internet access goes there.

Thanks everyone.