Church, taxi's, Leve Toi and MORE

Hello all! Alysha here. I'm so excited to be writing here again! It feels like I'm connecting with everyone back home, and it's so wonderful.
There's so much to talk about and I have no idea where to start. I think I'll start with what is at the forefront of my mind, so this might not go in a day-to- day order.
It seems as though the biggest attack that we have here in Kinshasa is through physical sickness and pain. We have not had very many days where the whole team has been feeling well and ready to go! Josh currently is not feeling too up to snuff, which we can tell by the way his eating habits have changed!
Today sadly Aurora had to stay home as she was feeling really, really sick. She had been up all night and had gotten no sleep. It's hard to know what to do to make someone feel comfortable in this kind of situation, because I know that all I would want in that moment would be my mom. :) We've prayed for her as a team but we never turn away the chance at more prayer so please keep our teams health on your minds as you pray.
Though it was ahrd not having Aurora with us today it also gave the team as chance to stretch ourselves and step out. The day was good! We were at Leve Toi which is a school for blind and disabled children, it's amazing the things that Mama Jullianne has done with this school! Now it has a variety of children coming to it. Blind, deaf, mute, physically disabled, and mentally handicapped. This women has just reached out her arms to all those who society has shunned. We were told by Jean-Baptiste today that for the most part handicapped children are not even seen as being part of them family and they are not considered to have any potential in their lives. This makes it difficult for a lot of them to get to school because no one sees the job of getting them to school important. It's pretty sad really, and it makes you wonder what can be done so more of these children can learn and get to school. There also having a lot of building problems because of stone quarry that is near by and the loud noises of them breaking rocks and all the other effects of that is ruining their buildings and their foundations. There's so much good going on in that place, pray that they are filled with energy and renewed passion for the work they are doing there.
Now to jump back to Friday. We had a little bit of taxi trouble travelling to where we needed to go, it was a long two taxi rides somewhere near the airport. These taxi rides have not been fun for me as I pinched a nerve or something while hauling sandbags and sitting down on wooden benches in these taxis is not so great! Once we got to the NGO of Peace that we were heading to we were given a tour and then we sat down with the staff from the NGO and chatted with them about what they're doing and what their vision is. They started up basically a youth drop in center with games and an HIV/AIDS testing center. It's great because the youth come in the play games and get off the street and the workers get to hang out with them and chat with them and teach them all sorts of stuff. They started this map where they have pin pointed the "red" spots in the neighbourhood as well as the "safe" spots, namely churches or similar centres. They are partnered with 74 churchs who said they were interested in starting up something similar and wanted to know what to do! We headed to a church afterwards where we were welcomed with singing from more choirs, I'm continually struck with insane amounts of joy each time they start to sing. We then were given more food which was delicious! We were told we were going to lose a lot of weight here but that hasn't happened to most of us yet, we're being too well fed! I'm sure I'm missing out on sooo much but there's a lot to fit in!
Saturday was our Tourism day, we headed out to an MCC store where we were able to buy some souveniers, all the stuff is made by workers who are paid fair prices for the work that they do. Some of the sculptures were incredible and they had awesome furniture, plates/dishes and other household knick-knacks. After that we headed to go and see this artists shop but when we got there we found out that he had moved his large gallery elsewhere but he had a few pieces lying around. He does really cool work with metal, bending it, scratching it and shaping it. It was great to hear him talk about his work and see him so passionate about what he does. We get to go back to learn how he does some of his work and try it out ourselves, it should be interesting. :) The people's welcoming nature here is incredible sometimes.
After that we headed to Eric's house, Jean-Baptiste's assistant, and learned how to make a Congolese meal. We mixed Kasava leaves with peanut puree and dried fish, we fried fish, mixed Fu-Fu (or Foo-Foo, I'm not really quite sure) which was a lot more difficult than we thought, and cooked some chicken. I'm sorry that I don't remember the Congolese names for all these dishes. While dinner was being cooked by different team members Amanda and I were blessed to get our hair braided. It was pretty painful and I know that I had a watery eye once or twice, especially when all three girls were yanking my head in different directions. :) But now we no longer really have to wash our hair! How excited are you guys to welcome us home?! ;) After Eric's we headed to Jon and Anicka's, two missionaries here to play some games and watch a little bit of monster's Inc. it was great to spend some time with them and Anicka had made some amazing banana bread! :)
So Sunday we headed off to Pastor Mulumbu's church, we had much debate over whether we were going to Pastor Mulumbu's or Pastor Muvungu's church. We eventually have learned to differentiate them by saying Mulumbu- the small pastor or Muvungu- the big pastor. It was an incredible 3.5 hour church service mainly filled with 9 choirs and a worship team singing. Their voices are so powerful and the people seem passionate about singing praises to our God. It's beautiful, we told them that we wanted to bring them back with us so that we could experience that much excitement and passion every Sunday. Their voices just fill the church, without microphones or antyhing! It really is totally different than a church service here, there's nothing to compare it to, it's just wonderful! After that we got to sit down to another wonderful meal with the Pastor and a few other church members. We met a woman who had lived in Canada for 3 years and in Fresno California for 3 as well! Her English was therefore pretty good and it was great to hear another person's outlook on a few things in Canada (such as our COLD winters )! It was a blessing to be there and then we headed home.
That's all for now! I hope that this fills some of you in on what to pray for and what we have been doing the past few days! We think and pray for you often! :) Much love from us all!