Burkina Faso

This last weekend we took a little vacation to Burkina Faso and did some hiking, swimming, and wildlife watching. The trip took us a little over 4 hours to get there by the time we filled out our visas and all the other things we had to do at the boarder. Burkina is one country south of us in Mali. They are a little farther from the desert so it was quite a bit greener than it is in Koutiala. We were just tagalongs with Barry, Terri, Ben, and Jake. One of the first things we did was go shopping for the items that are not available to us here in Koutiala which are things like cheese, hamburger, and just the normal kinds of things you would buy in a grocery store. Then again, we don't have grocery stores here in Koutiala. We even got to eat out at a great Korean restaurant owned by a christian Korean woman. We topped it off with ice cream from the Dany Ice Cream store. For our day trips, we went to some water falls that had little pools of water that we could lounge and relax in not to mention cool off in, and the next day to see some hippos in the wild. The day we went to the falls, it started to turn dark and storm while we were up there. We had a little hike to get down from the falls and we were high tailing it down. We no sooner got down and into the trucks and it cut loose. We made it back safe and sound.
The next trip was to go and see the hippos. It was about an hours drive from the CMA guest house to the lake out side of Bobo. We rode in an aluminum boat that three natives using poles to push us along navigated us to the spot where saw the hippos. Jeffrey counted 48 hippos. We got within 50 to 60 yards of one group of hippos. A few of them were not happy that we were there, but we kept our distance. This place that we went said that in the hot season there are elephants there at the lake to stay cool. We will hopefully get to check that out also.
The hospital building is coming along nicely. We have all the main trusses up and are staring on making the stringers between them. By the middle of July, we should be installing the roof.
Thanks again for all your prayers.