Our New Normal: Campus

The language school in Albertville has been in existence for 47 years. It was started just as it continues today – a place for missionaries to learn French in order to live and work in Francophone countries. Except instead of seven students, it has grown to somewhere around 60! The campus consists of four buildings and some lovely areas for the kiddos to play. The parking lot is more often used as a courtyard with community bikes and balls and picnic tables. Levi has already mastered riding a bike (no training wheels), and Amelia is loving the scooters. There is a small swing set in another part of the yard that has a baby swing, too.

Classrooms and single-room apartments – also the kids’ favorite place to ride bikes and scooters!

The first building is a large old house, covered in vines. It houses some storage and a large family (it has six bedrooms). The other three buildings are all connected, but separate sections. The first is the administrative building, but also has a conference room, the laundry room, a large break room with a ping pong table and one family apartment.

This beautiful old house houses sits at the front of campus. Pascal, in the photo, lives here with his parents and four younger siblings.

The tallest building is where our classrooms are but also has single student housing (or married students without kids). The last building is the “family building” – it has eight apartments and where we call home. We are also very blessed to have the nursery in this building for the school hours, so our littles are close by.

The family building is where we call home, though none of those are our windows…and, of course, the Alps in the background.

The Family Building is a fun mix of private two and three bedroom apartments. All four Congo Families live in this building, so we hang out a bit and, all being table game lovers, tend to play games late at night once kids are in bed and studying is done (mostly…).

The top floor Matthew and I call the Medical Wing, because all three apartments house doctors and their families. Having a pediatrician, OB/GYN and a surgeon one floor up has its perks. Two of those families will be serving at a hospital in Vanga, about an hour and a half flight from Kinshasa, supported by MAF. The floor below us houses two families, one of whom are the other MAF couple here and headed to Eastern DRC. We are so glad to get to know them (though we first met in Idaho this summer) and we look forward to the arrival of their first kiddo this winter! Actually, three ladies in this building are pregnant…what a fun winter it will be!

There are quite a few families that live nearby off campus, too. You see a lot of bikes and strollers parked around campus during school hours. The weather here for our first month has been lovely – only three days of rain and it’s topped 80F most of the sunny days, so walking and biking are a favorite mode of transportation. I will talk about the town off campus things in an upcoming post.

The campus is bursting at the seams with students eager to serve and learn French, but it is a place where God is working and the staff are so ready and willing to teach.

Matthew and I are different classes – he is in the next level up. It’s fun that way. We often see each other on breaks, and, of course, during lunch. I also have a blog post coming about our daily schedule, where I will go into detail about “a day in the life.”

Thank you for praying for our time here – and may it continue to be on your hearts!

Snickers the cat hangs around campus and loves the kids…and by “loves” I mean, “puts up with their attention.”