Please continue to lift our family in prayer, as well as the students and faculty at CBTS. We look forward to sharing much more with you in regular blog updates over the next several months.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
We have a departure date!
Thank you for praying for us in our preparations to leave for Cameroon. We now have purchased plane tickets and are awaiting the official visas from the Cameroon Embassy here in the US. We will depart on Friday Oct 29th. We will be flying to Chicago and then on to Europe. After a short 3 hour lay over in Europe, we will continue into Cameroon, arriving early Saturday evening. Once in Cameroon, we will have two days of driving before arriving at the Seminary in Ndu.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
We'll be there soon
After several months of waiting for approval for residency, we still have not received the necessary paperwork to enter Cameroon and stay. It turns out that the official in charge of these documents was dismissed by the president of Cameroon this summer, and while a replacement was hired, he has not yet started working.
CBTS has decided that it would be best for us to come now on a six month visa rather than continuing to wait for residency. The 6 month visa can be applied for at the embassy in Washington DC and does not require the more extensive paperwork from Cameroon. We expect to be able to apply for the Visa early this week, purchase plane tickets and depart some time during the week of Oct. 24th.
How does this affect the seminary? Our time serving at CBTS was planned for this current academic school year in order to help fill in for a professor that needed to take an unexpected leave of absence. The president and academic dean of CBTS have been able to work out a schedule which will allow Dale to teach all of the classes they had hoped for him to teach this year. While we are late for the first semester, Dale will still teach all five courses as originally planned. Three of these will be taught during the rest of the semester with make up class times in the evenings. The other 2 courses will be taught as intensives during January. We will be in Cameroon for a majority of the second semester, but with the six month visa will have to leave a few weeks before classes typically end. These class times will be made up with a few extra meetings during the semester as well.
While this is not what we had anticipated when God called us to Cameroon this past June, we trust that this is His plan. Please be praying for our final two weeks here in California as we finish packing and say goodbye. We recognize that the 6 months in Cameroon will be much fuller than we expected as we condense 9 months of classes into 6 months. Please pray for strength and endurance. We are overjoyed to be a part of the ministry at CBTS. Please be praying for the students in Dale's classes who will be working on this shortened schedule, for the effect this may have on their families and their abilities to learn and retain what is taught in the classes.
(The photo is of Isaiah packing his clothes for the trip. We will be packing everything we need into 12 rubbermaid actionpackers. Isaiah will sit on our laps on the plane...not in one of the actionpackers.)
CBTS has decided that it would be best for us to come now on a six month visa rather than continuing to wait for residency. The 6 month visa can be applied for at the embassy in Washington DC and does not require the more extensive paperwork from Cameroon. We expect to be able to apply for the Visa early this week, purchase plane tickets and depart some time during the week of Oct. 24th.How does this affect the seminary? Our time serving at CBTS was planned for this current academic school year in order to help fill in for a professor that needed to take an unexpected leave of absence. The president and academic dean of CBTS have been able to work out a schedule which will allow Dale to teach all of the classes they had hoped for him to teach this year. While we are late for the first semester, Dale will still teach all five courses as originally planned. Three of these will be taught during the rest of the semester with make up class times in the evenings. The other 2 courses will be taught as intensives during January. We will be in Cameroon for a majority of the second semester, but with the six month visa will have to leave a few weeks before classes typically end. These class times will be made up with a few extra meetings during the semester as well.
While this is not what we had anticipated when God called us to Cameroon this past June, we trust that this is His plan. Please be praying for our final two weeks here in California as we finish packing and say goodbye. We recognize that the 6 months in Cameroon will be much fuller than we expected as we condense 9 months of classes into 6 months. Please pray for strength and endurance. We are overjoyed to be a part of the ministry at CBTS. Please be praying for the students in Dale's classes who will be working on this shortened schedule, for the effect this may have on their families and their abilities to learn and retain what is taught in the classes.
(The photo is of Isaiah packing his clothes for the trip. We will be packing everything we need into 12 rubbermaid actionpackers. Isaiah will sit on our laps on the plane...not in one of the actionpackers.)
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