Boys, Boys, Boys...and a few girls

It's been a long time since we have blogged. We went two weeks without regular internet service. It's amazing how dependent we have become on the internet for information and communication. Thankfully we were able to check email a few times over those weeks through a cellular internet device and had the opportunity to let family know that we were okay.

The purpose of this posting is really to simply show some photos of the kids for friends and family back home. They are growing physically and learning contentment in all that God has given us. We have moments where they are running and playing outside, excited to see new little faces show up in the yard to enjoy some football or gymnastics, and other times when they can't think of anything to do with themselves. (This was no different in America...we are still learning.) This past week has been a new season here in Ndu which has kept the kids inside quite a bit. We thought that there was only rainy season and dry season. We have now learned that just as the rainy season is about to begin, we enter smokey season. People are preparing their farm field for planting and that means burning out all of the brush, weeds, and left behind cornstalks. I'll try to get a picture posted soon of the farm fields here on campus. The smoke makes breathing and seeing difficult, but when the fields are ready for planting, the campus looks great.

Isaiah and Jonathan can often be found helping in the kitchen. Isaiah also has a fond affection for Billy Bob. Fortunately, Billy also seems to like him. They communicate well with each other since Isaiah makes a better goat sound than anyone I have ever heard. If you're concerned about the photos, yes, we really did buy large daggers(or small swords, depending how you look at it) for the three older boys. Don't worry, Noah's is relatively dull and the other boys only use them for shaving sticks and creating the sharpest wooden swords and daggers they can possibly make.

Chickens

When Dale and I were first dating, I was working at a Christian bookstore in northern Wisconsin. One memorable afternoon, Dale stopped by for a short visit. He smelled awful and was covered with blood and chicken feathers. Dale had spent the early part of the day butchering chickens with a family from our church. I think this activity was required in order to really be official as a youth pastor in northern Wisconsin. He describes the process like this: first you place the chicken's head between two nails, one person holds its body still and keeps the wings in place, another person then chops the head off with an axe, and finally, you hold it up by its legs while the wings flap and all the blood drains out through the neck. It is easy to understand how a person could end up smelling and looking like a chicken by the end of the day.

Well, two weeks ago, we had the opportunity to experience a nice, clean butchering of chickens. (We eat a lot of ground beef because trying to eat beef any other way requires too much chewing for the boys. We have fish about once a week, when it is available. Chicken is sort of a delicacy that is savored and enjoyed when we are willing to fork out the cash for it and endure the process of getting it.) Martha picked up two chickens on her way to our home a few weeks ago. They came to our house in a sack. She put them out in the "back kitchen" for the morning. We were waiting for our neighbor's cook to have a free moment to come and kill the chickens because Martha has a bit too much sympathy for them and, when possible, prefers to avoid the actual killing part. The first photo is of the chickens enjoying their last meal. The second photo is the butchering. It was an amazingly neat and clean process. Ancilla pinned the chicken down with both her feet and simply made a small slit for the blood to drain from his little body. It wasn't gruesome, and there was no mess. Why don't they do it this way in Wisconsin?

Josiah had really wanted to do the butchering himself. Maybe next time. The boys did get to watch and also learn how to clean it. Martha was very helpful in showing them how to remove the feathers and the outer skin. We also learned that the heart, gizzards, etc. are very important for the Cameroonians. I was glad to be able to share these. I am not sure if this was unique to the Wimbum people or is common throughout Cameroon, but chickens are oftened prepared by the groom's family and delivered to the bride's family to notify them that the marriage has taken place. Without the portions I so quickly gave away, the gift would be no good.

Football

Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon the students on campus play a few football matches. This past week, one of Dale's Greek students from this past semester invited him to join his team for a game. Football happens to be the biggest sport here in Cameroon, and just about everyone seems to be able to handle the ball quite well. I think Dale kept up with the group just fine, but I am sure they are probably finding that he is much more valuable to them as a teacher than a teammate on the football field. I'd like to tell you that the photo is of Dale's incredible breakaway which led to the game winning goal...but...that's not quite what happened. It was fun to watch, and I think an enjoyable opportunity to see students outside of the classroom for some great fellowship. Isaiah joined the team photo because he was

confident that he should have been on the field with the guys.

Cameroon Missionary Fellowship

I've wanted to take a few moments to share a little bit about our time in Bamenda, enjoying fellowship with the other missionaries with the Cameroon Baptist Convention. I confess that I was not certain beforehand that I was really looking forward to this time. To the entire family's surprise, we all were very thankful to have made the trek on the dust-covered roads to the Cameroon Missionary Fellowship (CMF). The kids were nervous about the kids program and what it would be like to be away from mom and dad for the meetings. I was a little uncertain about a busy schedule and managing naps and caring for Isaiah.

I have to mention, briefly, that traveling the road in dry season looks somewhat like traveling in Wisconsin in January. The dust is very similar to snow in its appearance as it sprays up from the wheels and covers everything. There are even times when you feel as though you are driving through a bit of a dust blizzard. We are so very grateful for God's protection and for the grace that He has given to Gerald, our driver. Gerald makes this trek sometimes multiple times during the week, and I have come to learn that it is both physically and mentally exhausting to drive the roads safely.

Our time at CMF was a wonderful blessing. Some of the missionaries had brought in a team of four from Connecticut to lead the children's program. This was a great VBS type program for the kids. They had a great time playing games, doing crafts, and memorizing Scripture. They also enjoyed simply having some adults with energy caring for them and other kids to run and play with. Micah is actually thinking maybe we should stay in Cameroon so that he can go to CMF again next year. :-)

The time for Dale and I was refreshing and a very nice break. We were even able to do a little grocery shopping without the 4 older boys and also have some moments just to relax and talk together. I think one of the greatest things about this time in Bamenda, however, was all that we learned during the times with the other missionaries... those who have been here and are committed to serving here for many years. These are some of the things that Dale and I learned that we want to share with you. (Please note: We are not career missionaries and are not writing from our own experience. We do not write this to attempt to affect the responses of our friends and family to our ministry either while we are here in Cameroon or after we return.)

1. MK’s: This time at CMF, along with the homeschool co-op that meets twice each year, is extremely important for the missionary kids. Though the kids are learning a great deal on the mission field, they often are struggling to build relationships with other children who are very different from them. Because of cultural differences, language barriers, and differences in the way that children are raised, many of the missionary kids don’t spend much time at all with the other children in their villages.

2. Culture Shock: It’s somewhat hard to believe that the return culture shock is often more difficult than the initial culture shock that is experienced when a family moves over seas. We had many conversations with missionaries who feel this is the reality. Why? These are some of the things that were shared:

1. Serving in a different culture means that you change, and often times your friends and family back home aren’t ready to accept that.

2. Also, your friends and family back home will likely go through some major life changes while you are gone, but too often, they don’t tell you about them until you return. Many said they came home and were expected to know that their church had split or a friend’s father passed away, but no one ever wrote asking for prayer or informing them.

3. While you might think grocery shopping in America would be easier, many of them say there are so many choices and so many places to go that it is actually paralyzing.

4. It’s often hard for missionaries to rejoin their church community. Some of them said it is actually easier to fellowship in a church where nobody knows they are missionaries. Then they are not treated as though they are supposed to be some sort of super-Christians or are too busy to engage into the community life.

5. On the other hand, some said that while they want to reconnect, it may take them a little bit of time. It is often hard to initiate becoming involved in a small group or even just meeting with an old friend. A specific invitation is much better than a general one. One missionary said that she connected with few people on furlough because when she was told, “Let’s have coffee some time,” it meant that she needed to make the call and set the date.

3. Supporting Churches, friends and family: We heard great stories and very sad stories from missionaries related to how they were cared for by friends, family, and churches while out on the field, as well as when they returned home for furlough. Here are a few things that we learned from what they shared:

While On the Field-

1. Let them know you are praying for them. Read their newsletters, ask questions if necessary, and pray.

2. Mail is wonderful, especially when such care is taken that a birthday card actually arrives before their birthday. (This sometimes means sending it two months ahead of time.)

3. News from home is always appreciated, especially if you can send it without always expecting a timely response.

4. Short term teams sent from supporting churches are extremely encouraging, usually. They love to have you come and serve along side of them and learn about the culture they live in. Unfortunately, we also heard about a team that came hoping more for an adventurous vacation, and not at all prepared to engage the culture, endure harder circumstances, and encourage without being overly critical of the way of life they were coming to serve in. (One short termer was actually found washing her hair with filtered water because the running water was out and all water was becoming scarce.)

5. Many missionaries still need their churches to send them sermons. Though many churches are now putting sermons online, many missionaries lack internet access or have such slow internet that it is impossible to download them. They need the hard copies. Many of them are fellowshipping in a church where they can’t understand the sermon or the sermon is entirely unbiblical.

6. We also learned that often times people back home assume that their missionaries have made new best friends with their teammates. We think that they should get along so easily since they are all missionaries and out serving God half way across the world. The reality is that they need more prayer, encouragement, and often even counseling and wisdom from pastors back home than you might think. Some teammates have strongly opposing theological views, making it difficult to teach a course together, translate Scripture together, or plant a church. When they are the only ex-patriots within hours of each other, naturally, they share a closeness and a companionship that is unlike what you may share with you neighbor in the US. However, we heard numerous stories of substantial conflict resulting from differing personalities and differing parenting philosophies among other things.

7. Unfortunately, we also heard a story of a family that lost one of their supporters because they had taken a week of vacation at the beach.

At Home/Furlough:

1. Some of the missionaries told us they have 40-50 supporting churches! That means that when they have a 9 month furlough, all of their time is spent travelling throughout the US and Canada giving reports and connecting with supporting congregations. They return to the mission field exhausted. As a church in America, maybe we need to look at how much we are giving and how we are caring for those we send out, instead of how many we are sending/supporting. (Missionaries don’t have 40 supporting churches because they are greedy. They need more churches to come along side them because so little is being given.)

2. The experience that missionaries have when reporting to their churches varies greatly. Some felt they had many opportunities to share with the congregation about their missions, while others said they may have driven 6-8 hours and had three minutes to share about the last 3 years of their ministry. We also were told that most of the missionaries feel that there are very few people that are really interested in knowing any more than what can be shared in 3 minutes. Unfortunately, this is also what friends and family are communicating.

3. One couple shared with us that the best care they received was from a pastor who recommended that they spend some time in counseling. It wasn’t because he sensed something was broken and needing to be fixed, but because he knew that it would bring forth conversation that would strengthen them for the work God had prepared for them.

4. One of the greatest challenges that missionaries shared with us was that they felt many people assumed they knew what the missionary on furlough needed in terms of care from their churches and friends, but few people ever asked.

5. A few other wonderful experiences with churches that missionaries shared with us: one couple said they went on their first date in three years because someone offered to watch their kids, another family said that after travelling and giving reports throughout furlough, they were delighted when one of their church’s mission’s committees decided to meet with them at Chuck E Cheese, one of the women mentioned the value of having been personally invited to a women’s Bible study at her church, one missionary mentioned that some former missionaries advised their church on practical care packages which were given to them while home for a missions conference, and many of the missionaries said that they were confident that there were people in their churches that were praying regularly for them.

While some of these things may not be characteristic of all missionaries and may be more typical for those ministering in Africa, most of what was shared with us, we felt was insightful and helpful in shaping our own desire to care for and encourage missionaries. We are thankful for the time we had with all of the missionaries we were able to briefly get to know in Bamenda, and we continue to pray that God would use our time here in Cameroon to open our eyes to see how we can serve Him faithfully and encourage others to do so also.

When the Cameroonians Have a Passion for Missions

I came across this paragraph while grading some assignments from the Galatians class. This is an MA student with missions emphasis. She is reflecting on Galatians 5:6 & 14 where Paul says that only faith working through love counts and the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Her reflection is exciting to read because it shows that God is raising up people from every tongue and tribe of the world to be his ambassadors to bring the good news of Christ to every tongue and tribe.

“The Great Commission cannot effectively be accomplished when the Great Commandment is not faithfully practiced. What do I mean by this? I am saying here that in order for us missionaries to effectively proclaim the good news of Christ Jesus, we should be able to back our gospel with aspects of love to the people we come in contact with. We should be willing to provide basic needs for a group of people who are in desperate need like those in Somali, Sudan who do not have food because of constant war and drought in their countries. When we meet up with this, I believe the people will be willing to receive our gospel and why not making Christ their Lord and Saviour. Jesus Christ showed us this example by feeding people physically and spiritually.”

A Word About Bible Reading

Last year, at this time, I preached a sermon at Valley Springs Presbyterian Church about being committed to reading your Bible on a regular basis (you can still listen to the sermon online at www.valleysprings.org/sermons, dated Dec. 27, 2009). Every Christmas, we celebrate the great gift of God the Son coming to dwell with us in human flesh. The incarnation is one of the great miracles upon which our hope of salvation firmly rests. But Christ’s humiliation is not God’s only condescending act for humanity. The fact that God has chosen to speak to us through human language and human grammatical constructs, which we can read and understand, also is a great gift from God. The Bible is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. And it is readable and accessible in our language. And the Bible contains “the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68). We would be fools to ignore such a great gift. In fact, we cut ourselves off from “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3) if we do not deepen our knowledge of the Word. We cut ourselves off from the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, if we do not soak in God’s word (Eph. 5:18 & 6:17 with Col. 3:16).

So the challenge still stands for the new year. Be a person of the Book. This is not necessarily a challenge to read through the Bible in one year or follow one certain plan; it is a challenge to regularly, daily, let the Word of God shape and transform your mind and your heart and your life. Will you step up to the challenge in 2011?

From my personal experience, I have found that it is difficult to be regular in the Word without a plan. The last two years I have used the Bible reading plan found in the ESV Study Bible, with some modifications to fit the high school ministry at Valley Springs. I do not have a modified plan to offer you for 2011, but let me lead you to several options. I do not challenge you to use a plan just to have something to check off, but to have something to help you develop a regular habit of reading God’s Word. With any of these plans, modify them as needed, but let them help you soak in God’s Word.

This ESV Study Bible reading plan that I have used, along with other reading plans, can be found at http://www.esv.org/resources/reading-plans-devotions/. These reading plans come in various formats. You can set the plan of your choice to be your homepage on your web browser, or even subscribe to the RSS feed, if you want to follow it like a blog. Of course, you can do as I do and print the plan and carry the copy in your Bible.

For 2011, I plan to use the M’Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan. Robert Murray M’Cheyne was a Scottish pastor in the early 19^th century. Although he died at the early age of 29, he has impacted the church greatly, especially through this Bible reading plan. I was introduced to this plan as a teenager by my pastor and used it then. It leads you to read through the Old Testament once and the Psalms and New Testament twice in one year. You can skip the last column and read through the whole Bible once in the year. I look forward to a new year of continuing to be shaped and transformed by God’s Word.

I encourage you to browse through these plans (or do your own Google search for Bible reading plans) and pick one and stick to it. If you miss one or more days, don't give up. Just keep plugging along. The point is not to just "do a plan," but to put yourself in a place where God's Word can shape and influence you. May God richly bless you in 2011 as you feed on his Word.

Christmas in Cameroon

We enjoyed a peaceful Christmas here in Cameroon. It was certainly much different than Christmas in the US. We did not go shopping the day after Thanksgiving, but I did do a little marketing with an American friend. I picked up a few relatively dull knives for the boys to use to cut weeds and carve a little into sticks. The man I purchased them from offered to sharpen them, but I thought they would be just fine the way they are. I was able to get four of them for about 80 cents. My understanding is that Cameroonians use them out on their farms and for peeling potatoes. I also found a Cameroonian football jersey and shorts for each of the boys, except Isaiah. Isaiah is fascinated with pushing things around the house, particularly a stool that makes an awful racket. Our cook, Martha, has a nephew who is a carpenter and was able to make a little toy from wood that he could push. Dale created a tire swing for the boys.

We brought along our advent calendar that we purchased several years ago from www.desiringgod.org. This has been one of the highlights of our Christmas season ever since and was a small taste of home throughout the advent season. We also read an advent story together, Bartholomew’s Passage, everyday during lunch. Dale is home each day for lunch, in fact, we eat every meal together except for breakfast a few days each week. The only Christmas songs we heard or sang with a congregation throughout all of advent were at a Sunday evening Vespers service in the chapel here at CBTS. While we enjoyed the familiar choruses, we were hoping to hear some traditional African Christmas songs. Other than our advent calendar and a small Christmas tree candle, we didn’t bring any decorations. I had told the boys that the candle would be our tree this year. Just into December, our gardener asked Dale if he should cut down a tree for us. We were very thankful and surprised the boys with a Christmas tree one Saturday afternoon. Our neighbors even loaned us a few strands of lights, and we made some paper chains and snowflakes. We even used tree clippings to make a few wreaths and to decorate the mantle.

I tried to give our house help the day off on Friday since it was Christmas Eve. However, it was market day, so our cook did some marketing for us. Also, though I had planned leftovers for Friday, she still had to grind the beef which kept her here longer than I had hoped. The student who is helping with general house work over the break insisted on coming to be sure that the floors were clean for our Christmas day. (We sweep and mop floors twice each week with multiple extra sweepings in between, but still they are always covered with red dust.) Our laundress also came for a few hours. I think maybe they were all a bit concerned about our ability to survive an extra day without them.

Throughout Christmas weekend, we enjoyed many familiar things. I made taco salad on Friday night with some Ranch dressing packets brought from home, we had a chocolate chip coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas morning (chips used sparingly as one bag from Costco must last as long as we can make it), we had garlic parmesan chicken on Christmas day (parmesan cheese brought from home), and we brought marshmallows, graham crackers, and Hershey bars to make s’mores Christmas night. Dale even made chocolate chip pancakes Sunday night with homemade buttermilk. We decided that we ought to enjoy the treats now since there is always a possibility that a mouse will find them. We even had the opportunity to play with a little snow. (Of course, it was instant snow that sticks to your fingers but does not pack well enough to make anything but a wall or mountain.) We did pass some along to our cook and laundress. This is likely the only snow that their children will ever experience.

Though we enjoyed treats from home, we also had a few treats the Cameroonians enjoy. I asked Martha to buy some sugar cane at market for us to try. She returned with two sticks about 5 feet tall and told me they did not have the large sticks. Really??? You peel the outside, bite a chunk off and chew on it to get the sugar out. Then you spit out the remains. Martha also brought us some chin-chin which is the only traditional Cameroonian Christmas treat that I was told about when I asked. I don’t know for sure how to describe chin-chin, but if you visit us next Christmas, maybe we will have some. Other than chin-chin, my understanding is that they just eat and drink A LOT. Christmas is the time when everyone wants to settle their debts, and others probably go into debt in order to prepare a feast. Someone from campus brought an entire cow to store in our deep freezer for the week before Christmas.

We have another week to finish grading from the first semester. Please pray that we finish all that we need to and that Dale also will be able to sleep some. On January 5th, we will travel to Bamenda for a missionary fellowship conference. Please pray for safe travels as the roads are awful and the drive takes approx. 6 hours. Shortly after we return, we will welcome another couple from the US that will be here to teach for the second semester. We would love for you also to be praying for Andrew and Susan’s arrival as well as the friendships that we look forward to with them.