electric and internet woes

Our electric has been on and off since Saturday, seems a transformer in the area blew up, it got fixed and then blew up again... praise God our co-workers lent us their generator (they're on a different circuit) but still couldn't use washing machine, hot water heater, etc. Well, we finally got electric back and our internet was out, seems like the router that sends out the signal blew up (lots of things getting blown up!). Praise God it got fixed today and we are back online, wohoo! I really shouldn't complain, I just got done reading the biography of Adoniram Judson (with Josh for 3rd grade); he was a missionary to Burma back in the 1800's. Man, life was tough for missionaries back in those days, constantly sick, persecuted, children dying, months to travel back home, years with no furlough... so incredibly dedicated to their work. Seriously, we are soooo blessed today, thank you Lord!

Tomorrow we are heading out to see some of our good friends, the Hamms, that are Bible translators out in the village of Bafangi. Their son is turning 4 so we going to go celebrate with them. They also have a little girl who is a few months older than Jude and they are such good buddies. I'm really looking forward to it, we haven't been out there before and I love seeing more of this beautiful country and it's beautiful people. Hoping the roads won't be too bad as it has been raining a lot lately. Will post pictures when we get back.

Answer to prayer

For anyone that gets our newsletter you probably saw where we were asking for volunteers to come out for the summer and help with Summer School with the kids at HHCH. I taught it last year (as well as our interns) but with baby number 4 due June 1st, I just don't think I'm going to have time this year. Most of our kids are far behind in school so we want to keep their schooling going on through the break. Plus we'll probably have some new children by then who have never been to school so it will be back to basics again.

Well, we just got an email from some good friends that are missionaries in Ghana. They are third generation missionaries that run A.C.E (Accelerated Christian Education) schools there. Jeremiah, the husband, stayed with us about 6 months ago as they are interested in starting a school here too. They are seriously thinking of moving out here in a few years. Well, they just wrote and said they will be coming out for the month of August to teach the summer school (plus spy out the land a little bit too). It is such an answer to prayer as they are already familiar with the African culture and the ways children are taught here, they speak Pidgin fluently and of course they work with a school so they'll be great teachers.

We have had a few other people contact us who are also interested in coming out for the summer (one is a follower of this blog, hint hint, nudge nudge!) and this does not mean you can't come out. We still need teachers for the month of July and even if you could only come out for August we could still definitely use you so keep praying and thinking about it.

Summer school last year, learning the alphabet.

Mushroom season!!

So it's mushroom season in the NW of Cameroon, all I can say is Hallelujah! Everything is so seasonal here (mangos, advocado, oranges, etc.) so when they come around once a year, you really appreciate them. Look at this beauty I just got at the market, I'm making spaghetti Bolognese on Saturday so it will be perfect! Right now I'm trying to work out how to preserve some of them; drying, canning? If anyone has any experience let me know...

Work on the new farm land is going great. On Saturday all of the older kids were out there clearing the spear grass, they are such hard workers! A farming co-op has been volunteering most mornings, tilling the ground. Friday and Saturday they will be planting seed, very exciting!

Looking good! Scroll down two blogs and see the difference already.

Relaxing weekend and finding a lost friend

Jake was down with malaria this weekend so we didn't do too much, just stayed around the house. Saturday I was able to mulch my whole front flower garden (about 60 ft long), a project I've been wanting to do before the rains get really serious and weeds sprout up quicker than you can pull them out. Praise God that Jake was doing a lot better by Sunday but we decided to stay back from church and just rest (The thought of sitting squashed on a backless wooden bench for three hours wasn't very appealing to him). Unfortunately the electric was off all day (as it often is) so my poor husband had no fan. He told me I should stand over him with a palm frond and fan him, I reminded him I was eight months pregnant :-). So laying in bed wasn't much of an option as it was super hot, so we played eight games of Settlers throughout the day instead (such an awesome game, highly recommend it). It was a lot of fun and kept Jake's mind off of the heat.

In the afternoon we were out in the garden, watching the boys play and I was cutting some shrubs back. As we were cleaning up the branches, Seth shouted out, "The turtle, I found the turtle!" Now about 3 months ago a man knocked on our gate and said he had a turtle for sale. Since we love animals and we've never owned a turtle I though it was a great idea. After negotiating the price we brought him in (he is actually a tortoise). We though we would put him out in the yard and let him eat the grass and then we'd put him in a box at night. So we put him out and checked on him during school break but couldn't find him anywhere (I thought they were meant to move slow!). Now we have a pretty big garden/yard, almost an acre with tons of shrubs and nooks n' crannies. We looked and looked but couldn't find the little guy. There's a wall all the way around the property but there is a rain grate in it at the back. I thought he would be too big to get through but wasn't sure. Also at that time there wasn't too much rain so was worried about him not having enough to drink. Anyway, needless to say we hadn't seen him since then and Jake joked that one day we're going to see this giant tortoise come out of the undergrowth. But we finally found him yesterday, he looks great and lot healthier than last time (he was very dry and he shell was all sort of peeling). He munched some carrots and seems fine. So we are probably just going to let him go again as we know he can look after himself, maybe spray paint a bright yellow strip on his back so we can find him easier.

Thanks to everyone that was praying for Jake, he is doing so much better and will be heading up to the bi-weekly staff bible study at HHCH this morning. God is Good!

Farm land praise!

Praise God that the orphanage has been given a plot of land to use for farming from a secondary school close by. It's about 1 acre of land that's a five-minute walk from HHCH, so just perfect. The land has been farmed in the past so it isn't terribly overgrown but it has a lot of spear grass coming up everywhere that has to be dug up and burned (or it'll take over everything). PTL we have a lot of hands to help! We are also in contact with a common initiative group here that is coming to look at the land today. They will tell us the best ways to fertilize, what to plant with what, and they will even send us youth volunteers to help get the land all ready for planting. Looks like they will be giving us some seed too, plus selling us some at whole sale price.

Farming is so important in the Cameroon culture; we think it is so important that our kids will continue to learn this skill. Plus it helps us to keep our food costs down, and allows the orphanage to be a step closer to self-sufficiency. God is good!

Great New Website

We just discovered a great new website; www.faithcomesbyhearing.com. It has free audio downloads of the New Testament in literally hundreds on languages. It's awesome as I can now listen the New Testament in French so I continue to improve in that language. Also it is in Slovak (I was an MK in Slovakia) but since learning French my Slovak has really gone downhill. It so great! Also I can listen to it in Pidgin English (which is coming along nicely I might add). I can follow along in the Pidgin Bible, so it really helps me to read it, which isn't easy. Now I need to just find time to do all of this! :)

But the main thing is that Ma at the Children's Home can't read. We have done some classes with her but it is slow going. Anyway, we are downloading the Pidgin Bible for her plus it even has her own tribal language which I think is pretty incredible! So she can now listen to the Word of God whenever she wants to, awesome!

Easter Fun

I know this is a little late but still wanted to post about Easter. We had a great Easter Weekend at the Children's Home. We decided on an Easter outreach to the neighborhood kids. Praise the Lord we had over 20 children show up so with our own kids at the orphanage we had 40+. Saturday afternoon was pact full of fun and games like Red Light, Green Light, and tug of war (they enjoyed all going against Jake :). We also did egg painting, explaining that the eggs represent the New Life that we can have in Christ. I'm not sure if they enjoyed decorating or eating the eggs more but still a lot of fun! We also had an egg hunt, a first for all of them, it was awesome to see them enjoying it so much.

Lastly we showed the Jesus Film for Children with snacks and drinks. The kids loved the film and all watched intently, especially when Jesus was nailed to the cross. It definitely displayed the story of Easter to them in detail. At the end, a salvation appeal was given and seven children raised their hands to give their lives to Christ for the first time, hallelujah! It's always such a joy to see the little ones coming to Him! We hope to see these new believers coming to Kid's Club during the week now.

Tug of war

Simon Says (or Jesus says as we play it) with the younger group

Red Light, Green Light

Kingsley waiting for his egg to go green

Waiting to dye their eggs, Dorcas is eating hers anyway :-)

Some of the finished products. You can only get brown eggs here, not quite as good as white for dying

Bringing eggs back after the hunt

Everyone got something from the hunt (phew!)

Some egg spoils!

Watching the Jesus Film for Children

Ice cream for the first time

The children at the Home just had two weeks off of school, they had their reports in for the last term, all but three did exceptionally well (we are moving the three back a class as they are struggling to understand). 4 kids got first and second out of their class, such a huge improvement from the start of the year when they could hardly speak a word of English. We we took them out for ice cream today (plus two kids that had the tidiest spaces). Only one of them had every had ice cream before so it was quite a day for them. Sakina kept shivering when she was eating it and I don't think Cidoni was impressed at all but all the others devoured theirs (as did I)!

Also had a very cool thing happen over the school break, we are friends with another orphanage about two hours away up in a village called Harvest Children's Home; they have been going for quite a few years and have 60+ children. Right now they they have an American guy volunteering for a few months, Justin. He's doing an awesome job of getting them organized, teaching the kids English and devotions, and nutrition (his area of expertise). Anyway, he suggested that 10 of his kids come and do a short "Mission's Trip" to Helping Hands Children's Home. We though it was a great idea and they came for three days. They laid a sidewalk, help put up a security light and taught our kids lots of songs and games and helped lead devotions. Our Children just loved it and haven't stopped singing the new songs. It was also great for our kids to see that children can make a difference and spread the love of Jesus too. We are hoping to return the favour in the near future.

One thing Justin mentioned was how impressed he was with the food we give our kids, the portion size, quality and the variety, in the village they get the same pretty much all the time. This is something we were really glad to hear as we strive very hard to make sure our children are getting good nutritious food, 3 times everyday.

Laying the sidewalk

Mixing cement

Their kids washed our kids' feet (and legs!)

We were able to give each of the children a new t-shirt as we had a lot shipped over in the truck

Let's see if this work's

So, we get our internet through Wycliff Translators here which has been a real blessing. But recently they just redid all the proxies (or something) and lots of website's have been blocked, to help save on bandwidth and anything inappropriate. Well it seems that my blog is one of those websites (not sure why), so try as I may I have not been able to get onto blogger.com, very frustrating! They guy that does all the internet stuff is in the capital and not sure when he will be back so until then it can't get fixed. So I just remembered that i can send email blogs out so we'll see if this works; hopefully I will be back up on the blogger by the end of the week.

Here is a short update on Godwill:

We praise Jesus that Godwill was released early from hospital as he has responded so well to his chemo treatments. The tumor in his face has already gone down! He was sick the first few days of treatment but since coming back home he has been running around everywhere and keeping up with the rest of the children. He has also been eating really well. Godwill still has to go back to the hospital for one more treatment and then for some check ups after that. Thank you so much for everyone that joined us in prayer and believing for his healing, all I can say is, "What a mighty God we serve!!"

 

Look at that smile :)