Spreading the Word!

Last week I start teaching Sunday School again since Jude was born. It was good to be back with "mes enfants." This month we are teaching on the ascension and return of Jesus. I taught the kids about the great commission and how it is our responsibility to share Christ with other. I gave them the homework of showing the love of Jesus to their friends either by word or action. It was great to hear their testimonies this Sunday of how the Lord open doors for them to share their faith with others. One boy, Peter, said that he shared the Gospel with a classmate and he accepted Jesus into his heart! So cool, this is the 9 to 12 year old class.
Saturday we are taking them on a picnic to the local zoo, we are thinking about 100 children will come, most of who have never been. At the end, Sister Hortence will do a short lesson on how we can see the power of God through nature. Should be a lot of fun and I'm sure I'll sleep really well that night :-D

Catching up

Ok, I've really been slacking in my blog, lots has been going on these past few weeks. Jake's mum came out to visit us 2 weeks ago. When we were living in Iowa and Josh was born, she took the Greyhound bus from Florida to visit us as she didn't want to fly. So this was a HUGE thing for her to fly all the way here, having a day's layover in Paris (if any one has been to Charles De Gualle airport before, you'll know how confusing it can be). She'd never really been out of the States before so it was a completely new experience for her. Kathy did really awesome and it was such a blessing to have her here for a week (that just whizzed by). With Josh and Seth my mum and other family members came to stay for a bit to help out with the baby and cook. I really missed that when Jude was born. So it was great to have Kathy here to spoil me and cook and look after Jude, it was a great time. Of course the boys loved having Grammie around and each of them got to have a "sleep-over" in Grammie's room where they stayed up late reading stories, eating snacks and just having a fun time.
It was great to kinda relive our first experiences of Cameroon again through Kathy and her questions. They culture was so new and different to her. We went for a walk around the back of our neighbourhood one night. We went past a small wooden house (shack) that was housing a family with a bunch of kids. Kathy said it was incredible that people could live like that... we walk that way all the time and I hardly even noticed it before, I guess I can get hardened to the needs and problems around me, so it helped me to open my eyes again to what is going on around me.
I think Jake added some pictures of our time together to our site so check them out. Love you Kathy!

ahhhhhhhh

Here's that smile I was talking about!

Children's church

Since '05 I have been the children's church director at our church. At the start of the year I handed it over to one lady, Hortence, as the baby was coming and we knew we would be leaving Yaounde. Praise the Lord, Hortence has been doing a fantastic job of leading. We had a retreat this weekend for all the children's workers. I didn't organize anything for it, it went really well, things started on time, and most everyone was there. They had all night prayer last night and had a great time. It is a real blessing to see how they are continuing the work on and even preparing for another Camp this summer. I also got to speak at the retreat today on how to teach young children (3-6 yrs). I really empahsised on using visual aid which is very uncommon here. Also shared on keeping each activity with them no longer than 10 minutes. Praying it all sank in. It was the first time I taught since having Jude, but he was really good and let me do my thing. He was passed around the workers all day, he enjoyed all the attention :-)

Jude

Jude finally hit the 8 pound mark! And we had our first smile last week, ohhhhh so sweet, life doesn't get much better than this!

Bamenda Trip

New Home in Bamenda

Praise the Lord we had a great time in Bamenda. The house that we thought we would be renting fell thru… the landlord decided he didn’t want to rent for long term. At first we were disappointed as we really liked the house. So we searched all over town for 3 days and finally found one we LOVE. God knew exactly want wanted and gave it to us… it is a nice house with enough room to even have a school room (no more homeschooling in the living room, yeah!) Jude will also get his own room, Jake will have a small tool shed and I even get a laundry room! But wait, there’s more, the yard is HUMONGOUS, it is so big and is full of trees, flowers, and birds singing in them. We have about 4 Guava trees, a couple of mango trees and even an avocado tree (which is loaded, yum!). The family that lived there before even built a little tree house, great for the boys… it's also very secure which is a necessity in Bamenda. There’s a large area in front of the house that is paved so it will be perfect to do a Bible club with the neighborhood kids. God is so good, he always provides for our every need. And since this is out of the city, we will actually be paying less rent for it than we are right now for our small house and tiny yard…

We got to visit some other missionary friends while we were up there. They have horses so I got to go riding with the boys (minus Jude :-) It was a lot of fun and Josh and Seth had a blast. We’re thinking our yard might be big enough for horses too…. we’ll see. June will be here before we know it.

Heading to Bamenda

Leaving tomorrow for the NW for about a week. We're hoping to work on the house we will be renting when we move up there in June (painting, cleaning up the yard) as well as talk with the Borns and see what needs to be done to get the ball rolling with Win Our Nations in Cameroon. Really looking forward to it, it's always so much cooler up there and so B-E-A-utiful. It'll be Jude's first trip (6 hours) I think he'll be fine as he loves his little car seat. Jake took the truck in to get lubed before we head out on the trip, while he was there, the electric company came and cut the garage's electric as they hadn't paid there bill. So our truck was stuck, suspended in the air on the lift. After a bit they managed to bypass the meter and hook the electric up so we could get our truck down, I though it was pretty funny.

internet back up!

Had a really nice weekend. Everything has calmed down in Cameroon so had lots of visitors to come and see Jude. On Saturday the youth group came over to see him, about 26 of them. Of course they stayed all afternoon and played basketball and on the trampoline :). They had a lot of fun. Then Sunday afternoon all the ladies that work with the Children at church came over. They had cards and small gifts from the children, it was very sweet. Everyone that has come to visit so far has brought a six pack of bottle water, it must be the Cameroonian gift for babies, not really sure why, but we can sure use it. Jude is doing great by the way, getting bigger everyday and starting to get into a bit of a schedule so I am getting some sleep.

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another update

Praise the Lord that things have calmed down around here. Last week we were pretty much stuck in the house all week. After a heavy military presence in town, things got quiet and we were able to go out to church on Sunday and get a bit of shopping (we were getting pretty low on food). There have been some rumors that there may be some more rioting this week but so far so good. The American embassy called the situation "a tensed calm" as there are soldiers everywhere with machine guns keeping the peace. But things are defiantly improving and it seems like the situation is under control. Thank you so much for all your prayers, we really appreciate it!

another update

Praise the Lord that things have calmed down around here. Last week we were pretty much stuck in the house all week. After a heavy military presence in town, things got quiet and we were able to go out to church on Sunday and get a bit of shopping (we were getting pretty low on food). There have been some rumors that there may be some more rioting this week but so far so good. The American embassy called the situation "a tensed calm" as there are soldiers everywhere with machine guns keeping the peace. But things are defiantly improving and it seems like the situation is under control. Thank you so much for all your prayers, we really appreciate it!