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 :)

Please pray for Godwill!

We have a prayer request to share with you. Godwill, one of the children at Helping Hands Children's Home, was admitted into hospital today, Just over a month ago the side of his face started swelling. We took him to a dentist who pulled a tooth. The swelling went down a little after a few days. It started to bulge again after another two weeks but he said it wasn’t painful. We took him to a different dentist who said his teeth were fine but that he had a small infection so he was put on antibiotics. But still the swelling didn’t go down so we finally decided to take Godwill up to the Baptist hospital today where an American Doctor works. The doctor straight away diagnostic it as a tumor, Burkitt's Lymphoma, a cancer caused by the malaria parasite. He said that this type of thing is very common in the villages that Godwill is from and they have a special ward just for it.

He has been admitted into the hopital and will be there for three weeks while he undergoes his first round of chemotherapy. We will have a WON staff with him at all times. The hospital will cover all his medical costs as he is an orphan, a huge blessing! They have already treated over 500 of these cases and are extremly confident that he will make a full recovery. If Godwill was out in the village, he would never have received medical treatment and most likely it would have been fatal. We praise God that He brought little Godwill into our care!

Please join us in praying and believing that Godwill will make a full recovery and that the chemo won't be too hard on his little body. We praise God that He is Jehovah Rapha, the Healer of all our diseases!

Fun weekend

There's a couple in our neighbourhood that are of the Baha'i religion, he is American and She is from Iran. They've lived in Cameroon since the 70's and used to be school teachers and actually get a pension from the Cameroon government (which I'm still amazed at!). Anyway since moving up here we've been to their house a few times and we've had them over for dinner. She is an avid gardener so we often trade seeds and clippings. Anyway I had a free Friday afternoon (how did that happen?) this weekend so walked down to their house for a visit, I had a bunch of dill seeds I wanted to share. I ended up spending over an hour and half as we got in a really good discussion on "religion." I know very little about the Baha'i faith, only what they have told me but got a bit more insight into it. Basically they believe that all the religious leaders; Abraham, Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha, Krishna, etc. where manifestations of God and that their Leader (Bahaum?) is the last one, that he's the second coming of Jesus that Christians are still waiting for. They don't believe that Jesus truly is God but say they believe in the Bible. So of course I pointed out some scriptures where it tells us He is God, and other's about his second coming. One of my biggest points was that if all the religions are from God, why are they so different? They say they're not and all point to one thing. I explained the Christianity is unique in the fact that we can't do anything to earn our way into heaven, we just have to accept what Jesus has done for us by faith, I can't make God love me anymore just because I pray, or do good things, as is the emphasis of other religions. God loved me while I was still a sinner. So anyway it was a good talk and I hope it gets them thinking. Praying the Light of Jesus will shine into their lives. Please keep them into your prayers.

Also we had all the kids from HHCH come over yesterday, as always it is a lot of fun. They played on the trampoline, with toys, raided my guava trees, looked at photos, we had a big meal out in the garden and the kids actually asked for seconds on salad! That is a first, it's something we have been making them eat at the home 3 times a week and at first they hated it, never having anything like that in the village. But they are really enjoying it now. Here's a few photos:

Jude and Bena out in the garden, munching on guavas

Seth teaching the boys how to play Connect 4

Legos and cars

Farming time is here!

WON got 10 more hoes for the Children's Home this week, it was really funny because the kids were so excited, they were all scrambling to get one! As all our children came from villages they're all expert farmers. As you can see from the photos that African hoes are a little different from western ones, but let me tell you, they sure can till up ground with them! I'm completely useless with them, (they hurt my back), but Seth is starting to the hang of them :).

We have a bit of farming land on the HHCH property but we really need some more. It helps us keep our food bill down as well as teach the children a valuable skill. Jake and Tim have visited the Fon (chief) of the area and have requested he let us use some land for farming... we're waiting for his reply. It is pretty normal for a Fon to do that, it would be great if we got the big field right behind the Home. There is a ministry in town that will come help us plant when we have more land and give us tips and techniques on farming, as well as give us seed. Please keep all of this in your prayers.

Kids with the new hoe handles

Putting the hoes on the handles

Trying to look very serious about their farming duties

Library Time

Here are some photos of our library time yesterday at the Children's Home. The children were so excited to run and get their books and exchange them for new ones. Not one child lost their book, I think that's pretty amazing as it was the first week! Even all the neighbourhood kids brought their books back and we got another two signed up.

We have two shelves so far, this is the easy book shelf; we're still teaching them how to put books back nicely on the shelf, something they've never done before.

This is the more advance shelf, we have a few kids that borrow books from here. We are believing one day the whole room will be filled with shelves and books!

Dorcas even gets to check out a book, how cute is she!

Checking out books; I make them read me the titles of the books they are checking out, some of them really struggle with this but have improved so much since coming.

Couldn't resist posting this one of Jude and Simon who's from our neighborhood. Simon is like our fourth son, he's always over the house, has sleep-overs, he's Josh and Seth's best friend even though he's 13. He loves the Lord and is a very sweet boy.