In the US of A

We have been gone from Cameroon for more than a month now! We are having an amazing time in Florida. The month of July is really a time of rest and relaxation for us before we start our road trip. We are so blessed as my folks live on the East coast of Florida, Jake's mum lives on the west coast of Florida and our next stop is my brother's in Destin, on the coast of the pan handle of Florida. So it is the perfect place to get some R&R. Since coming to the States we have just been overwhelmingly blessed by family, friends, and church. Sometimes in Cameroon I wonder if my kids are missing out on all the fun stuff that is going on in the other side of the world, but we are certainly making up for lost time. We have been to the zoo, beaches, pools, tubing, national parks, eating out all over, to name a few. Still on the list: deep sea fishing, legoland, four wheeling, zip lining, kayaking... we praise the Lord for such generous family and friends! God is good!

Things that have been awesome about being on the States so far:

~Electricity (all the time)

~Water (all the time)

~Hot showers (all the time)

~Not being stared at (all the time)

Church (even though I don't know ANY of the songs they are singing)

~Wearing shorts!!!

~Making a grocery list and getting EVERY single item on it

~Strawberries

~Play grounds

~Fountain drinks

~The speed of internet. No joke, I can get done in 10 minutes what would have taken me all afternoon in Cameroon.

Things that still seem a little weird:

~How fast food comes at a restaurant (and I'm not talking about fast food)

~How friendly people are in stores

~Light switches inside of the bathroom (I keep looking for it on the outside and it's not there!)

~People buying bottled water when the stuff out of the tap is soooo good

~Not hearing the rain from inside the house (I'm shocked when we open the door and it's teaming outside... the tin roofs in Cameroon get pretty loud)

~Remembering to give way to pedestrians (almost run over a few people in Walmart parking lot :{).

~How healthy and big pet dogs and cats look

~The amount of food EVERYWHERE (needless to say, we have all put on a few pounds!)

On the flight to the US... technically Jordan is still in her belt. The kids did amazing on the 9 hour flight, they loved their individual TV screens (something that was lacking on Ethiopia Air)

Riding the shuttle at Orlando airport

Fun at the zoo with my parents

A special 4th of July breakfast to celebrate Jake's B-day (at his mum's)

4th of July cook out with family and then an amazing fireworks display in the city of Largo

Jake having fun with the camera

The kids playing with their glow sticks

Jake sharing at a homeless outreach

Cocoa Beach

Anna Maria Island (Jordan examining some cool seaweed)

We are all getting a lovely tan! 

Fun with Grammie and cousins

Jake grilling with his mum

Treetop walk at Myakka State Park

Observation tower 75' tall

Gator! We also saw a deer and her fawn.

Jake found a tree frog

Boating and tubing with friends on Indian River

England (part 2)

So, let me finish off my English blog so then I can post some up about the US. Below are a bunch of snap shots of our incredible time there; very very special!

Cousin Joel and Jordan on their way to the park (they were in seperable)

Outside Peterbourough Cathederal... built in the 12th century

This works out to be $8.33 per gallon! And we though Cameroon was expensive at about $5 a gallon.  

Jake sharing at Gold Street Church in Saffron Waldon

Josh smashing plates at a village fete

The highlight of the boy's stay in England was visiting Kenilworth Castle

They enjoyed rolling down the hills :D

The Olej family; they are wonderful friends from Slovakia who now live in England.  It was soooo good to see them swell as freshen up my Slovak.

Figuring out puzzles in the science museum

More science fun

A highlight for me was running my first official race with my big brother Ben. I placed 100th out of 161... not bad for my first 10K. Official time was 55:52

A great cook-out with the Living Word Fellowship

Jordan feeding Uncle Bob :D

Sharing at the Living Word Fellowship (house church)

England (Part 1)

Well, I didn't get the chance to post a blog in England, I wanted to savor every moment I had with my brothers and friends so was not on the computer much at all. The two weeks in Britain was just too short and unfortunately we didn't get a chance to see everyone we wanted to. Next time we will have to stay three to four weeks. But having said all that, it was an amazing blessed time. I'm going to try and blog about it in two parts as so much went on and I have so many cool photos to share. 

From the very start of our trip, the favor of God was on us. To get to England we found some pretty cheap tickets with Ethiopia Air. I was sort of dreading it but they were a really great airline (much more helpful than some of the major airlines, let me tell ya!)  It added an extra 12 hours to our travel time (we flew into Ethiopia), but we would totally do it again. In Addis Ababa, Jordan was like a celebrity, everyone was staring at her with her blond curls and all the women kept coming up and kissing her hands and head (she loved it!). 

When we landed at Heathrow, the first thing out of Seth's mouth was, "Look at all the white people!" Then as we went through customs we had to go up an escalator and half way up Jude ran back down it screaming at the top of his lungs. Then Seth came running out of the toilet saying very loudly, "You don't have to flush the toilets, they do it by themselves". So I'm sure anyone behind us must have thought we'd just arrived from the moon.

We were met at the airport by our generous friends, the Drakes (they drove 2 hours to bring us the car) and then they took us out for a delicious English breakfast, not a bad way to be welcomed into the UK. Immediately the english climate hit us, it was rainy, windy and chilly. Once again, our thoughtful friends had put coats in the car for us, as we didn't have anything warm. 

Getting to meet my little nephew, Joel, (above) for the first time was definitely the highlight of our stay. He and Jordan were just two peas in a pod, both very affectionate.

Jordan meeting Uncle Dan for the first time (my oldest brother).

Always great to see your siblings after four years. Dan is in Torquay, on the southern coast of England.

The beautiful English Riviera

It was soooo cold, we were hoping to have an afternoon on the beach but there was just no way.

Jordan celebrated her second birthday in England. Thank you Uncle Dan for the beautiful cake!

We visited the Dartmoor zoo, the inspiration for "We Bought a Zoo"

The real Benjamin Mee!

Our boys were fascinated by all the ladybirds in England

We did experience some culture shock coming back into a "western culture." Jake and I stood about five minutes in front of the apples section at the supermarket as there were just too many choices. We kept comparing and just couldn't decide, in the end we just grabbed any bag (it's been this way with a lot of things!). Every time I feel the kettle or a bottle up from the tap, my mind keeps telling me, "This is wrong!" Also people in long queues (lines) waiting to get on a bus or pay for something, always makes me do a double take. And people not locking their cars and even leaving their windows open seems really strange to me right now. And it is has also been really hard to throw any left over food in the trash, as we pretty much save everything and what is bad goes to one of the animals in our house or the orphanage. And for some strange reason, all the boys are obsessed, and I mean, obsessed with toilets. Everywhere we go they have to use the toilet about every 15 minutes. It doesn't matter if we are at someone's house or at a shop, they just have to check them out. Hopefully they are going to get over this really soon! But I think the kids have adjusted really well and are loving being here.

So more to come about England in the next blog. The Lord really blessed us while we were there, so that even as gas was $9 a gallon and we were driving a Landrover, we never lacked and got to visit everywhere we wanted to. I am so thankful for the goodness of God!

4 DAYS LEFT!

Not sure if I will get a chance to blog again before we leave so I'm just going to put that last month in one huge blog. Make sure you've got a few minutes spare before you sit down to read this one!

So, it has been a frustrating month electronically, thus I haven't posted any blogs. So let me complain for just a few minutes and then we're get to the good stuff :D. Our internet line went down so we were out of the web for over a week, which is hard when I am doing last minute confirmations with family and friends in England, etc. Then our printer went out, not good either when we have all our e-tickets to print out and itineraries, plus a bunch of reports and schedules for the children's church. Then our computer hard drive crashed (serves us right for always bragging about Macs to everyone we meet :D). We managed to find another hard drive in town but seems that the laptop still has issues. We were able to rescue just about everything after a week of Jake spending ALL day on it. These last few weeks were set aside to get our presentation ready and for Jake to prepare his messages for while we're back. It was really frustrating to be spending so much time on this. In the end we have given up and are going to show an older presentation while in England. Then when we get to the States, we'll get another Mac and make a new presentation. So praise the Lord we did managed to get it all sorted out in the end. Internet is back up and we can do basic things on the laptop. Ok, enough whinning!

So what else has been going on this month? We have two volunteers here right now; Erin who is staying with the Borns for 3 months, and Megan, who is saying with us for a month (she flies out a day before us). It has been a lot of fun to have them around plus to have some extra hands to help with the workload. It's wonderful to see young people giving up their time, money, etc. to come and be a blessing as well as get blessed. We have been trying to do fun things with them on the weekends so we have been doing lots of hiking this month. 

Megan, myself, and Erin

One way to get your cow to market

Well worth the two hour hike!

Cameroon, the beautiful!

I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen with the girls. Here I'm teaching them how to make mozzarella cheese. We also made yogurt, granola, ice cream, and sorbet this same afternoon :D

Erin and Megan and been adding another mural to the HHCH wall, they did an amazing job!

Delanee, our last intern, did the first one.... we still have 4 wall spaces left for future, artsy, volunteers (any takers?)

We also received 3 new girls into the orphanage this month; Nkeh, Mali (identical twins), and little Gamboh. Gamboh had a tough time the first week as she was very sad and withdrawn. But now she is "one of the kids" running around everywhere, giving big hugs and full of smiles. It is wonderful to see how quickly these children adapt to their new lives at the Children's Home. At kids' club on Monday both of the older girls were answering questions!

Some kids in the village that the 3 sisters came from

Random picture of Nestor and Kinsgley and the kittens at HHCH (we currently have 4 there)

And then we have a HUGE praise. As some of you may know, we have been looking for an RV for while we're on our 3 month plus road trip around the States. A lot of people can't host a family of 6, plus it will save us money from not having to stay at motels and eating out all the time. It will also give the kids (and us) a bit of a home away from home, we won't quite be living out of a suitcase for 3 months, which is incredibly difficult by the way.  Since no one had one available to lend us, we decided that we would buy one and then planned to resell it when we leave. We have been looking at some of craigslist and other sites, and my Dad has even gone and look at a few. Every time we went to put an offer down, it would already be sold. So we just have been hanging back, reminding ourselves that the Lord knows what He is doing. Then we came across the one below. It was very close to my folks so they went and checked it out. They didn't get to test drive it but they looked it over and said it had been well taken care off and seemed great. They were asking $5,500 for it. We wrote back and said test drive it, and offer them $4,500 (we have sold our vehicle here and will be buying one at the end of our furlough to ship back here). So my dad went to test drive it but it wasn't running very well, didn't seem to be getting enough power. They lady said she didn't know why, and that it run perfectly before. My dad advised us to not to go for it. We kinda had our hopes up but decided to not get down about it. A fews day back, my dad wrote and said he had heard from them again. The husband had found the problem, it was the fuel pump or something, but it is all fixed now. The wife mentioned that why they were fixing it she told her husband that maybe God was trying to tell them something (my parents had explained about us to them) and that she felt she should help us out. She said that if we wanted to pay $1000 to cover the cost they had recently put into it, then we could take it! My Dad went and test drove it again and it is running great. Also our Ministry, WON, said that they would really like it for the ministry, so when other missionaries come back, they can use it also. So instead of reselling it, the ministry will pay half and keep it at the end (we'll have it for future furloughs!). So at the end of the day it will be $500 (plus tax, title, and license) out of our pockets. It is amazing how the Lord uses people to be such a blessing, they are complete strangers, yet the Lord has been working in their hearts about us. The Lord's arm is certainly not too short! So we are getting SUPER excited about our road trip now, it is going to be a lot of fun. 

We are leaving Bamenda on Monday to go to the capital, Douala, then we fly out on Tuesday morning to England via Ethiopia. It is hard to believe that we have less than a week here. Friday evening will be our last Missionary bible study, so will be saying goodbye to all of our good friends there.  On Saturday all the church leadership is coming over for a farewell afternoon (our last authentic Cameroonian food!). Jake is preaching at church on Sunday, then they will pray for us, it will be sad to say goodbye to everyone. Then Sunday evening we are having dinner at the Children's Home to spend our last evening with the kid. It is going to be really hard to say good-bye to all of them! So our weekend is full of goodbyes, which is never easy, so please keep us in your prayers. Seth especially is having a hard time with it. We said goodbye to Comfort, the lady that helps me in the kitchen, a couple of days ago and Seth had a little melt down. He is really going to miss everyone so much, especially at HHCH. He had a sleepover there last night so that was good for him. Anyway, my next post will be from my lovely home country of England (provided we can get on the web there).