Today marks the two and five year anniversaries of pivotal moments in our lives – two years ago on this day we boarded a plane and said goodbye to Cameroon.  Five years ago on this day, Jonah had a serious accident and needed emergency surgery in Cameroon with follow-up surgeries in the USA.

While learning French, one of our duties at the school was to participate in some capacity at daily chapel.  There was a lesson that spoke to David from a passage in Matthew, Mark & John about two fish and five loaves.  We were blessed to have our French vocabulary multiple beyond five verbs and two adjectives.

It was two years ago today that we said goodbye and boarded a plane to leave Cameroon.  In some ways it feels forever ago and in other ways it feels like yesterday.  We have to admit we don’t miss the harder daily life aspects or the traffic, but we greatly miss people!  We miss friends, people we consider family members, the drop-in visitor’s, the borrowing of DVD’s from one another and the priority of people interaction.

*****WARNING*******GRAPHIC PICTURES******

Five years ago today, Jonah had a freak accident that almost completely severed his left ring finger and shattered the left middle finger.  If the emergency surgery wasn’t traumatic enough, he had to endure horrific twice a week bandage changes.  The graphic picture below is from one of his bandage changes that shows what his hand looked like one week after the accident.

Our six years overseas is a pivotal point in our lives, we talk in the BC (Before Cameroon) and AC (After Cameroon) terms.

In 2012 when we returned to the USA for four months, I was numb and it all seems and feels like a blur.  We went from surgery to surgery and therapy to therapy.  I remember seeing the x-rays that showed finger bones were pretty much shoved back in and the skin somewhat sewn around them.  I also remember a few months later on a follow-up x-ray seeing how the bones had pretty much disappeared due to bone infection.  I’ll always remember every detail of Jonah’s amputation surgery.

Here we are two and five years later.  Jonah was born with a left hand with five full digits, however, due to an accident, two of those digits were severely injured.  The Lord has helped him and us these past five years to process the grief, trauma and struggles that accompanied his accident.  Even though we are still adjusting trying to figure out how to “fit into”our old/new environment, the Lord has helped us these last two years to process the grief, struggles, transitions and new roles.