2nd FES Olympiad

Posted on September 8, 2011 by David

Three times a year there are sessions of school called FES (this is the time when village families come to Yaoundé and get to be in the classroom with others and taught by teachers, rather than homeschooled).  The first session is in August, the second in December and the final in April.  The school year starts with a FES session.  There are different focuses during FES and this particular session’s focus was Ancient Greece.  We had PE three times a week starting at 7:30 to prepare for the Olympics, which took place on August 31.  The Olympics started with a torch run from the compound where school is to the compound where we live that has a soccer field.  The games were opened in prayer and the events started.  Enjoy the pictures.

Medal Count

Joshua: Silver in Long Jump, Bronze in Hurdles, Bronze in Football Throw (his team ranked 2nd)

Jonah: Silver in Distance Run, Silver in Hurdles, Bronze in Sprints (his team ranked 1st)

David competed in the Parent Relay and enjoyed being part of the Olympic competition.

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Dropbox to out of the box

Posted on August 31, 2011 by David

A few months ago a translator came to me very distraught that the CDs he mailed to the publisher a continent away was unable to read his CDs. So I asked him how much information he had on the CDs and he gave me a USB disk that had 1 GB of data on it. We don’t have a very great internet connection for downloading data, although we have improved it since this original problem, but we have an even tougher time uploading data to the Internet. It easily takes 4 hours to upload a few 100 MBs.

We didn’t have time to mail it, if we wanted to get it to the printer and make the next shipment from JAARS. So I turned to dropbox, and online file sharing site that gives you 2GB of free storage and is password protected. So after 48 hours of uploading data to the internet we were able to get the Bible Story and scripture books uploaded to the internet.

Last week the shipment arrived from the United States and over 300,000 Bible story books are now available in the Baka language. This shipment also includes books on learning how to read since the literacy rate in their mother tongue is less than 1% and in their second language of French it is less than 5%.

 

This shipment also came with 80 proclaimers for the Baka so the people can listen to the Bible stories as well as read them.

Please pray for the Baka people that they will learn to read and that God’s Word will transform their life.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. Revelation 7:9 NIV

 

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Grandma

Posted on August 29, 2011 by David

I, DeAnna, received a letter from my grandma yesterday.  It’s fun to read her letters about the things going on in their garden, during their days and the family gatherings that we can’t be present for.  This particular letter struck a chord with me about garden and food.  People will often say comments like, this is as good as grandma makes or this is my grandma’s recipe and it carries more weight than here is the recipe.  There are many foods that I miss that grandma does make, no one can recreate her homemade chocolate ice cream with little flecks of chocolate or her sweet corn and there are many more.  In her letter she asked if we have zucchini available here because she has always liked and misses a zucchini pie that I make.  Wow!  She’s missing things that I make, just like I miss things she makes.

 

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Golf

Posted on August 25, 2011 by David

I recently was invited to experience a joy I’ve not been able to do in over 2 years. When packing up to leave the US one of the things that didn’t make the list to ship to Cameroon were the golf clubs. But I was able to go the only course in Yaoundé last week; there are only 4 in the entire country.

The course is on Mount Febe and extremely hilly, there were no golf carts, thankfully we had a caddie. At first we said we didn’t need a caddie but the man asked us if we had been there before and we said no so he informed us we would get lost without a caddie, he was right. We also had a kid, maybe 12 years old, that followed us around and would go and stand about where our drives should land and he was the spotter for our balls, in addition to retrieving the balls that we hit out-of-bounds. I’m not sure what his official job title is but he allowed us to finish the round with close to the same number we started with.

Pictures with my cell phone.

Someone that took a real camera to the golf course, or has a much better cell phone then I do. The building in the background is the US Embassy.

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First day of School

Posted on August 23, 2011 by David

School started last Monday and it’s so hard to believe our boys are in 1st & 3rd grades!  Our school year starts with a time called FES.  This is when families who live in villages and home school their children come into Yaoundé and all the students have class together and have extra-curricular activities.  Each FES session (there are 3 in a year) has its own distinct theme.  Our theme right now is ancient Greece.  The PE part of this session is training for the Olympic games.  They also have art and other fun activities to do while everyone is together.  The closing ceremonies will be the Olympic games and a marketplace type family activity.  The boys are off to a good start in their school year. Each family has to come up with a product that they barter and trade with the other families. Please give us your ideas on what a good product we can make to trade in Cameroon that has something to do with ancient Greece.

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Seeing clearly

Posted on August 12, 2011 by David

Last week I misplaced my glasses. I couldn’t find them anywhere. DeAnna even sent out an email message to the entire Yaoundé based mission community with a picture of me wearing the glasses enlisting everyone’s help to search for my glasses. As I walked around glassesless everyone asked if I had found my glasses yet. Since they were not found, I had to go buy a new pair.

I went to the recommend location, Korean Optique Medicale. I arrived right as they unlocked the door and I explained what I wanted. The Korean optometrist, in Yaoundé, asked me how long I had worn glasses and then asked me to have a seat at the eye checking machine. After he looked at my eyes he had me read some numbers, and when I said the wrong number he had me try again before going to a smaller number. After adjusting a few lenses my exam was done and I waited for the guy who was going to make my glasses. He explained my options and I picked the type of glass I wanted then I went over and picked out the frames. I tried to find frames that were similar to what I had. They really wanted me to get this checker-board printed frame, but I didn’t think that was really me.

I finally decided on a frame based on the brand name. The brand name was To Heaven. If I need to wear glasses how much better to be able to see when I pick up my glasses in the morning to see clearly if I have my focus not on things that are temporary but on Eternity.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  2 Corinthians 4:18

Much to my surprise I had my new view on Yaoundé in only 45 minutes after walking into the store.  Plus they gave me a 50% discount since I mentioned the name of a person who was in the store the previous week to get a pair of glasses.

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Plants

Posted on August 10, 2011 by David

I like to walk a soccer field in the morning when I can.  I usually use this time to listen to the ipod, walk and reflect on my mental to do list.  Yesterday Jonah asked if he could join me.  He and I walked hand in hand for much of the time, he talked my ear off and we had a great time together.  He asked me to watch him touch a specific plant, fighting mimosa that grows with the grass and other weeds.  When he touched the plant, the plant closed its leaves.  We took a short video of him doing this so he can share his fun discovery with you.

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Pass it On

Posted on August 8, 2011 by David

The song I sang often as a child rings through my head as I write this, Pass It On.  It only takes a spark to get a fire a going…. that’s how it is with God’s love, once you’ve experienced it.  The Lord asked us to obey in going where He wanted us to go.  That meant being introduced into a whole new mindset of financial planning – raising support by asking others to partner with us.  When David first explained the system to me, I thought he was crazy.  After much prayer and searching God’s Word, I realized that this was His design and not mine, so I just needed to say, “yes” and He would take care of the rest.  Every time we have shared our story, we first pray that God uses us to be the conduit to share what He wants others to hear.  One of the churches we were invited to speak at before leaving Missouri was KCBT during their Summit mission conference.  A few weeks ago, a woman was introduced to me here in Yaoundé, Paula.  She shared with David and I that she was at the mission conference at Kansas City Baptist Temple (KCBT) in 2009 and heard our story.  She was waffling about what the Lord wanted her to do and decided to join Wycliffe Associates.  She said that God used us to speak to her about what He had in store for her.  We are continually amazed and in awe of Him!  We had her over for dinner so we could get to know one another better.  She will be serving in Yaoundé for six months a year and in the Dallas office the other six months.   Please pray for her as she adjusts.

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Opposite

Posted on August 6, 2011 by David

Recently the boys were watching an Arthur DVD (the aardvark from PBS).  The episode was opposite day and everything was the opposite, for example, they would say goodbye to greet someone instead of hello.  That’s the best way to describe many of the differences between our home country and our host country.  It’s funny how in the States one has to pay more for organic or all natural foods and processed foods are very cheap, but here you can get all the produce, vegetables and peanuts you want cheap, but will pay extremely high prices for ham slices, hot dogs, potato chips, canned goods, etc…  We splurge and every once and awhile will purchase hotdogs (about $22 for 20 hotdogs) and I ration them by cutting them into smaller pieces and mixing them into other things like stir fry’s.  Today I got a great deal on ham (it was only 7995 fcfa, which is $17.76 per kilo = 2.2 lbs).  This was marked down from 9995 per kilo.  This is the low end, not the superior ham.  Then, much to the delight of our boys, potato chips were on sale too!  They were only 990 ($2.20) per bag (the bags here are a little bigger than the big grab bags in the States).   So tonight we are having a very familiar and comforting meal that the boys are already bragging to their friends about …. ham sandwiches and potato chips!  (Now if we could only have yellow mustard and dill spears to go with it we would be in hog heaven)

Food is not the only area where things are opposite of the States.  In the States one pays a premium for services, for example, tailor/seam stress, doctors visit, cleaning, shoe repair, haircuts, etc…, but goods are inexpensive compared to services.  Here services are very reasonable, but goods are expensive in comparison to services.  I can have a dress made for 2000 ($4.44), but if I want dress shoes to go with it, I could find a cheap pair for 15000 ($33.33).  I can get the same pair of shoes repaired for 300 ($0.66).

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Water

Posted on August 2, 2011 by David

Before we lived in Yaoundé, I never thought about running water.  At our first house we had some plumbing issues and the water would be turned off to fix a pipe, but it was only for a couple hours at the most.  Now I understand what water cuts are and electricity cuts too!  We went away for a few days and returned to our home and the water was off.  We live in a compound that has a reserve, so we are blessed to have a trickle of water.  We have house sat for others and know what it is like to use barrels to draw water from to take bucket showers, heat water for doing dishes, etc…  As you know when you are away, you return with laundry.  We returned on Wednesday afternoon and the water came back on Friday and I could do laundry.  I’m so thankful for running water.

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