Ben has been busy updating our family website. We purchased Cameroon4Christ.com some time ago, but because we aren't web designers, we have no idea how to upkeep this site (maybe someone can give us a lesson in the future). Originally my brother did this for us and we appreciate ALL the work that he has done to help us in our ministry. From prayer cards, to our furlough presentations, to our website and beyond, he has been such a help to us! He is on deputation for his own mission field of Venezuela and working very hard to raise the final support his family needs to leave for the field in December of this year. His schedule is too busy and we don't want to pester him with website updates. So, we recently asked him to link our dot com, to our blog. That way people can type in either web address and it will take them to the same spot. Perfect solution! So, this week Ben has been busy updating our ministry blog! You can see my nice blog button off to the right there, with an easy little link! So, please click that adorable blog button and check out our refurbished ministry blog! (after you are done reading my blog post of course! heehee!)
We were blessed this past week with a visit from our field director and his wife, Steve and Martha Anderson. Their visit was much too short! We enjoyed every minute with them, and wish it could have been longer for sure! The fellowship was wonderful and as always we enjoyed some great laughs. They arrived on Saturday and Martha spoke for our ladies meeting. We had a wonderful group of women. I couldn't believe how many came actually. We served a meal, and thank the Lord we had plenty of food. This photo was taken before everyone arrived. You can still see what a good group we had though.
Eunice, Emma, and I are helping here to serve the food to all the ladies. I'm so glad we had enough! We had a big cooler of jellof rice and then some ladies brought fufu and njamajama and fish. I also brought banana bread and muffins. Every last bit of food was eaten!
Sunday was a busy day as usual. Brother Steve preached in both of our churches. I failed to plan out our teachers so I missed out on both his messages as I had to do Children's Church in both Bambili and Bamenda. I heard they were great though.
Martha kept my kids in line :)
Then on Monday they treated us to lunch at "The Fancy Place," as my children affectionately call it. haha! The Andersons got a kick out of the menu - specifically:
Evidently fish don't come out of the oceans here in Cameroon - they are fabricated in our fancy restaurants!
Needless to say we had a great visit with them and were sad to see them go. They headed to Douala for several days to visit missionaries there, and then are heading back in the direction of Kenya where they will continue to serve as furlough replacement missionaries until May. We will see Bro. Steve again in July, however. He will be coming with that huge group of 20 from First Baptist Church of Land O' Lakes. We are looking forward to that visit for sure!
The next big thing on our calendar is our annual family camp. That is Next Week!! It is always a time of refreshment and fellowship with missionary friends that we have come to love dearly. Our family has been working on special music and skits for the week. The kids are excited to get together with friends. I will have a lot to update after that weeks is over I'm sure!
We are adjusting to life back in Cameroon and it is in full swing! The ministry and home life are busy and there is never a dull moment here! I'll recap some of the last several weeks.
First, I'm happy to announce that we are indeed, MOUSE-FREE! Our Rat Zapper is the bomb, and we also have another form of rodent control.
Way cuter than the rat zapper - don't you agree? :)
The kids are absolutely loving our new kitty, which we all agreed to name Charcoal. We call her Coal for short. We debated naming her Claw...and I'm wondering if that would have been more fitting. That little kitty loves to use my legs as her scratching board! Ouch! She really is very sweet and loves attention. She meow's constantly because she just wants someone to play with. The naming process was a fun one, and the kids thought it was great that they could cast a ballot for their favorite name. In the end, Coal was the winner, hands down. I think the kids just thought the whole voting process was fun, and they didn't really care what the final choice was.
Another fun process about our home life is preparing beef. I've done posts in the past about the time consuming task of trimming and grinding the meat. Thankfully it is a process that we only have to do every few weeks. And I'm so thankful for my husband who takes the trimming part. I normally do the grinding and cleaning up. Our last meat venture, Ben made it to the market as soon as the cow was butchered. In fact, he came too early at first, and he had to wait. I'm sure that not too many people get meat as fresh as we get ours. To prove how fresh it is, watch this!
I know, I know - gross. But, hey...that is my life here. :)
One exciting part of our ministry is the recent growth of our church plant in Benakuma. God provided a piece of land through a member in the church. This man donated some of his property and the people in the church got excited about building their own building! They began making mud blocks and as the rainy season drew near, Ben and a group of men from Faith Baptist Church in Bamenda, went out and helped Faith Baptist Church of Benakuma build the walls up.
The whole church got involved from the men right down to the women and children. In fact, I think the women had the hardest job! They carried buckets and buckets of water from the river back and forth to the building site, which according to Ben was a good little hike straight up and down a hill!! And the kids...they were just having fun playing in the mud! lol!
Here is a glimpse of the process. Mud bricks, mud mortar. Ben hard at work - or playing in the mud himself. I'm not too sure which.
And this is as far as they got on the last trip.
Since then, TomMike went out to help install door and window frames and put up the rest of the walls. Our church in Bamenda voted to help provide wood for the rafters and zinc for the roof. The people are SO excited. Actually, the whole village is buzzing about it. It is obvious God is doing this work because the people out there literally have nothing. It will most certainly be God's church!
So that pretty much sums up our most recent events. We had a wonderful Easter Sunday last week. We have been enjoying the arrival of the rainy season. It always seems like it will never come, but Thank God it does! We are anticipating the arrival and visit of our field director, Bro. Steve Anderson and his wife Martha next week. I have a lot of cleaning up to do before they get here. That is one bonus of company - the house gets cleaned! haha!
Some of the next big events on the agenda are our annual family camp the first week of May and then we are anticipating hosting a group of 20 church members from First Baptist Church of Land O' Lakes Florida! That is going to be one exciting time! I can't wait to update that visit!
