On Life, Meat, and Kittens

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!