Journey through 2010

NetCasters

2011-06-23T02:30:00.004-04:00

If you aren't familiar with Netcasters, I'll briefly explain it.

You are probably familiar with the little Sunday School song, "I Will Make You Fishers of Men." That is what this program is all about. It is basically an intense training course on how to effectively share the Gospel and lead people to Christ. Those who participate have to memorize a ton of scripture and steps on how to share the gospel. There are training sessions every day to equip. One day I plan to take it myself. It is very time intensive and bringing the kids to Bamenda from 7:30 in the morning until 8 pm. every day it just impossible at this point. When they get older though, we will definitely take part.

So the first day there were 60 people in attendance. That day is just straight teaching. Nobody goes out for "Catching-Catching" as they call it. On the 2nd day, our church had 80 people in attendance! Wow! We even had a few come all the way from Benakuma! One of my Sunday School kids is even taking part in the program (11 or 12 years old) and Ben said he is so bold it is unbelievable! :D After a morning of training, the group pairs up into teams of 2 or 3. The head of each team is a believer who has experience sharing the gospel, and they go out. Basically they go door to door, or business to business. After a couple hours of sharing the gospel, they come back for testimony and praise time. On day 2, Ben's group was busy sharing the gospel with a group of men and he was late and missed the entire testimony time. He finally heard an amazing testimony yesterday (day 3) and I had to share it on my blog.

A group of 2 Cameroonian guys went out to share the gospel. On day 2 it was really rainy and stormy in Bamenda, so it is amazing how many people recieved the gospel that day. Anyway, David was sharing the gospel to 3 guys and they listened, but basically ended the conversation with ... We need to think about it. David kept pressing them with the fact that today is the day of salvation. He gave an example and told them, that at any time, lightening could come down from this heavy storm and strike them dead. If they didn't repent and believe the gospel, they would spend eternity in hell. He told Ben yesterday that right at that very moment, lightening struck the spot where those three guys were standing - and literally knocked two of them off their feet! One man said he felt the lightening strike his hand! You better believe that right that second all three of those guys bowed their heads and put their faith and trust in Jesus!!

It sounds unbelievable doesn't it! God works in mysterious ways! :D

Yesterday the group was down to about 65 and they had another amazing day of "catching-catching" Tonight the Netcasters group that came from the states to teach this program is coming over for dinner. It is Emma's birthday, so she wanted to celebrate with a crowd. And there are about 20 of them! So she definitely got her crowd! lol! I made one cake and now need to make another one. I've got ice cream ready to freeze and I'm making taco soup and serving it over rice to make it go further along with cornbread casserole. Hopefully it will be enough food. And thank the Lord - both the power and water came back today! I'm in desperate need of both!

June Update

2011-06-20T17:28:00.014-04:00

Oh man, there is a lot to share...so I best get right down to it!

I have been enjoying our summer break. I am still keeping the kids busy with their vacation station books. We are also really focusing on learning our times tables, since Drew has a weakness in that area, and Kate should be memorizing them now too. The kids are doing well and don't mind the bit of school I push on them each day to keep them caught up.

Ben found a special treat in Bamenda a couple weeks ago. They are long gone by now, but we managed to stretch them out for a few days anyway:

Yummy! Who doesn't love Lucky Charms?! It is my favorite cereal...or one of them anyway. I'm kind of a sugar cereal fanatic.

The kids have also been doing well with their piano. They love their teacher, Miss Sarah and she has been such a blessing to teach the kids each week. One of our favorite days of the week is Tuesday because we go up to the Needhams for piano lessons. Check out this dinosaur of a fruit that Aunt Barb had on hand:Last week the kids finished up their final piano lessons and Sarah held a piano recital as well. It was so nice. Our three kids prepared music and there were two Cameroonian girls that Sarah and April have been teaching. Sarah also played some beautiful solo numbers.

The kids did a great job and we got the whole thing on video for the grandparents as well. :D

We have a new restaurant we have been going to on Mondays for the past few weeks, Friman's. It isn't really new to us, but we don't take the family there very often until recently when my girls have gotten a hankerin' for Fufu and Njamajama. It is a very typical Cameroon dish that my girls love. Kate and Emma are really funny - they make the perfect pair. Kate prefers the Fufu, and Emma the Njamajama. So, they eat a bit of both, but end up swapping for their favorites near the end of the meal.Well, most of you know that our furlough is fast approaching. 17 days to be exact. :D In preparation for furlough, I wanted to get a suit made for Drew. I figured buying him a suit in the states would cost near an arm and a leg, and we got one made for 30 bucks. It isn't finished yet, but I've seen how well the suits look here, so I have no doubt it will look professional when it is finished. Here is a shot of the suit man measuring Drew.

I am also going to get an outfit made for myself - something I've never done successfully. This time I have a trusted seamstress, Mirabel. She came to the house today and took my measurements - I can't wait to see the finished product. Here's hoping it fits ok! :D

This past Friday we had a meal in our home for our church leaders from both Bambili and Bamenda. I'm always a little nervous hosting Cameroonians b/c they don't ususally like my cooking. I figured I'd go with a favorite all over the world, Spaghetti. It was a hit!

Something new that I learned on this night... Cameroonians like butter. I put it on the table thinking...maybe some of them will have it. I know my kids will anyway. My kids barely had any and the rest of them took down an entire cup of butter for that meal. Wow. I also had french bread of course, to go with the butter, carrots and green bean medley (that sounds so fancy - really just carrots and green beans steamed together) and carrot cake for dessert, which they also loved. We had a great time of group prayer after our meal. We are so thankful for these leaders in our church and are just praying that one will step up and commit to becoming a pastor for one of our churches. Please pray with us.

This past Sunday we had a wonderful baptism service. Brother Walters was baptized.

This man has an amazing testimony of God's miraculous work in his life. His first and foremost miraculous work was his spiritual birth of course, but he also had a brush with death and God spared him. And amazingly enough, his brush with death occurred in America. He came to the states many years ago as a student. Late one night he picked up a man needing a ride. Unfortunately he could tell immediately this man was on drugs. The guy pulled out a knife and made him drive to the nearest ATM machine. He demanded that Bro. Walters pull all his money out of the bank, which he did at several thousand dollars, and gave it to the thief. They got back in the car and the man told him to take him back to where he'd picked him up. Somewhere along the way, the guy must have had enough presence of mind to realize that he could be identified unless he did something, so he took his knife and slashed Bro. Walters throat. The man ran off, and bro. Walters made it to the nearest phone booth, dialed 911 and the next thing he knew he woke up in the hospital several months later. The doctors told him that when they found him, he was clinically dead. And of course he was in a coma for some time and they never knew if he'd ever wake up. Thank God that this man received two new lives - a physical one and a spiritual one.

The last thing I want to mention is something very important taking place this week. Our Bamenda church has the privilege of hosting a Netcasters seminar. Pastor Mark Gilmore from Falls Baptist in Wisconsin has come out with a team, to train believers how to share the gospel effectively. The days are full - from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening. All the sister churches were also invited. We are running our bus from Bamessing all the way to Bamenda and back each day. Pray that the bus keeps running. Pray for fruit that remains as hundreds of Bamenda residents will hear the gospel this week. And how encouraging it was for our church to see this group on the first day of Netcasters:

Thank you to so many of you who read my blog. I really appreciate it. I hope it has been a blessing and help in keeping up with our ministry. I also hope to see some of you on furlough in just a couple of weeks!!

May Update

2011-05-11T15:04:00.000-04:00

I absolutely love rainy season. My favorite time of year, and it is now in full swing. Today it was rainy, and is now breezy and very cold! I love it! In fact, if it weren't for the fact that I'm cozy in my kitchen with the oven and burners going, I'd be snuggled under a blanket with my warmest socks and sweats on! It is like a cold fall day (which is my favorite time of year in America by the way).

The last few weeks since family camp have been busy, but not nearly as busy when the kids were in school. We have been spending the mornings doing our "vacation station" books. They are awesome workbooks put out by BJU press, that give the kids a review of what they have learned about over the past year. It will hopefully keep them sharp so that when they head back to school, they won't forget what was learned this year. We have also been studying the states. The kids can sing the 50 Nifty United States song and we have been quizzing capitals and other facts of the first five states. We delve into California next and I'd love for them to be able to fill out a map of the US and also know the capital city of each state...but we will see. I bought some candy, and if they want a piece they either have to answer a question about one of our states, or they have to sing for me! lol! I have been working with the kids on music and they have a lot of songs prepared for our furlough travels. My mom is anxiously awaiting their return so they can sing in church and she can beam with pride and joy! They are doing a great job and I'm so thankful for kids that truly love to sing!

The kids have been taking piano lessons too, and we had a really fun day at piano lessons this past week! Rosemary Craven got some horses together and after the kids had their lessons they rode horses for a while. Then we had a picnic lunch outside on the grass and after lunch the older Needhams kids took my kiddos down the water slide! We forgot our camera, but I'm pretty sure that Abby Sanderlin got some pictures, so I'll have to beg them off her. They had a blast and slept like babies that night! They were so exhausted!

I tried something new this past week that I've never tried before...making donuts!

I used a biscuit cutter to cut the donut and a bottle cap to cut out the centers. When I'm home I'll pick up a donut cutter. They are really cheap and it will be fun to have one to make donuts. I was surprised at how easy they were! And the family loved them!

I also wanted to share this picture of my Mom on mothers day. She and my aunt took my grandmother out to lunch. I love this picture of of all of them!

I spent the early hours of Mother's day up sick...blech! Ben was gone for a three day weekend to Benakuma to encourage the churches out there. It was just me and the kiddos. They spent the morning doing who knows what while I tried to catch a few winks of sleep to make up for my long night. They did watch movies and I do know that they made a mess! Oh well...thankfully nothing bad happened! lol! But, I did get a really great early Mother's day gift before Ben left for Benakuma...

Yeah, I scrapped it! haha! I have been thoroughly enjoying my Kindle and have already read two books that I got for free! How can you beat that!! My scrapbook page tells the story of how I came across my Kindle earlier than I should have...Oops! Mom sent it to Ben in a package and she had wrapped it very carefully with Ben's name on it. I was going crazy when the box came, opening up everything...I didn't even think twice when I opened that package! Before I'd even gotten all of the brown paper off of it, I saw what it was. Ben walked in about that moment and I said, "I don't think I'm supposed to see this...am I?" It was originally an anniversary gift, but he knew how much I wanted it, so he switched some things around and decided to give it to me for Mother's day. What a guy!! I'm so glad he did too, b/c I am really enjoying it!

I wanted to share this adorable picture of Emma and her new smile. Her front teeth are coming in and she looks so cute! I just grin everytime she looks at me. It completely changes her whole look!

She and Faith Ann suck their thumbs, and and since Emma's new teeth have started coming in, I have determined to make them quit. I have this nail polish called Mavala Stop. It worked for Kate who was a die hard finger sucker (she sucked her pointer finger) and so I know it will work for Emma and Faith. It is a big pain, b/c they have to be careful about picking up food even or the stuff will get on it. I told them I didn't care if they had to experience a little bit of discomfort...I was going to get them to stop! It is ruining their teeth...Hopefully it will work quickly.

Well, less than two months until furlough...and counting! We are getting excited and definitely looking forward to it! I know the next two months will fly by really fast. They always do.

Until next time!

Family Camp

2011-04-25T17:19:00.014-04:00

Life has been busy. But a good busy! So, I'll give you an update on what has been happening in the Sinclair house.

First and foremost...We are done with school! Yahoo!!! Family camp was coming up and I was really pushing the kids to finish. We'd gotten behind with some lessons b/c of sickness, so by doubling up and doing extra work the kids were able to finish the Friday before camp. Emma still has a little bit of work, but we are just going to do it together a little bit each day. No pressure. :)

I have been doing a little bit of sewing. Here are my latest projects. First is a dress I made for Kate.
and I also made her a twirl skirt.
I found this great pattern on www.youcanmakethis.com. I love that website by the way. There are tons of gorgeous patterns and they are all downloadable pdf files. You just print them, cut out the pattern peices and sew away. They are so much easier to follow than simplicity or any other brand pattern name! Yesterday I had a lot of fun sewing clothes for American girl dolls. While at Family camp a family there had their car broken into. It was some kids and they stole some odd things. One of them being the girl's American girl doll clothes. Not the dolls mind you...but the clothes. Go figure. So, the twirl skirt pattern that I'd made for my girls came with an American doll version. I couldn't wait to try it out. I also found some more free patterns at www.libertyjaneclothing.com Here is one outfit that I made...it turned out so cute!
Down the road when my girls get an American girl doll...I will be able to make them some cute clothes!

Some fun family things we have done lately:
Playing in the sprinkler. That was fun!! We have regularly scheduled rationed water now, which has been such a blessing. Every couple of days we get a full day of high pressure water. I take advantage of those days and get lots of laundry done. I also get in at least a couple showers! haha! Well, we decided on one hot day that it would be fun to dig the sprinkler out.

We also had a family bowling night:
Our bowling ball (one of those dryer balls) was not very effective. Ben finally dug out my HUGE exercise ball! That did the trick! Lots of strikes occurred after that! lol!

Ben had the opportunity to meet the U.S. Ambassador.
Tom Needham, a missionary near us, invited the ambassador up for a breakfast. He invited all the missionaries as well, but it was a little too early for my liking. Plus I wanted to keep the kids focused on school as family camp was the next week. So he went up and spent an hour with the ambassador. Keep praying for our CBF government approval. We brought the need once again to the ambassador's attention, and he promised he would keep bringing it before the president's office. All we need is the president's signature and we will have complete legal authority to plant churches. As an added bonus it will also make living here significantly cheaper!

The next big event was our missionary family camp. Each year all the fundamental, gospel preaching missionaries, gather up in Sabga for a conference. Sabga is about 20 minutes from our home, so we stay at our house and host some of the other visiting missionary families. This year we had Don and Ann Wright in our home. That was a treat. Some of you that comment on my blog may have noticed that Ann frequently comments on here. It was such a treat to have them in our home!! All of the other visiting missionaries stayed up in Sabga.

Our conference started on Monday night. Dr. Wayne Van Geldren and his wife came to be our speaker. All of the missionary ladies divided up the cooking responsibilities. Since I am pretty much by myself right now, I decided to do the meal on Monday night. I figured I'd have all weekend and all day Monday to prepare. So, I was a little loco and chose to do Tacos! haha! I paid a Cameroonian to make 150 tortillas. Ben and I ground up 10 lbs. of meat. I made a bucket full of chips. Two huge bowls of Salsa. Three jars of home made dressing and two big trays of salad fixings. I also made up a big bowl of nacho cheese sauce and made up a bowl of sour cream as well. The meal was an absolute hit. I was SO completely stressed by the end of that day, and was really thankful that I'd chosen to get my meal out of the way at the beginning of the week! lol! But thank the Lord it turned out yummy and that there was enough to feed over 70 of us!

We had three sessions a day and the children had their own special meetings of missionary and Bible stories and crafts. There was a zip-line for them to play on, and a volleyball net and a fun day of play in the water with a home made water slide. We came home exhausted at the end of each day, but it was a wonderful week. I always enjoy the fellowship with the ladies that I only get to see a few times a year. Some only once a year! Our family prepared several special music numbers. In fact the very first night Drew and Kate sang a special.
It was kind of an odd night. Right before the service started a big storm blew in. Tom was afraid of hail, so we had to bring both of the airplanes in the hangar. We all crowded chairs around as best we could. For the rest of the week, however, the planes were parked outside the hangar and we were able to sit like we normally do. Even in the craziness Drew and Kate sang and did a wonderful job. One of these days I'll have to post a video, but they sing parts so well. We also sang two family specials the next day. I had the privilege of singing a duet with Christine Mossman. We both love to just sing through music. It was SO fun to sight read music. I haven't done that for a while. We sang a beautiful choir number and also a ladies group number. During one practice I wanted to just sit there and cry...the words, the music, the parts...I just really enjoy singing and miss being able to sing through arranged music like that. It was an extra special blessing this week.

The kids also did a choir number
The boy to the left of Drew became Drew's buddy during this week of camp. I was so thrilled that he found a friend. Caleb Wright lives in the far north of Cameroon, so we only see the Wrights once a year, but since camp, Drew has already gotten an email from Caleb. I think they will become great friends. One of these days we want to take the kids up to the far north. The Bachman family and the Wright family serve up there and both are great friends. They don't get too many visitors, and I know it would be a neat experience for our family.

And I have to show you pictures of the make-shift water slide
The kids had a blast playing on this all afternoon. There is a nice waterslide that Tom made out of cement. But it had a big hole in it and wasn't repaired in time. So Kathy Needham came up with this great idea and the kids didn't even miss the other slide. They had so much fun!

The sessions and the preaching were so refreshing spiritually. I was challenged in so many areas. One of them being in my parenting. We received some great teaching this week of camp, and I am so thankful for the amazing week that God gave us!

So, that is an un-condensed update! lol! Now that the kids are done with school, we have started a summer school of sorts. They do review work every morning to keep them sharp on the skills they learned this year. They are each reading a book they have chosen and we are also reading one book orally as a group. For fun we are going to study each of the 50 United States and I'm hoping they can fill out a blank US map by the end of the summer. And I also have a goal of Drew and Kate memorizing their times tables! So, while school is done, we will have a much longer summer break than normal and I don't want them to forget what they have learned!

Next big thing on the agenda...our trip home!! In about 10 weeks we will head home to the U.S. and we will now start counting down the days!

Don't Faint!

2011-03-26T08:45:00.009-04:00

Don't faint because you are actually reading a blog post from me! haha! I've been busy, and lazy mostly. lol. But I wanted my Mom to see some pictures, so thus a blog post. I figured you all might like to see too!

We have been busy with life in general. Kids are so close to being done with school. Only 25 lessons left and in some subjects less than that. I'm anxious for them to be done as well. Of course, they are more anxious. We recently started three of the older kidso on piano lessons. So that is extra time for them, and Ben and I. Tom and Barb Needham's daughter, Sarah, just graduated with a major in piano, so she was happy to offer lessons. It is good teaching practice for her and of course great for my kids. They were so excited the night before that they couldn't sleep. Once I started buckling down on their practice time though, Emma came to me and said, "Mom, I don't really want to take piano. I just said that I did because I wanted to go to Uncle Tom's house." haha! I said, "Tough! I am making you and you will thank me for it later." On the day of their very first lesson, they came back all excited to tell me all about...piano?? No. They couldn't wait to tell me all about Goliath:

Now that is one big chameleon! Unfortunately, since then, Goliath has somehow escaped, so I guess I'll never get to meet him. :( lol!

Some other fun treats that our family has been able to enjoy lately:

Yummmmm... and also this:

Ben found these canned strawberries in town that came from Europe and they were so yummy. I made strawberry shortcake and what a treat!

The ministry is busy. This month is missions month and we have had different guest speakers on Sunday. Ben finishes off this Sunday with a message and we will be taking our Faith Promise committments. Praise the Lord, our church was able to support Pastor Felix this past year and we are praying that the committments will increase this year and we will be able to take on another national missionary.

I picked up my needle and thread again and tackled another pattern. Simplicity is supposed to be so simple...NOT! haha! I get so stumped on patterns, but with the help of YouTube and google I figured it out and made a dress for Emma. The material is pretty downright ugly, but it was a free gift from our insurance company here. I figured it was the perfect thing to practice sewing on. I wouldn't cry too much if I messed up. I even made buttonholes! Of course, Emma is thrilled no matter what the material looks like!

I think that is pretty much it for an update. We have our annual family conference in about three weeks, and we are pretty excited about that. We look forward to that every year. I will be sure to give you an update of our week when that is done. And by then, we will also be done with school. I still plan to spend an hour every day doing school work with the kids to keep them sharp. Our summer break will be longer than normal, and if we don't do some practice math facts and sentence diagramming, they will forget everything! And then we are of course looking forward to our furlough the beginning of July!

A Word from our Sponser...

2011-02-17T13:52:00.003-05:00

Ben went to Benakuma this last weekend. This trip was quite a bit easier than the last, and he didn't have any exciting labor and delivery stories to share, but they had a great weekend and saw souls saved and believers encouraged. As always, he came back bursting with Benakuma news. He shared a neat little nugget that I could never put into the proper words. So, I asked him to write it down. I know it will be an encouragement to you:

I know this is weird. The same day Becca changes her banner to read, “Missions from a Mom’s Perspective” she asks me to write a post on her blog. I am not sure what that means, but here goes. :D

This past weekend Tommike and I went out to minister in Benade and Benakuma. We saw at least six professions of faith and we were greatly blessed by the tremendous growth of Faith Baptist Church of Benade. This church is not even four months old and the small room they are meeting in is already packed! The church in Benakuma is talking about buying their own plot of land to build a church house, and next time we hope to have a good group baptized who have been recently saved. Praise God! The ministry in these two villages is very challenging both physically and spiritually. It is physically challenging because some weekends we must trek for hours and miles up and down rough terrain to reach these villages. It is spiritually challenging because we have entered a region that has been dominated by Satan and his dark realm for generations. He is seriously at work on the individuals and families who have come to know Christ in these remote villages.

On Sunday morning I was singing a congregational hymn with the people of Faith Baptist Church in Benakuma. The church house is constructed of mud blocks, six trusses and a corrugated aluminum roof. The floor is dirt and the “pews” are rough hewn wooden benches. The church has three small wooden shutters that open and allow a little air and light in for the service (this village has no electricity or running water). During the week, the one door and the three shutters are closed tight and the church house is completely dark except for Wednesday night prayer meeting, Saturday evening Bible study and Sunday Morning worship service. That is why I was very surprised on Sunday morning to look to my right and notice a small Banga shoot (palm nut tree) poking up through the dirtfloor of the right aisle in the church! My first thought was, “How in the world did that seedling get water and light to germinate and begin growing inside a room that is completely locked in darkness all week?” During the next congregational song, I discovered the answer. I pulled my camera from my pocket and took this picture.
You see, the metal roof contains several nail holes. These holes apparently allowed just enough sun and rain to fall and to bring forth life in this room almost entirely concealed in darkness day after day. My heart was moved as I considered the comparisons between myself and the nail hole above this seedling. Benakuma and Benade have been strongholds of darkness since they were established generations ago. The god of this world has blinded the minds of these people since birth (2 Cor. 4:4). All of the sudden, the I AM led a couple of missionaries to punch a hole in the darkness of this region. God has used these small “nail holes” to bring a few drops of water (John 7:38) and enough light (Matt. 5:14) into this realm of darkness - and life has sprung forth! This Banga plant is young and fragile, just as the young believers of Benakuma and Benade. Please pray for God’s daily grace and strength for these precious people, and please pray the Lord of the Harvest that he would send more laborers to Cameroon who would be willing to be nothing more than “nail holes” for Jesus.

Extended Stay

2011-02-16T03:26:00.008-05:00

Well, it has been just over two weeks since we returned from taking the Yeiters to the airport in Douala, and I have to share our exciting experience. Life in Africa is always an adventure and you never quite know what is going to happen. You have to take one day at a time. Although - that is really life in general. It's just that when a trip like ours takes place in the states, you have triple A to call and a taco bell and a Wal-mart next door to make it a bit less stressful. :D

The trip started out with, "How much longer til we get there" 's from all the kids before we even really left Bamenda! haha! We were packed in pretty good between all of us and the Yeiters luggage and it was an unusually hot day. So, it wasn't the most comfortable ride, but we told the kids to enjoy each other's company and have fun. Easier said than done I can assure you - but all in all, they were pretty good for the duration of the trip. Especially considering the trouble we ran into close to Douala.
You can kind of see Trinity in the back of the van, snuggled between all the luggage. She fell asleep that way lol! Too cute.

Well, everything was going along just great until we were about 30 to 45 minutes outside of Douala. The van started to overheat (deja-vu from my Mom's visit). We obviously pulled over...cooled it down. Whew! The van was steamy!! and we were all so sweaty. Well, it cooled down and we continued on our way for a very brief time. It started heating again and again the guys tried to cool it down. This time some local men helped to carry some water. Off we go again...but then the van started making this terrible grinding noise. Yikes. So, Ben just had no idea what it was and was too afraid to go any further. Especially after we'd just paid to have the engine rebuilt! God orchestrated every bit of it though. We broke down in front of Jonathan's house. This man lives and works in Douala, but he is from the village of Babanki! He was from our province. Ben told him, "I was just in Babanki this morning!" So instantly we had a connection. He allowed us to pull our van into his little yard. He also offered to find a friend who could carry us to the airport. And he said it was no problem to park the van there for the night. He had a big security light and a nightwatchman, so the van would be safe. Wow! God worked it all out!

Well, We had to wait quite a little bit of time until his friend arrived with the van, and keeping the kids entertained was a feat. I'd brought a book with me that I tried to read to them. Susan took over and sang some songs with them. Jonathan was so thoughtful and brought out chairs for all of us to sit in. Finally that little van arrived. There were 12 of us...and Yeiters had their 12 peices of luggage plus their carry-ons - and we had a carry-on size suitcase with our stuff in it. This van was a 9 passenger. Hmmmmmmmm. Well, in Cameroon fashion, we all (including luggage of course) made it into that van! Unreal!! Susan and I were in the front passenger seat with 3 kids, and Matt and Ben were in the back with 5 kids. Because of how everything worked out, we weren't able to go with Yeiters to the airport. We had Jonathan's friend take us to the Mediterranean restaurant so we could eat and we said our goodbyes while the Yeiters continued on to the airport to find something to eat there.

We went to the Mediterranean twice while we were there and would you believe I forgot to take a picture both times! I'm so mad at myself. Well, we were exhausted, but hadn't eaten a real meal all day, so we ordered some pizzas. After we ate we hailed a cab and went to the Baptist guest house to crash for the night. I took a shower...Ahhh! I haven't had a real shower in weeks! It was such a treat.

The mechanic met Ben at 8 the next morning and they took a taxi out to the van. The kids and I got up and ate breakfast outside. They served tea, so we had fun having omelets, bread and a tea party. We went back into our room to wait for Ben b/c it was so hot. When you are really bored...even french cartoons will entertain you! haha! In the mean time - Ben dropped the mechanic off and put him to work. He headed back to the guest house, so we could spend the day as a family. Ben learned right away, that the mechanic would need to work on it all night, so we were spending an extra night in Douala. The kids were excited!

We decided to go shopping, so we left the guest house and walked until an empty taxi pulled up, and we hired him for the day. His name was Gaston...the kids loved that. ha! We went to all the fun stores that we only get to go to a couple times a term. I bought some stuff - not too much, but we enjoyed looking. Each time, Gaston would park outside and wait for us. We finally finished around lunch time and had him drop us off at the ice cream restaurant we always go to. We paid him and decided to walk back from there. We enjoyed burgers/fries and ice cream!!!

We had the whole afternoon ahead of us and nothing to do but wait, so Ben suggested we go swimming. Well, there was no Wal-Mart next door, so we had to improvise. Kate wore her jammie pants, and her shirt from the day before...Emma wore my tank top and Drew's shorts. Drew wore his clothes from the day before. All in all it worked out, and they swam ALL afternoon! I went and made Faith take a nap. She finally fell asleep and when she woke up, we got ready and walked to the pizza restaurant. We sat down and enjoyed pizza with feta cheese...Yumm! The kids were so wasted though, that they didn't eat as well as they had the night before. That pool wore them out! When we finished we got a taxi and headed back for bed! We went to bed early b/c everyone was so tired.

The mechanic finally came with our repaired van at 11 the next morning. Thankfully the problem was a lot milder than it sounded when we were driving it. The alternator housing came loose, causing the fan to slow down, causing the engine to overheat. We hit the road and had no problems the remainder of the trip. Another treat we enjoyed was rain our second night in Douala. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of it pouring on the roof. We also ran into rain a few times on the drive home, which made the trip home 100 times cooler than the trip there. In some places, almost too cool for the windows to be open. Since then we have had several days of rain, including yesterday. It thundered and threatened all afternoon and evening. It never did actually just dump on us, but rain fell a little bit and I'm hopeful and excited about the rainy season coming!

Rain eventually means water. Though, I'm not sure we will feel the effects of it before we leave for furlough the beginning of July, but I'll enjoy the rain whether we have water or not. The water situation has become frustrating, but it is a fact of life I'm learning to deal with. Ben finally sat down and talked to the water chairman and the plumber on Monday, and told him that he needs to ration the water, so that everyone can get a little. We are supposed to now get water Mon-Wed-Fri nights. That will keep our tank full, and the laundry caught up. So while I won't necessarily get a shower, I'll still be able to flush my toilets at will and wash my clothes!

I'll be back in the next few days to update on normal life and Ben's recent trip to Benakuma!

Movie Night!

2011-01-30T15:32:00.002-05:00

Ever since Toy Story 3 came out, we have been dying to see it. I bought it several months ago and we have been patiently waiting to watch it. Sam Sanderlin's mom came out for a visit and she packed it in her luggage so we could get it out here and so we planned a big family movie night to watch it.

We don't always watch movies on the "big screen", but I thought it would be extra special for this extra special movie! So, Ben dug out the data projector and we turned the couch around and took all the pictures off the wall. Pretty cool, huh? Our own little movie theater!

It was a great movie and it made us laugh a lot, and get teary at the end (well...I did anyway) and we had a great evening as a family!

Tomorrow our co-workers are headed back to the states for a few months, and so we are taking them to Douala as a family. When I first moved here, a trip to Douala with all my kids didn't sound enjoyable at all! But now...I'm really looking forward to it! haha! We will get to eat at the yummy pizza restaurant and maybe even grab a yummy burger (can you tell we don't get out much!). I plan on stocking up on lots of great goodies for the kitchen that we can only get there. I'll be sure to take a photo or two of our Douala adventure and share!

While Susan is away I'll become the primary piano player (poor church people!), so I have been copying music from my "Fake" book and practicing quite a bit. Have you ever heard of the fake book? It is the only way I can play the piano ... it is all written in the key of C and I just have to learn the chords to play with it. I bought the books on Amazon and it gives me quite a repetoire of music that I can play for church. I know the song leaders will be thrilled to have Susan back a few months from now, but it will give me some more piano practice anyway! Pray for us as we will be a bit busier the next few months with our co-workers gone. Especially for Ben - he is taking his final Masters course in March, while preaching at both of our churches and also taking on the new responsibility of a Men's Saturday Bible study...among all the other things he does (moral instruction classes, visitation etc...). He is a hard worker ALL the time and he never ceases to amaze me. I am blessed to have such an amazing husband.

Ok - I'm off for now! 'Night!

Januray almost over??

2011-01-26T13:25:00.014-05:00

Seriously...can you believe January is almost over??? I can't. And I've been a bad blogger. So many of you have conveyed to me how much you appreciate the blog and enjoy reading it, and I want to say a big thank you for taking the time to read it. It means So much to me! And I apologize for not being as faithful as I should be.

I wanted to give a quick update on Hederine's funeral as I promised I would. Our church had a good group of 10 that took the time to spend the day and be a support group for Okerike. While the family wasn't Baptist, they were very cordial and let us have a big part in the funeral. The dad made a statement that Hederine was an adult and made the decision to choose Baptist as her faith rather than presbyterian. We aren't always accepted very well in situations like this, so it was a blessing that the family was so welcoming. Ben was gone most of the day. I'd planned to go but came down with a terrible cold/sinus infection. I spent most of the day on the couch. But Ben and Matt drove their cars to carry our church people. Here is a photo of most everyone that went: Ben also snagged this photo of the burial: Okerike is doing so well and we are just continuing to pray for God's grace in his life. And we continue to praise God that Hederine is in heaven today! It makes all the sacrifice of living here worth it...and I so need to remind myself of that when I miss my family or when I haven't had water for over a week. In the long run, those things are insignificant when I reflect on people like Hederine that are in heaven today b/c God allowed Ben the priviledge of sharing the gospel with her husband!

In family news there isn't too much new. We are plugging away at school and all of us are suffering from coughs and nasal junk. Poor Drew and myself have been coughing in stereo the last week. I'm sure our family is sick of us! I am tired of coughing and so ready to just get all this ick cleared up.

This is how Kate spends her days: She wears her skates more than she wears shoes. And even more recently Emma has given them a try. They always scare the daylights out of me when they first put those things on. Emma has got her balance down, but she hasn't quite figured out how to make herself go. She and Kate came up with a system though. They each wear one skate and skate through the house like it is a skateboard, pushing themselves along with the other foot. It is hilarious.

Faith Ann is my girly girl. She loves to dress up and dance around like a little princess and she loves her baby dolls. She wanted me to tie her baby onto her back. It is all she's ever seen, and she thinks this is how you carry a baby. OH, and excuse the outfit. I did make her change before she went out into public. Haha!! I was also giggling at her in church the other night. She was SO proud of herself in this picture,
She said, "Mom - look! My feet touch!" She sees the rest of us propping our feet up on the bench in front of us, and she told me that she was a big girl now because her feet could finally reach. SO cute!

I had a little photo shoot with the girls the other day. It had really been a while since I'd tried to take decent pictures of them. They turned out pretty cute and I've had fun scrapping them. I always love taking photos of Emma in natural light. She has the bluest eyes! I wanted Kate to give me a genuine smile, so I told Drew to come over and make her laugh. He got some genuine giggles out of her! And then there was Faith Ann who can almost always giggle on cue!
Hmmm, lets see. Anything else interesting go on recently? I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. Oh! One more thing... Ben recently ran into a couple of Americans in Bambili. We don't usually see too many of those! haha! Jacqueline is a Peace Corp worker and is teaching at ENS (a teacher's college) here and Eva is a Fullbright student who is here for a year as a teacher's aid. They were thrilled to be in contact with some other Americans, so we invited them to church and also to dinner the next week at our house. They came to church and then to dinner the following Friday and we had a great time of fellowship with them. Since then Jacqueline has come to church 2 more times and we know she is Catholic. So pray for more opportunities to share the gospel with these ladies. Just being Americans we have a connection with them and they loved coming to our house for dinner. I made taco salads and they about fell over they were so excited. We plan to have them over again and I'll be sure to get some pictures of them! The girls love Eva. She is just out of college and she braided the girls hair and they took to her immediately. Jacqueline is middle aged and has grandkids of her own. Drew enjoyed her though, because she is a science teacher and he was pretty pumped to show her his new microscope that he got for Christmas.

Anyhoo...I think that is about it. Thanks again for all those that read - and I'll try to make my next post a little sooner! G'night!

This Temporary Life

2011-01-13T04:50:00.004-05:00

This life is so temporary and we were reminded of that this past week when a young member of our church passed away. Her husband called us with the news and Ben and I wept together. Not because of Hederine's death. We are rejoicing because within the last year, She trusted Christ and is at the feet of her Savior right now! The thing that really broke our heart was the baby she left behind that will never remember his mother. Let me tell you Hederine's story.

About a year and a half ago we were having some internet trouble and Ben was in a cafe checking his email. The power went out. When that happens, expletives fly and people are usually not happy because whatever they were doing just got lost. Everyone was sitting around hoping that the power would pop back on and chatting in the mean time. Ben heard one man near him talking about how his brother had just died, and how he didn't have one thing prepared. He was having to go around and arrange the funeral and pay for this and that. Ben said, "Do you mind if I ask a question? Are you prepared for your death? What if you were to die? Are you prepared? Where would you go?" That man listening was a Nigerian man and his name was Okerike. Ben had many listening ears, but as he shared the gospel Okerike was the one that trusted Christ that day. He began attending our church and not too long after that, his Cameroonian wife, Hederine, trusted Christ as Savior. They were both baptized and became members of our church in October of 2009. Hederine was pregnant at the time. You can kind of see her baby bump in the photo. In March of 2010 she "put to birth" a baby boy and they named him Dick. We went and visited her in the hospital. Pastor Lee Atkinson was here visiting us at the time, so he had the priviledge of meeting Hederine. Here is a picture of her sweet newborn boy:
Around November of this last year, Hederine became ill. From what we were told, her husband was trying to treat her in the house. He is considered a type of medicine man in Nigeria, though not of the witchcraft type. He was attempting to treat her naturally with herbs and things of that sort. She became so ill after two weeks, that he finally admitted her into the hospital and she was diagnosed with cerebral malaria. We visited her one Monday as a family. I wouldn't have even recognized her she was so thin. She looked so different. But she was sitting up, eating, and while visibly very weak, she seemed to be improving. She was finally discharged from the hospital. Her husband claims that a difficult trip out to her village for Christmas caused her to relapse. She was re-admitted to the hospital after the holidays. Ben went to visit her and he came home and said, "Hederine is really sick. We need to pray." He said she was strugging for every breath. He spent close to an hour with her and prayed with her and read scripture. He called them every day to check on her health. Okerike kept saying she was improving. Wednesday of last week, however, Okerike called us to tell us that she had died that morning.

I'd say she is about my age. Maybe even younger. It is hard for me to grasp how a seemingly healthy young woman could get sick and die so quickly. It is a reminder of the brevity of life and I'm so thankful for the boldness that Ben had in the internet cafe that day, to share the gospel with Okerike and later with Hederine. I'm so thankful that she chose to trust in Christ. Like I said earlier, what really saddens me is that Dick will never remember his Mother. He really hasn't even been with her very much the last couple of months of her life even. But every time Ben visited her in the hospital, Dick was all she would talk about. Our hearts are saddened for the family and we pray that during this difficult trial in Okerike's life, that he wouldn't become bitter or angry with God.

Would you pray as well, that God would bring the peace that only He can bring? Would you also pray for the funeral this Saturday, as Ben preaches and has the opportunity to share the gospel with her entire family?

Happy New Year

2011-01-03T14:06:00.017-05:00

Happy New year to everyone. I hope you are excited about 2011! The new year is a really big deal here in Cameroon. They spend the day celebrating and eating just like they do on Christmas. Surviving another year is such a great reason for them to celebrate here. New Years at our house wasn't a big feast and celebration. I started my new years resolution diet right after Christmas, so we weren't eating. But I am no-less thankful for all the God did for us in 2010. This 2010 blog is a testimony and record. I'm considering printing it, actually. I think it would be fun to read down the road.

Well, I should make my Mom happy tonight. :D She's been pestering me to update my blog. Sorry I'm so behind. Here is a re-cap of our Christmas.

We celebrate Christmas eve. I've been doing that since I was born I think, and that is just how Christmas is for me. I couldn't think of doing it any other way. And in fact, it works very well for us here. Christmas day is spent at church and then entertaining vistors all day, so having a private family time would be impossible. The kids woke up Friday ready to open up their presents! lol! I said...not yet. I have a lot of work to do. I spent the day preparing a fun meal. We had a 7 layer dip, that wasn't actually 7 layers, but it was yummy. I made home-made tortilla chips (very time consuming). I had to cook, grind and re-fry the beans for the 7 layer dip (also very time consuming...and this is why I don't cook when I'm in the states :D), I made sugar cookies and chex candy (thanks to Susan who gave me the chex cereal for my Christmas present! Yummmmmmy!). I also made pizza pinwheels. Those called for cresent roll dough, which of course I had to make from scratch. They turned out so-so. Not exactly the pizza-y flavor I was hoping for, but you live and learn.
Anyway, it was a fun night of snacks. By the time I got everything ready it was around 5 p.m. We had some visitors and more delays and the kids were chomping at the bit! haha! Finally we opened presents!!! Yay!! Thanks to my Mom's visit in Nov., we were able to have a really great Christmas this year. Here are a few pics: I think this is one of my favorites of the whole night. Emma has been wanting her own Bible and Mimi got her a really great kids Bible with a Bible cover. As you can tell, she was beyond ecstatic! We go around and read one chapter of the Bible as a family each night, and her brother and sister have their own. Now that she can read, she has been commenting on how much she'd like one. This gift was the best present she got, according to her! This was Faith's favorite of the night. She loves Tink and she squealed SO loud when she opened this. It always makes a mom happy to know that she got the right gifts! The kids were pretty excited about their new wii games too. Sports and Sports Resort is fun...but having some new things to play has been exciting for them. Drew loved all the spidey stuff he got. He has been mentioning for some time how he wanted character sheets for his bed like the girls have. Well, they don't make character sheets for queen size beds really. I found a set of batman sheets at pottery barn but they were outrageous. Well, once Mimi knew what Drew wanted, she set out to find something. She snagged these bright sheets on ebay from some place in Hong Kong I think. We were both a little leary, but they are great! Great quality and they fit great and Drew loves them! Another winner of a gift! Thanks Mimi! Isn't this great!? haha! I did this when I was a kid. I got these fake nails and put them on. I knew Kate would love a nail kit. I might regret it at some point...but I've set some strict rules down about not taking out the nail polish unless she has permission etc... Sometimes Kate acts and thinks later, but hopefully we won't have any disasters. The set came with several nail polish colors, nail stickers, a nail dryer, and a couple sets of fake nails. They brought fun entertainment for about a day. Kate ditched them after the first hour, and then Faith Ann put them on. She had more fun with them than Kate did I think!

Ben had to take a break at one point to check on our Christmas dinner....
Yep, still there wandering around the courtyard. :D

Michael, our nightwatchman, did the dirty work later that night. He cleaned the bird up all nice and pretty for me. I stuck her in the fridge and got her ready for cooking the next day. My new oven has a rotisserie in it, so this is the first time I'd ever used it. It looked neat while it was cooking, but in the end, I think sticking the bird in a pan would be just as effective.
Then the final product!
A nice treat for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately I didn't plan well enough in advance and all we had to go with our bird was rice, but the kids didn't care. We had tons of goodies from the night before still hanging around so we ended up snacking the rest of the day.

Our Christmas service was great. I kind of organized a program in advance and typed it all out. We were ready to go at 9 a.m., but unfortunatly nobody else was. We kept trying to move ahead, but we were missing all the people involved in all the parts of the program! lol! We kept singing and singing, and rearranging the schedule around. Finally everyone showed up, and it ended up being a great service. The kids sang, played bells, did a drama and they loved being a part of it. Here is one photo of some of my Sunday School kiddos singing a song:
So, in conclusion, we had a great Christmas and New Year. We are back to the grind of school and pushing to stay focused for the second semester. This year we have many things to look forward to...one thing is a 6 month visit to the states. Of course I'm pretty excited about that. I always enjoy a break from the extra work it requires to live here (ie. cooking! haha!) and it is always nice to get a reprieve and see our friends and family...because I miss you all! Thank you for being faithful readers through 2010! Next blog post will be about a possible new name for my blog! :D

Kate is 8!

2010-12-22T13:44:00.012-05:00

We had a blast of a party last night for Kate's 8th birthday. It was so much girly fun! Kate woke up ready to open her presents. It killed her to have to do school and then have to wait until after we ate supper to open gifts, but she survived! haha!

She requested lasagna, which turned out SO yummy!! I made it the night before to save myself some stress and it was so moist and delish...if I do say so myself. I made garlic herb braid and a salad. We invited Yeiters over and our evening was a lot of fun! Here are some pictures to sum it up:
Emma wanted to bring the cake in. When I handed it to her, she was like, "This is too heavy!" So we brought it in together. Kate requested Hello Kitty, and I went the easy way out this time. Mom brought this little thing from a cake shop and I just plopped it on there. But hey, the kids were still impressed with the "flower" frosting (thanks to the star tip!) and all is well!

The girls were a HOOT the entire night screaming and oohing and ahhing over all things girly. The Hello Kitty napkins and plates were a hit!

Kate surrounded by her friends. She got some great presents and I think she was thrilled. She got a barbie, which is something she really wanted. (You should have heard the girls when that gift was opened!) The Yeiters gave her some really cool gifts. One was a pet shop pen, that had a little tiny remote control car that is stored in the top of the pen. Kind of hard to explain, but Kate said it was her favorite gift. All in all the evening was a success.

There is a lot of other stuff I haven't blogged about. It is a busy time of year. That is my excuse for now haha! This past Friday we went to Yeiters for a Christmas party. The kids had a blast exchanging gifts and it was just an overall fun time. We got a super gift for Yeiters. They are pickle lovers, and we found huge Sam's Club jars of pickles at an American import store in Bamenda. There is a bit of a story behind it all, but they were so thrilled with their gift. There were two jars left in the store, so we bought them both so Matt and Susan didn't have to share! :D Susan got me some Chex Cereal. My favorite Christmas dessert is the candy that you make with that. There are a ton of different names for that candy...Chocolate treasures, Muddy buddies, dog chow! Whatever the name it is yummy stuff and I make it once a year if I have the cereal on hand. I was so pumped about my gift. It will make my Christmas eve snack night complete!

My sewing machine has been staying busy. I bought a pattern for barbie clothes and had to try those out. Wow...it takes some patience to sew those little tiny seams, but the girls have been ecstatic with the results. Here is my most recent dress.
I'm also using my newfound sewing skills to create organizational helps around the house. I made this for the girls barbie dolls. Emma is a quick one. She saw me making it and said, "Mommy, we only have three dolls, but you have five pockets..." Hmmmm...little stinker! haha! I told her that she needed to keep a secret and then explained that Kate was getting a barbie for her birthday. Then Emma said, "But that is still only 4 dolls and there are 5 pockets." She was obviously fishing for some hints to what is under the Christmas tree! I told her the extra pocket was for accessories! :D Anyway, here is the little barbie holder that I made.

We are looking forward to Christmas. We have a great program planned for our Christmas morning service. This is the first year that we have a lot of special music planned and things of that sort. I'm pretty excited about it! I'll be sure to update with pictures after this week is over. I hope you have a wonderful Christmas as well!

Happy Friday

2010-12-10T12:55:00.011-05:00

I always love Fridays. I'm not sure why...maybe because it is pizza night. And even though I have to make it, we all love pizza, so it is still a treat! :D

Today was spent doing school with the kids and then off to the sewing room for me :D I found some of the girl's old jeans in the closet and decided I was going to do something with them. I found some directions online and tackled the project of turning those jeans into a skirt. It was surprisingly easy and I finished it in about an hour. That doesn't include the time I spent ripping the seams though. Oh my word!! They have like three layers of stitching in jeans! It took me a while to rip the seams and I was very thankful it was a kid's size 5 and not an adult pair of jeans! Once I ripped the seams it was cake from there. I was really happy with the results and Faith loves her new skirt! This past week was a pretty busy one. I'll start with this past Sunday since I got some pictures on that day. It was a rough day for Emma. She woke up and got dressed for church. Before we were even out the door she sliced her finger open with a razor blade. We'd been digging a jigger out of Faith Ann's foot (yes...another one!) the night before, and the razor blade didn't get put away. Emma didn't even know what it was and cut the pointer finger of her left hand open. We were late for church because I needed to get the bleeding stopped, and it took a little while. After church in Bambili, Drew kept complaining that he didn't feel good. He was coming down with a sore throat, headache and just all around yuckiness. He has since been coughing his brains out and not sleeping well at night. Anyway, I stayed home from Bamenda with everyone but Kate. She went to church with her daddy. We worked on our little drums while we were home. Drew and Emma took turns making theirs. Here are the finished products.

Emma's...she stepped out of the box and chose pink as her color!

Drew's:

And Kate's:

Kate made hers as soon as she came home from Bamenda. She was helping me glue with the hot glue gun and a huge glob of glue came from the gun. I don't know what Emma was thinking, but before I could get a big loud "NO" out of my mouth, Emma had stuck her finger in the glue. Oh man...she was screaming and Kate was screaming. (Kate is so dramatic! haha). I felt really bad for her because burns are one of the worst things. They just keep on burning and burning. She said she thought that it was already hardened and not hot. I had drilled into them how hot the glue was and to avoid touching it. Poor Emma. So, we got a container of ice water and she stood at the counter soaking her finger and crying for about an hour. I knew it hurt and there was nothing I could do. I just wish we could take the pain for our kids. By the time she sat down to eat, she wasn't crying anymore, but her finger was in ice water the remainder of the day. At bed time she finally took her finger out of the water and we put some neosporin on it and a bandaid. Poor girl...her pointer fingers had a rough day on Sunday.

The rest of the week has been busy for Ben. Friend day is coming up and he has been out inviting and getting gifts to give all the friends that come. He had a hiccup in his plans on Wed. The president of Cameroon, Paul Biya, came to Bamenda to visit for the first time in his entire presidency (of 30 years!). Ben tried to get stuff done in town but he ended up having to turn around and come home. He thought he was going to get thrown in jail at one point! He got on the wrong street at the wrong time! The presidential motorcade was coming down that street and he got stuck. He parked on the side of the street until a police officer came and yelled at him and told him to get OFF the road. So he pulled off the road right in front of a store. A short time later a man in a suit came and got right in his face and yelled at him. Ben told me when he got home that it really shook him up. He had to get out his ID card and the guy kept yelling to GET OFF THE ROAD!!!! Ben had no idea where to go and told the man that he was off the road. But when he would try to ask, the guy would just keep yelling at him to get off the road. He finally found his way off the road and drove into the quarter (basically a neighborhood of homes...no roads really run through a quarter). He stayed there until the motorcade was through and then stayed there a little while longer just to be safe! :D

Later that night after we got the kids in bed, I kept hearing a banging noise. I thought someone was outside and I tried to look out the window to see if I could see someone. Through the bushes I saw lights off in the distance and it dawned on me that it was fireworks! This is the second time we have ever seen fireworks here. The first display we'd seen was for new years and it was pretty puny. This display was for the president, however, and it was the longest fireworks display I have ever seen in my life! We got the kids out of bed and after watching them for 20 minutes (at least!) I finally sent them to bed. I can't imagine how much money went into that display. And they were beautiful too! It was definitely a treat that night. The kids kept saying it was the best night of their life! haha! I don't know how far away the fireworks were from us. We are about 12 miles out of Bamenda, but I'm not sure how far out as the crow flies. Ben did dig out his camera and attempt to get a shot, and this is how it came out:
Not very impressive, but I can assure you that it was a very impressive show. It was impressive for us all the way out of town. I imagine in town it was amazing! I bet most Cameroonians have never seen anything like it!

So, anyway, that is a bit of an update from this last week. As I mentioned earlier, this Sunday is our annual Friend Day. We encourage everyone to bring a friend, and we usually have quite a crowd. It is a great opportunity for the gospel to go forth and we are praying that we will have many visitors. Pray that our family can get over this icky cold. I can feel a sore throat, and sinus headache coming on tonight, so I hope I'm not getting it. Drew has struggled with it all week. The cough is what he's really been battling. So far Kate is the only one who has been unaffected. We have certainly had our share of sickness this season change, but I'm thankful it has been minor things.

Until next time...

Trim The Tree

2010-12-04T16:13:00.014-05:00

I thought I'd share a cute little ornament idea that you can do with your kids. Or for youself if you are feeling crafty! :D

One of my readers, Melanie, is one of my digital scrapbooking buddies. She mentioned in one of her comments recently that she was looking for cute ornament ideas to make with her daughter. By the way Mel...thanks for reading and always commenting. I really appreciate it! :D

So, in school this week, Drew's Bible teacher made an ornament for the craft in one of his lessons. I told the kids that we'd make it after school sometime this week. We put it off and put it off. Finally tonight I dug out all of the materials and gave it a test run. I plan on doing it with the kids tomorrow night, but I thought it would be fun to show you how to make it.

Here is what you need for materials:

A toilet paper roll cut in half, two different kinds of ribbon, one piece of white felt and one piece of red (or color of your choice), tothpicks, hot glue gun, scissors. I think that is it! :D

You don't need both the green and the red felt. You just need to choose one color other than white. You can get creative and go outside of the Christmas "box" and pick pink if you want to! Also, the shape of your ornament is made by using the toilet paper roll. I cut mine in half with my serrated bread knife and it worked great!

Ok, using a pencil, trace the end of your toilet paper roll onto your piece of white felt. Cut it larger than the shape you have drawn so you can actually glue the edges down over the toilet paper roll.
Using a glue gun, glue it over the edges of your toilet paper roll. Make sure you press the felt into the glue real well. Do this for the top and the bottom of your roll.

Next you will need to cut a strip of red felt the width of the roll. Next time I cut mine, I will actually cut it slightly shorter b/c it looked a little messy when the red was right up to the edge. You can judge about how long you need to cut it by wrapping the felt around the toilet paper roll and making a mark. It is better to cut it a tad long too and go back and trim. Here is my piece:
You will then glue the red piece all the way around being sure to cover the edges of the white pieces of felt.
Once you have the white and the red felt on, you are going to take a small ribbon and glue it in V shapes all the way around your roll. I just tacked it at the edges rather than glueing every inch of the ribbon.You will cut a small piece of the same ribbon to make a hangar. Glue it near the top edge of your drum. You can see that the place where you glue it will be hidden by the final piece of trim. Then take a different kind of ribbon to trim the edges. This can also hide all the seams where you glued the felt down. I had silver on hand, but Drew's teacher used gold. Get creative!

Take two toothpicks, cross them and glue them somewhere on the top of your drum for the drumsticks. And Voila! You have a cute little ornament on your tree!

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

2010-12-02T04:47:00.014-05:00

In my house...and on my blog! Do you like my new blogwear?? I think it is pretty cute. I am a CT member for Zoe Pearn Designs at The Sweet Shoppe, and she lets us download her products and show them off for free. The first time I set up my blog by myself, I about pulled my hair out. Her instructions, however, were SO easy!

It is also Christmas in our house and we are really enjoying our tree. We planned to decorate the tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was a good plan too, b/c the kids really didn't want to leave Foumban, but the plans to decorate for Christmas did give them something to look forward too. The kids helped Daddy organize all the branches by color, and used their imaginations in the process!The kids loved going through all the ornaments again. Grandma often gives them ornaments with their name and date written on it. The kids love to go through the boxes of ornaments to find their own! Kate has several of her own ornaments. Since she is the second oldest, she's collected a few more, not to mention that she was the first girl in our family and she was also born a few days before Christmas. She has a lot of Baby's first Christmas ornaments! She enjoyed finding special spots in the tree for hers.
After we finished the tree, we had a blast making ornaments. I've had some of that crayola air dry clay sitting around for a while and I've made ornaments with it before. It works great. So we dug out the Christmas cookie cutters and went to work creating some new ornaments for our tree.
We used the eraser end of a pencil to make the holes. I think Emma ended up making the most. She really enjoyed it.
Drew used up most of his clay to hand make his own ornament...Rudolph! I think he did a pretty good job for free handing it!
After letting it dry for 24 hours, out came the paint.
The kids loved this part the most I think and some of their creations went from clean and pretty, to messy! haha! (Don't tell them I said that!), but they had a blast, and when all was said and done, they look pretty hanging from a ribbon on the tree. Speaking of tree...Here is a shot of it, along with our 2010 ornament that my Mom brought with her when she visited.

A couple more things before I close out my blog post. I have to share a little treasure that Ben found in town:
It's definitely the little things that make me a happy girl. :D
And another blessing of the day....

I know it doesn't look like it...but it is actually...WATER! Looks Yummy, huh? :D Even as I type this we have our outside taps running to clear out all the muck. I figured that once the water finally came on that it would be pretty gross and I was right! It has mostly cleared at this point, though I wouldn't quite wash dishes with it yet unless I boil it. The plumber informed us that their might be several breaks and mishaps before this new source is hooked up and added to our water line, so we will be keeping all our spare containers filled. Now that I've had a week to practice living without running water...I know that I can manage and I don't think I'll panic as much as I have in the past. I've learned that you can actually live without running water, and we really consume more water than is actually necessary!

Ben and I were laughing today because as soon as the water came in...the power went out. Ben said, "What are we going to do when we get to heaven and we have the river of life running freely for all of eternity...and there will be no power outages because the "SON" is there!" What a great thing to look forward to! I think that our family might have an even greater appreciation for it after this year than ever before!

Holiday Recap

2010-12-01T08:50:00.008-05:00

I haven't posted since Thanksgiving! Shame on me. I hope yours was special...and I'll take a moment to tell you a little bit about mine.

The Yeiters met us over here around 10-ish to head to Foumban (a three hour trip from here). We switched people around so we could ride and caravan together. Ben and Matt captained the lead car. Their passengers were Drew, Autumn, Riah, and Kate. Susan and I captained the second car with Faith, Trinity, Emma and DJ. It was nice to switch around like that. The kids enjoyed the three hour trip a lot better with their friends! We arrived at the Mossman's house and helped put the last minute meal preparations together. It was a ridiculously hot day, and Foumban is even hotter than Bamenda, so I knew it would be a scorcher there. However, the Mossman's home is situated on top of a hill, and the breeze that blew through there made their home so comfortable! It was really refreshing!

Our meal was YUMMO! We had chicken (no turkey here for us), Mashed potatoes, two kinds of stuffing (all our stuff was home made!), carrot souffle, sweet potatoe casserole, Green bean casserole, corn and dinner rolls. We spent the afternoon visiting and did a lot of laughing. Susan and I split up familes...we got all the ladies to sit at one table and sent our hubby's to the next table! haha! So much for Thanksgiving being a family occasion. In reality though, we see our husbands every day...and love them VERY much! :D However, we do not get to have a group of ladies together often, so we took advantage of the situation. I know the men enjoyed their time of fellowship too!

We gathered again in the evening for a time of praise. Many of the families prepared something and the kids did choral readings, piano solos, and musical numbers of some kind. My kiddos sang "All that I Need" from one of Patch the Pirate music books, while I stumbled through the accompaniment. Excuse all the red eye in the picture. In fact, I tried to fix mine, but it turned my whole face to greyscale! Oh well! :D

They did a great job. You can see my poser, Emma. She was the only one who really made a mistake. She was so busy posing for the camera that she forgot to sing the chorus!

The next day was relaxing as well. I think they had a picnic and a hike planned, but I suggested that we just hang around and visit. Everyone was all for the idea! Many of the missionaries were leaving on Friday (Wrights and Ellen were headed to Zambia, and Rosemary was headed to the airport to start her trip to Greenville, SC), so with such a small group it was a nice plan. We stayed through lunch and then started our trip home. This time we caravaned with the Sanderlins, but we didn't switch up people.

So there you have it...our thanksgiving in a nutshell. We came home to no water. And we haven't had water since. So, that was a little depressing, but God has really given grace and I have learned to manage. My blog readers know that of all the challenges we face here, water shortage is my greatest. I don't know why that is the case...it just is. But I haven't had a choice and God has given me grace and peace of mind to deal with it. It does drain our time a lot more, but in the same token it gives us more opportunities. Ben has to make a daily water run, and in the process he stands in line with neighbors, all waiting to fill their buckets, and he has opportunities that we otherwise might not have with water flowing in our house. Here are a few girls he got a picture of one day. In fact they helped him fill all his buckets.Spunky little things, aren't they?
Since then he has been bringing the kids to help him fill the buckets. Here is Faith Ann helping out. I know they are working on the water and I would appreciate it if you all would pray for them to find the problem and for it to be fixed soon! It would be a big help to us...and also to my pile of laundry! haha!

Another ministry I've started is a one-on-one discipleship with the ladies in the church. Last school term we had a ladies Bible study, but with this year's school schedule it has been really difficult to find one time that is good for everyone. It is nearly impossible when they even hold classes on Saturdays. They have no free days here! There are some new believer's in the church, and I thought it would be good to have a discipleship class. If we can find a time to meet as a group...fine. Or if it is easier for me to meet with them individually, then I'll do that as I'm able, but I felt that this would be the best choice for this term. So,for now I've begun meeting with Ernestine. I had the privilege of meeting with her after a Sunday morning service several weeks ago and she trusted Christ as her Savior. Since then she has been attending church each Sunday and I approached her about going through the Spiritual Growth Series that my husband wrote, and she seemed very excited to learn more about the word of God.

My sewing ministry is progressing...haha! Just kidding! It isn't a ministry. It has turned into a "Me-time" activity. So, I guess it is my ministry to myself! :D Honestly though, I really enjoy it and love the challenge of tackling a project. My mom always asks me what my next sewing project is going to be. I made lot of bags and I wasn't sure what to try my hand at next until we started decorating for Christmas this past Saturday (which will be another post with pictures later). We were hanging all of our stockings and I realized that I'd forgotten to get Faith Ann her own. I keep meaning too, but once the decorations are away it is out of sight and therefore out of mind. Last year I stuffed my stocking with her goodies and she was fine with that, but this year I wanted her to have a stocking. So, I decided to make one. Or at least try to make one.

Mom had brought some christmas material with her when she visited. I'd asked her to slowly buy some on clearance b/c I thought it would be a good thing to wrap gifts with. It can be used over and over. So I took one of the pieces of material, along with some peices of felt that I have for the kids school projects and an old curtain and came up with this:It isn't perfect, but Faith Ann is thrilled. Now that I'm looking at it, it is the perfect stocking for Cameroon...it has all the colors of their flag! haha! I was going to omit the yellow, but that is Faith's favorite color (for now anyway) and she wanted it in there. The patterned fabric is candy canes and yellow stars. I'm pretty happy with the end result. I am wondering though...do most people who sew have to use their seam ripper as often as I do? Probably not!:D

Love You Sew!

2010-11-23T15:21:00.008-05:00

I'm having "sew" much fun sewing! Since my last post I have made two more purses and a skort for Faith Ann. I just want to try out patterns to see if I can do them! The skort, as simple a pattern as that is, still had me scratching my head and maybe even fuming at some points. Not really fuming...just frustrated I guess. I don't know why I can't wrap my brain around the instructions sometimes, but I was determined to figure it out. And thank the Lord...I did! :D Here is Faith with her new skort...made out of recycled curtains.

It turned out alright. She won't be wearing it too much longer. Next time I'll play with adjusting the sizes, but she seemed pretty happy.

The project that I worked on today has to be my favorite of all of them so far. I found this purse pattern on www.youcanmakethis.com If you have never been to that site you should check it out. It is so cool. They sell downloadable pdf patterns, which is great for someone like me, who can't just go running to Joanne Fabrics or Wal-Mart. So, I found this cute purse pattern and bought it and it turned out SO adorable!! Check it out:I think the flower is my favorite part. I found a tutorial on you tube on how to make them and it was so easy. All I did was cut out different size circles from the same fabric that I used for the lining. It is a polyester fabric of some sort and with a candle I just singed the edges of the circle very carefully so as not to light the house on fire. :D As soon as the fabric melted it curled inward and once I layered and stitched them together...voila! I had an adorable fabric flower! Here is Emma, my poser, showing off the purse. Yep, you can already see the dry season hair style setting in. Of course someone should tell that girl's mother to brush her hair for crying out loud! haha!

Speaking of dry season, it is here, unfortunately, and to celebrate we already have no water. :D We are starting off with a bang I guess. I might as well settle in and get used to it, otherwise it will be a miserable 5 months. Supposedly they are hooking up a new water source which will add to the supply, so that might help. But I'm not holding my breath. I'd rather be mentally planning on not having water, and if I do have extra...I'll be super surprised!

We had a suprise guest tonight. Pastor Daniel from Benakuma came here to have his treadle sewing machine repaired. He shewed up around dinner, and we had enough to feed him. I cleaned out the guest room, which was a MESS b/c of all my sewing projects and he is staying the night with us. Tomorrow he should hopefully get his machine repaired. We learned that the amazing woman that gave birth to "Pastor Ben" the last time Ben was there, is his sister-in-law! Wow...small world. Well, really the village is small, so it wasn't a huge surprise that they were related. But it is still neat.

Tomorrow I'll be cooking up a storm for Thanksgiving, and on Thursday morning we will drive the three hours to Foumban to spend Thanksgiving with fellow missionaries. We always enjoy our time there and are greatly looking forward to it. I will come back with pictures and I'm sure stories to tell! I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving holiday as well!!

It's Me Again!

2010-11-18T16:00:00.014-05:00

I bet you thought that I'd left and decided to never come back! Right? Well, you can't get rid of me that easy!

It has been almost an entire month since I last posted! But it was a very full month and I will try to give you a brief re-cap.

My Mom came to visit and the preparations before her arrival and all the hoop-lah that accompanied her visit took up most of my time. I really didn't even give my blog one thought while she was here.

We decided to go to Douala as a family and pick her and Gerald and Kathy Whitely up. The trip there was long, because we were anticipating seeing Mimi!! But the kids did great and we arrived early enough to grab a bite to eat and check in at the Baptist Guest House. We headed to the airport and stood outside on the big veranda that overlooked the tarmac. We heard and saw Mimi's plane come in and waited until we saw her disembark until we headed to the luggage area. Ben got special access and was able to meet them inside baggage claim, but the kids and I went to the second level of the airport where we stood on a balcony overlooking the baggage claim area. It was nice and breezy up there actually, and a great place to wait. Normally they kick you out of there and make you stand outside in the heat, but thankfully they were too busy to notice us.

I told the kids that as soon as they saw Mimi or Mr. Gerald or Miss Kathy to all whistle together. I gave them a little demo of the whistle and we all practiced it. It's actually the Whitely's special little "E-I-E" call that they made up. Those who know the Whitely's know exactly what I'm talking about. So, we finally saw them enter the baggage claim area. I told the kids to whistle as loud as they could and they finally looked up and saw us waiting up there. What was SO, so cute was when Kate saw them. I heard her trying to whistle, but she was so happy and excited, and fighting back tears that she just kept blowing and blowing with all her might, trying to get a whistle to come out of her mouth, but it just wouldn't come. Oh man, that girl melted my heart! When we finally met up with Mimi she just ran to her crying and said that she just couldn't help it...she was so happy. Goodness...I'm teary even typing it! She is just like me actually. I was teary b/c I was so happy to see Mimi too!

Praise God every piece of luggage arrived in tact! That really is almost a miracle here! One of these days I need to type out the Yeiters recent luggage story. Theirs was missing for a month! Anyway...we left the airport and headed to a restaurant called the Mediterranean.

Seriously...that has to be the yummiest pizza joint. It even rivals my pizza! haha! :) It is owned by a Greek family and their pizza is amazing. We got veggie and feta cheese pizza. MmmmMmmm! It is a good thing there isn't one located in Bamenda or we'd be broke!

We spent the night in Douala and headed home the next day. Our trip back was way more fun with Mimi and the Whitely's in the van. We did however have a breakdown. We kept overheating. The first time Gerald and Ben found a ruptured hose. They rigged it and got it repaired. But not long down the road it overheated again. We were in a purely french speaking area and this kid walks up to us and says in french that he is a mechanic. He was so young...I wouldn't even say he was 20 years old. But when all was said and done that kid flat knew what he was doing and God sent him directly to us! We lost a couple hours, but we finally arrived home safe and sound and very tired!

The next couple weeks were absolutely crazy for Ben and Gerald. Gerald was booked solid in all the area schools to share his creation/evolution lectures. Evolution is taught here in all the schools and nobody has ever been taught creationism. Gerald has several video presentations and replica fossils and he lectures on this issue with the ultimate goal of using it to share the gospel. He had 17 meetings and he probably averaged about 200 students in each meeting. Here is one picture of him teaching the smallest group of students during his visit.While the guys were out and about we were basically home a lot. The only downside to the entire visit was that the kids were sick. Really really sick. Drew came down with the virus first, but he ran a fever for so many days that I finally started treating him with an antibiotic and for malaria as well. The kids hadn't been this sick in a while. They wouldn't eat...all they would do was lay around and sleep. It was terrible. I was thankful to have a couple extra Mom's here to offer their advice and it was nice that we could all just be home together rather than running around.

We did venture out the first Saturday to a ladies meeting in Sabga. Mom and Kathy and I shared a plate of Fufu and Njamajama. Well...basically they tried it and I ate most of it. Then, on the next Saturday we hosted a missionary ladies luncheon. I reserved a spot at the new restaurant our family discovered and talked to the Chef. He planned a buffet meal to feed all of us and it turned out wonderfully! The ladies came from Foumban and all of us ladies here met together and had a great time of fellowship. The food was delish...and Kathy was our guest speaker. We had a great time!
Mom could never get over all the critters we constantly have here. We are always oohing and ahhhing over something. We found this huge beetle on our porch one morning. Drew and I will chase stuff down to have a better look. I got a good shot so you could see the perspective of size.
Mom also had a picnic with the kids one day and I got this great group shot of all of them.
On the last Monday that they were here, we decided to go into town as a family. Kate was still kinda down and out, and Emma and Faith were coming down with the nasty virus, but they weren't into the worst part of it yet, so we decided to go ahead and go. We ate at the same restaurant where we had the ladies luncheon and then went to the Pres-Craft store so they could pick up some souvenirs before leaving. The owner of the Pres-Craft is new and we actually couldn't determine his nationality. He was white and had some unique accent...I'll let you know if I find out. :D He told us to check out the coffee shop next door. So...we did! I'm not a coffee fan, but my Mom can't live without it. We bought a coffee pot just for her visits. Anyway, we went next door into this really adorable coffee shop. Mom got a cappucino! Can you believe it? And she said it was really good! They served it with sugar and this adorable little heartshaped biscuit. Wow...who would have thought we'd have a "hip" coffee shop in little 'Ol Bamenda?! Here's Mom enjoying her cappucino: I'm not sure how well it will catch on to the Africans...the shop was full of white people only! In fact, Mom and the Whitely's commented that they'd never seen so many white people in Cameroon before. We met a group of kids in the coffee shop that were from various parts of the states, and then on the other side of them was an older white couple. We never had time to speak to them. It will be interesting to see if that place can actually stay in business. There may be more white people than ever before, but I'm not sure there is enough to sustain an entire restaurant.

Our goodbyes were sad, but it really won't be long until we see them again. Less than a year before we head back to the states for our next furlough. We will start checking off dates on the calendar and looking forward to our visit to America (specifically Taco Bell)...Did I just think that out loud?? :D

Since their visit I have taken up a new hobby. :D Kathy mentioned my sewing machine that is in the guest room where they stayed and I told her I'd love to learn to sew. She said "Well, while we are here, I'll teach you!" I was pretty excited about that. I always tease my Mom that she failed in two areas. She never taught me to play piano or to sew. Both things I've had to learn in my adulthood. She knows I'm just kidding! Anyway, on the day that Mimi had a picnic with the kids, Kathy and I dragged out the sewing machine. We had spent a previous afternoon with the pattern and material and she taught me how to read the pattern and I'd already cut out all the pattern pieces. I was ready to sew it. So, in a few hours time, I made a skirt for Kate all by myself with Kathy's teaching! I have been her pupil since I was a freshman in high school...and she hasn't lost her touch. She is still a great teacher!

I dug out the sewing machine this week with plans on using it to make Christmas gifts. I found a pattern for a little girls purse and tried to make it. The first one turned out cute, though I didn't follow the pattern completely. I rigged it to make it work. I spent a lot of time just staring at the pattern instructions and the material. There was one part I couldn't wrap my head around, so I just took the basic pattern and made it work. I used our market bags from here as the lining and I'm content with the finished product. In the future I'd love to actually do it the correct way, but for now it works ok.
Here is a shot of the market bag that I cut up and used for the inside of the bag:
The part of the pattern instruction that I couldn't get was really bugging me. I spent some time reading and watching sewing tutorials on you tube until I finally figured it out. I actually found a helpful blog with pictures that helped me understand! So, today, with a little more knowledge under my belt, I tried purse number 2. I used a different pattern and did leave out the fusible interfacing (as I don't have that), but I'm SO happy with the results!
Isn't it cute?! I love how it turned out and the great thing is I used all scrap fabric. I used to have red curtains hanging in the kids toy room. I kept them when we changed them out and I'm glad I did. They make a cute little purse if I do say so myself! :D

Ok, so I hope I haven't bored you completely. I'll try to stay updated and please, please keep reading! And if you have time...leave me a comment! Cuz I love comments! :D

Catchin' Up

2010-10-24T14:33:00.011-04:00

Ben came to me tonight and dropped the camera and cables in my lap and said, "This isn't a hint or anything." haha! But I knew what his hidden meaning was... "Make a blog post!" :D

I really do need to catch up. I Hope you've missed me!

First up...Our NEW car!! If you've been reading my blog, you know how I completely destroyed the driver's side passenger door. Well, Genesis came to my aid that night and picked up the car and took it to his body work guy. I finally got a hold of Ben in Benakuma and he decided to re-do the entire car. It was rusted out in so many places and in bad need of a makeover. The guy did a great job and our car looks brand new! He even took out all the seats and scrubbed them! I didn't even recognize our car!

The kids have been diligently working in school and we have a big chart that we made. We mark off the days as we do them. It is fun to see the days disappear. Though we do have a lot of boxes to check off, it still helps them as they work toward a goal. With our kitty and puppy, they usually spend their free time outside. On Saturdays kids usually come up and they play outside with them. We didn't have any kids come up this past Saturday except Louis. He is deathly afraid of our dog...almost ripped my arm off one day trying to hide from Penny! I thought he was gonna pee his pants he was so scared! So, when Louis comes we hook up the dog so he'll stay. It was kind of a rainy day on Saturday, so Drew went outside to just visit with him. Drew had been reading one of those chick tracts and thought he'd go through it with Louis. Ben snapped a picture of them. Drew was reading the tract and then looking up the verses and reading them. I thought it was so cute! Our little missionary in training!And speaking of Penny, Ben found a great treat for her this week. He went to the meat market and saw one of those big cow bones lying there. He asked the meat guy what he did with those. Well, they burn them and feed them to the pigs. Ben asked why they did that...and I don't think that he'd ever been asked that before. His answer was, "That's just what we do!" Well, Ben asked him to dash us (pidgin for 'give us') one of those bones. He gave Ben two of them and he gave them to Penny as a treat and she loved it! This picture cracks me up. Ben wanted to get in there and get a shot of Penny eating her bone...she obviously didn't want to be disturbed! And you can see that Penny and Cuddles are starting to get along better. She was even willing to share her bone with the cat! And here is another sweet picture of them getting along. They do fight like cats and dogs (lol! I kill myself) Seriously though, sometimes Cuddles sounds like she is getting her head ripped off, but she survives and I'm tired of locking her in the store room. She is holding her own now, and I just let her roam and I think she is enjoying her freedom. Plus, I have a mouse in my kitchen and I need her to start earning her keep!
The kids came up with this great strategy to draw perfect pictures. They lay a coloring paper over our big magnadoodle and trace it. They are so proud of their creations and we have had coloring papers scattered all over our floor for a week now!I know these pictures are completely out of order, but they are from the last couple of weeks, so you get the point. Here is a picture of our neighbor, Jude. He is a good friend and we were sad to say goodbye to him as he moved to Younde to go to school. He takes care of our mowing and yard work, and so on his last day of work, he wanted a picture of himself with the lawn mower. He didn't say why, but I just giggled at him and told him I'd be glad to take his picture. He wanted the kids in it too. We are sure going to miss him, but he'll be back over the holidays.

That is pretty much everything new. I've been working on gathering pictures for a series of posts I want to start doing. It will be entitled "Fashion Faux Pas Friday." So be looking forward to that. I think you will get a kick out of some of our African Fashion Faux Pas! :D

My Mom leaves tomorrow to come here!!! I'm so excited and hope to update on her visit from time to time while she is here. She is so nervous about checking in bags, so I'm asking you all to pray for a miracle! haha! We need to save some money, but the airlines aren't very helpful anymore. An international flight is allowed one bag. Do you have any idea how impossible that is for a missionary to be restricted to one bag! A second bag is $50, and any additional bag after that is $200! We used to....a loooong time ago, get two bags at 70 lbs each. Then it went to two bags at 50 lbs each. And now it is one bag at 50 lbs. Pretty soon we will have to pay for any luggage at all. Really frustrating, but that is our life. We just need to deal with it and do the best we can. So in order to get some of the things out here that we'd like to have we have to pay for them. The problem is that their tickets are broken up into two separate trips. So some airline personnel are telling us that we will have to pay for the extra bags in Atlanta...AND in Paris. ugh! Some are saying we don't have to. My mom has done everything she can possibly do to try and get our luggage through for free on the Paris end at least, but to no avail. It is going to be in the hands of whoever is at the check-in counter that day. So, pray with us that God will work that out and save us some money! We know that God will provide and it is always neat to anticipate how He is going to do that!

Benakuma and Beyond

2010-10-11T05:40:00.019-04:00

Well, I mentioned in my last post that Ben was going to Benakuma for the weekend. He left Thursday and had plans to start his trip out in the small village of Benade (prounced BEN-uh-day) which is about an hour and a half beyond Benakuma...provided you can get a bike to take you there! :D

Well, the roads were SO bad that they made it to Benakuma after dark but couldn't continue on to Benade until the next morning. After a night's sleep in the Hotel Bonanza they began their journey to Benade. They got two motor bikes and the trip took just over an hour. They would frequently have to get out and walk so the bikes could make it through the thick mud. There were also no flat stretches of road either...it was all uphill and downhill, uphill and downhill. Here is one shot of the road.
They finally arrived in Benade and spent most of the day visiting. The village is quite small, so it didn't take them long to meet a lot of the people. They noticed a crowd at the health center and went there and met the family of a woman who was in labor. Well, the lady came out while they were there and Ben had a word of prayer with her and her family. She'd been in labor all that day, and all through the night. Ben found out the next morning that she still hadn't had the baby. He and TomMike began the trip back to Benakuma, only this time they didn't have a motorcycle taxi. They had to go on foot. Ben said the trip was exhausting! They had to treck 20 minutes to the main road, and then from there it was uphill and downhill once again through muck and mud taking them 4 hours to reach Benakuma! While they were trecking along, they heard a motorcycle coming from the the direction of Benade headed towards Benakuma as well. Ben recognized the lady immediately... Yep...the lady who has now been in labor for over 24 hours! Riding a motorcycle!! Mind you she also had to treck the 20 minutes to the main road, and an additional 20 minutes before the bike picked her up! And I thought I was doing good having a baby in my plush hospital bed, with cable television and no pain meds?? This woman wins the mother-of-the-year award!

Once she arrives in Benakuma, it is possible that she had to climb this hill to the hospital as well, as the motorcycles won't go up there, but I can't say that for certain. Considering all she'd done so far though, she might have! Here is a shot of the big fancy hospital she finally gave birth in sometime Saturday evening. Ben and TomMike heard about her delivery and made it a point to go and visit her Sunday before they had their church service and ultimately left to head back to Bamenda. In honor of Ben's visit out to her village, she named her baby after him. So, meet Pastor Ben and Pastor Ben: Here is a close up shot so you can see how adorable Pastor Ben is: Oh...Oops! I meant to post this Pastor Ben: haha!
And here is the Mom of the Year award winner herself: Oh, and to top it all off, this woman told Ben that she was going to TRECK back to Benade that day!! Ok...4 hours of exhausting up and down hill climbing?? She just had a baby??? She didn't have the money to pay for one extra night in the hospital (it would cost her the equivalent of 2 u.s. dollars), so she just planned on heading back home. Ben wouldn't even hear of it! He paid her hospital bill (which cost a total of $20 u.s. dollars) and gave her an extra 5,000 cfa to stay an extra night and pay for a motorcycle the next day to drive her back to Benade. I'm still shaking my head...

And that is the end of my version of Ben's trip to Benakuma! So many great things happened though...many people trusted Christ and Ben came back overflowing with things to share. So, in order to get the full view you'll definitely want to read his summary HERE.

As for the kids and I, we survived the remainder of his time away just fine. Thankfully after the car incident, there were no more blunders on our part and God kept us safe. We had a little bit of sickness over the weekend, but thankfully everyone is doing well now and we are all thrilled to back together as a family again!

Happy Birthday To You

2010-10-07T05:04:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday to Drew! You look like a monkey...and you smell like one too!! Haha! That is what Uncle Jay's card said for Drew's birthday and Drew sure got a kick out of it! My brother is really talented with computer and video stuff! He made a card for Drew on his computer with a special video message from his uncle Jay!

We are certainly thankful for the 10 years that God has given Drew. Especially when the doctor's said he only had two months to live after he was born. If you've never read Drew's story, you can check out www.cameroon4christ.com to find out about our miracle. This website hasn't been updated in quite some time, but you can at least click on the link to read Drew's story.

My mom is coming to visit in three weeks, and she is bringing all of Drew's birthday presents. But I did have a little something to give him on his actual birthday and told him I'd make him a cake. But then when Mimi comes we will have the big celebration. Ben was leaving for Benakuma at around 11, so we decided to do our happy birthday wishes at the breakfast table. Here is Drew with his gift.

I love this kid! It takes nearly nothing to excite him! He is SO easy to please! I got him a small spiderman figure and a spidey coloring/acitivity book. He was pretty pumped about it. I always love watching his reaction. He shows his emotions all over his face! Not all my kids are like that. :D

Ben left at 11 and I pushed the kids through school. They were so ready to be done and to play. I started working on the cake so that we could come home from church and eat it. I told the kids that was going to be supper! haha! They were pretty excited about that! So, I pulled the cake out of the oven, and herded the kids to the car. We were running a bit late. I pulled the car out and ... "Crunch!" I stopped...and looked back...only to realize that Faith hadn't shut the car door. This was my very first car accident. I know some of you know what it feels like in the moments after you make the dumbest mistake! You wish you'd turned around one more time! I heard a car door shut, and mentally thought all the doors were shut. Faith started crying immdiately b/c she just knew it was her fault. Poor girl. I told her it was all Mommy's fault. I should have double checked. So...there was no going to church. We were late as it was, it would take us 30 minutes at least to walk there. I tried calling Ben and couldn't get a hold of him. I finally called Genesis. I figured he could help me. He said he would come and get the car and get it repaired. So, he came after dark on a taxi, helped me tie the door b/c it wouldn't even shut and he took it to town. He has a friend who does body work. Thankfully this mistake took place in Cameroon...and not in the states! The repair work is a fraction of what it would cost me in America! And I learned a valuable lesson...To be more careful! The car is still in the shop because Ben decided to have the entire car repaired...new paint job and everything. Our car is rusting out in several places and it has needed a big repair on the body for a while...I just facilitated the process! lol!

So, once the car was finally taken care of...the kids and I enjoyed Drew's birthday cake! I felt I could relax a little knowing that the car was in good hands. I'm thankful for Genesis who came to help out so quickly!

All in all I think Drew's birthday was a good one for him. He is counting down the days til his big party though! Of course...we all are, because that means Mimi will be here!

Life in the Fast Lane

2010-10-05T04:56:00.010-04:00

It has been a busy week here at the Sinclair house. Between bouts of mild sickness (fevers - sore throats), funerals, and just plain trying to keep up with school, we have been running at a fast pace. I'll try to update with pics and give you the rundown of what is new in our lives! :D

We are enjoying our new kitty. It is a battle of sorts...trying to keep the girls away from that cat long enough to do their school.

Whenever they get a break, it is off to our store room to play with her. I have to be very diligent to keep her away from Penny though. I tried to put them together, but Penny is just crazy rough with her! She picks her up around the neck and just shakes her for all she is worth! So, my new strategy is to chain the dog up during most of the day, and allowing the cat freedom to roam around. Then at night I unhook Penny and we shut the cat into the storeroom. Once she gets bigger, she will be able to hold her own, and Penny will learn to steer clear!

Penny is good for some things though...home clean-up in particular! :D I dropped an egg on the floor and called Penny in to clean it up. She was unsure about coming in at first, and kept flinching every time she saw me move. She's used to getting whalloped when she comes in the house! haha!

On Friday, Ben packed up the bus with generator, screen, water, tracts and other supplies and headed to town to pick up 7 guys to head out to the village of Nginikom. The wake keeping for Emmanuel was to be held that night, and the men were prepared to be up all night and to share the gospel with as many people as possible. Ben said it was such an encouragement to go out with these mature believers, who were so on fire to share the gospel. The family was quite divided about our church being involved in the funeral any way. They were so afraid of the Catholic priest finding out that baptists were there. When your eternal destiny lies in the hands of a man, I can understand their fear! But Emmanuel's mom allowed our church to take part, thank God! Late in the evening Ben showed the Jesus film in the Pidgin dialect. He said it was SO good for people to see that because they were able to compare the baptism of Jesus by John, with photos of Emmanuel's baptism by immersion. A lot of people were talking about it, and many people were once again afraid that the Catholic priest would find out! On Saturday I came to Nginikom with Matt Yeiter and a couple more people from our Bamenda church, Ezekiel and Genesis, and we piled my kiddos in the back boot of the car. The ride out there took Ben two hours in the bus and about half that time in the little red toyota that Matt drove. The view is absolutley amazing out that way. There is no point even posting photos, b/c they don't even begin to do it justice! We arrived to a mass of chaos in my opinion. There were different groups of music bands playing their traditional instruments and drums. A MASS of people arrived shortly after we did to come and view the body that was set up under an ornate canopy for the viewing area. I finally merged my way to where our church people were (it took me a while) and I found Emma who was white as a sheet! Poor girl! She had a rough time on the curvy hour and a half drive there, and then we arrive and are just stuck in this mass of people! Thankfully she bounced back once she was able to get a little bit of fresh air. All the men were standing to the side of the viewing canopy singing out of the hymn book. I joined them for a bit, and then Matt stood on a pile of mud bricks, and with the aid of a microphone he preached the gospel to those that were filing through the line to view Emmanuels body. There was a crowd gathered around listening intently to the message. I was surprised they could stay focused with all the racket going on around them, but they hung on every word that Matt preached! Off to the right was a traditional xylophone - a loud cacaphony of sounds that comes from men beating on different lenghths of wood planks that are balanced on the trunks of a banana tree. Beyond that, men were dancing to the music in a big hole. As a few men shoveled dirt into the hole, the group would continue to pack it down over the casket by dancing back and forth. It was very interesting.
You can't really see it, but the hole is directly behind the group of men in this picture. And that house was Emmanuels own house, so he was literally buried right outside his front door.

Here is a great shot of Matt preaching. There is one funny in the photo...I'm sure it won't take you long to point it out. :D As we say here..."TIA" ...This is Africa. You can also see Eugene holding the little speaker, that amazingly puts out quite a bit of sound!

We really weren't there for very long. After Matt preached, and we went over to the actual burial site, we went to one of the homes of the family members and they fed us some fufu, njamajama, fish, and jellof rice. The kids were pretty excited as they love African food. Kate enjoyed picking out the fish heads for herself out of the pile of fish that they served us. It started raining right before we left and we were a little afraid we wouldn't make it out of the village. The roads are steep and incredibly slippery! Wow...I could barely walk! It was like an ice rink! Matt's car had some trouble...swishing and slipping it's way out of the village. I couldn't believe the bus made it out. We decided some angels were pushing the back end! We have had that bus in the shop a few times in the last couple of week repairing the 4wheel drive, so, it really was a miracle we made it out! After all was said and done we know of 16 people on Friday that trusted in Christ, and 8 people on Saturday! The salvation of Emmanuel's family has been at the top of our prayer list for quite some time. He was very burdened for his staunchly catholic family members. Sometimes God uses a death to draw people to Him, but I know Emmanuel wouldn't have had it any other way. Praise God for what he did this past weekend in Nginikom!

Here are a few more family pictures from this week.

We measure the kids every few months. They didn't grow as much as they did the last measurement. Faith Ann had the biggest growth spurt. We didn't get an actual photo of Kate b/c she is the one under the weather now with a fever and sore throat.

Ben had a good laugh at Drew's bear, Barry, this morning: haha! Poor Drew and his glasses. Last time we were home we went to one of those discount eyeglass places...eyeglass world or something like that. We got a great deal on his glasses, but they have been nothing but trouble...we have those things wired and glued and rigged to stay together. The next time we are going to have to invest the big bucks and get some nice glasses. And we will just have to pray the ones we have through the next year until we can go home next.

and speaking of home...only 3 weeks until my Mom and the Whitely's come! Yipee!!! We are so excited!! Drew's next milestone is his birthday in two days. We will have a very small celebration Thursday night, and then when Mom comes, we will have the big party (basically b/c she is bringing all the presents lol!). So...I guess that is all for now!

Overdue Update :D

2010-09-28T14:45:00.013-04:00

Wow...blogger is going to actually let me post tonight? I don't know what it is, but I have been having so much trouble with blogger lately. I haven't been able to post anything the past couple of days. Every time I try to log in or create a new post, I get an error 500. The last time it was an error 400...I guess I should look for the big 600 next time. Anyway, sit back, grab a coffee or a soft drink. This is gonna be a long one! haha!

First of all I 've decided to give up on my 365 project. I'm just going to enjoy keeping track of life via my blog. I have a daily record (or almost daily) of events up until about the beginning of Sept. That isn't too bad. And I'll definitely keep you up to date, I'm just not going to go crazy trying to get a picture everyday, and dealing with the guilt feelings of not having taken any photos etc... I'm just going to blog, at my own convenience, and I know I will enjoy it more. Not to say that I didn't enjoy the 365 project...I did. But, now I'm done.

Another thing I'm considering is changing the name of my blog. Which I think means my followers will have to rejoin etc... Unless anyone knows of a way to change names without doing that?? Any advice would be appreciated. I wasn't really thinking when I created my blog...obviously. Why I would create a blog name with the year in there was really dumb. So, help me out...what should I name my blog? Provided that name is available of course...but leave me a comment with some ideas.

Thanks for the help with the kitty names btw. The kids decided on cuddles. My opinions don't count too much anymore in this house. At least when it comes to naming pets anyway. They love that cat, and she is getting to be pretty cuddly. She loves to purr and gets her motor running as soon as we pick her up. I have kept her pretty confined to the laundry room. She has a litter box in there and we keep the door shut. I'm afraid of her getting brave and venturing out in the yard and getting eaten by the neighbor dogs like our last cat. And I'm a little afraid of how Penny will treat her. I try to put them together a little bit everyday for some supervised play time. Penny is all puppy though, and just wants to rough house with her. I was watching them today and laughing at them. Then things turned a little scary, as Penny muckled onto the back of the cats neck and picked her up. She looked right at me and I was sternly saying her name, "Penny, no!" But I think she thought it was a big game of catch. As soon as I started towards her she took off running right out of the courtyard gate with the cat still in her mouth. Ahhh! I took off through the house to meet her in the front, since it appeared that was the direction she was heading. Well, she never came around so I went back into the courtyard and she sauntered right in, and then little Cuddles came walking in after her. So...thankfully Penny didn't kill her. I just don't know what to think. I don't think Penny would ever intentionally kill her...but she is SO rough! She LOVES to play and she sees that cat as a live playtoy I guess. She bats at her and nips and jumps. Poor kitty.

We thought we'd lost Rex this week too. We have this plant in our house, and the kids will put Rex on the leaves for whatever reason. Well, Drew evidently put Rex there and forgot about him. I noticed him looking the plant over very closely at bedtime and asked him about it. He told me he'd left Rex...and now he was gone. Sure enough, he was gone. Which means that he fell off the plant, and onto the table, and then fell off the table and onto the floor. That little guy is tough, let me tell ya! So, all during devotions, while Ben was reading, I was walking around the parlour with my eyes open. It is a chameleon for crying out loud! They are hard to find! Sometimes we will all be searching in our window and be staring straight at him, and not even see him! I thought for sure we'd never see him again. I never did find him that night and cautioned the kids to be very careful where they stepped, b/c I figured he probably made his way down the hallway and was hiding in a bedroom somewhere. Well, the next morning (yesterday), Drew found him. He was in our bedroom and was crawling on the base of our oscillating fan. Of all people to find him, too. Drew, with his terrible eye sight, spotted him! haha!

We found a new restaurant for our family day. The Hamburger Place, as the kids like to call it, had some trouble with their employees. Evidently the cook left and ran off with a bunch of their kitchen supplies. Now, we are in Africa after all, so all the kitchen supplies probably didn't amount to much. Their kitchen is about the size of two of my closets...but they couldn't serve anyone without those supplies or without a cook for that matter. So we went in search of another restaurant. I'm always skeptical. You just never know what you will get here. You might order rice and it be full of rocks or dirt b/c they didn't clean it. You might get an organ or a piece of meat on your plate that you didn't really want. So, restaurant eating is done with caution, and when you find a good one...you stick with it. Well, this restaurant (I don't even know the name of it!) was a winner. It was in a very nice, fancy-ish dining room, and it was all clean. They had a big flat screen tv on the wall, and handed us the remote when we sat down. So while we waited for our food (which is usually a long time...another African thing) we were able to watch The National Geographic channel.
It was so nice! We watched some show on animals in Russia...and it kept the kids content while we waited. We got really yummy chicken, and french fries, and Ben and Emma got fried plantains. The kids love it and even Drew strayed from his normal order of plain spaghetti, and got chicken this week! So, we definitely found a winner. You can take a gander at their menu too, if you'd like. If you click the image it will make it bigger. On Sunday the kids sang a special in church. Kate came to me and said she'd like to sing, so I picked out a song that she could sing for a special. I decided to see if Drew could handle carrying the alto part, and if Kate could carry the soprano part while Drew carried the alto part. haha! They did great! Drew has an amazing ear for music. I don't know if all kids his age begin to harmonize. I remember wanting to sing alto SO bad. I used to sit next to Mrs. Russell in church because she always had such a strong alto voice. She must have cringed every Sunday as I slid in the pew next to her because I couldn't carry that alto part at first and sounded awful! I was in junior high I think, when I was determined to learn that part. It seems to come naturally for Drew. So, he picked it up in no time, and with some work, Kate did a great job staying on the melody line...and my fingers managed to find all of the keys so I didn't mess them up with my piano playing either!

We left our service in Bambili and headed to church in Bamenda. We saw this interesting sight along the way:Those are not birds...they are bats. Weird, huh? The sky was just FULL of them!

As we were pulling into our church lot, Ben got a call from Emmanuel's caretaker, Andrew, who informed him that Emmanuel had just died five minutes ago. It was a sweet, but somber service in Bamenda on Sunday. We had a time of prayer for Emmanuel's family, who still doesn't know Christ. He mentioned them in prayer regularly - he was really burdened for his family. He has a neat testimony actually. Matt and Susan Yeiter had regular mechanical problems with their washing machine when they first got one here. It was a used model, and the lady they bought it from promised to send a mechanic out to repair it. Well, Emmanuel was the tech guy. He came out and repaired it, and before he left that day Matt shared the gospel with him. Emmanuel didn't make a decision though. Shortly after that, the Yeiter's washer broke down again. Guess who came back to fix it...and guess who heard the gospel again? I think their washer broke down three times, and after hearing the gospel several times, Emmanuel finally trusted Christ. Sometimes God takes us through frustrating circumstances for an ultimate purpose. Emmanuel was a different person from that day on, and a faithful member of our church in Bamenda. He was a true servant...always working behind the scenes at the church doing a lot of maintenance. If Matt and Susan hadn't gone through the frustration of being without a washer...and had they not taken advantage of that situation by sharing the gospel with their technician...Emmanuel would be in hell today. I'm so thankful that Matt took that opportunity and was able to lead Emmanuel to Christ. For the last couple of months, he'd been in SO much pain. Through our tears we were rejoicing on Sunday, that Emmanuel was suffering pain no longer! Here is a picture of him on the day of his baptism. So, this next week will be a busy one for Ben. I think on Friday he will spend the night out in the village with people from our church for the wake keeping.

As you can see I'm kinda working my way backwards. :D On Saturday the kids played hard outside. They also went to visit our neighbor, to deliver thank you notes for the kitten that she gave us. I cracked up at Kate's note and had to share it: In case you can't actually read it, it says, "Thank you for the kittin - you are the best - she is soooooo cute - I love her sooooo much - why would you give that kittin - why, why, why - oh well - thank you for it enyway." LOL! No punctuation, or anything. She just finished her first chapter in English on writing...so I guess we have some more work to do. But it sure made me laugh!

Kate went to town with Ben on Friday. He is starting to take the kids every once in a while. She loves one-on-one time, so it is very good for her.

I got this cute shot of Emma and Penny on Thursday. Penny is gettin' big!

On Wednesday, Ben came home from church and the power went out. We were all amazed that even though it was dark we could still see to walk around our house! Usually when the power is out here, you can barely see your hand in front of your face! It is SO dark. But the moon was SO full and so bright. The sky was so clear too, that Ben said you could see one of the planets. I didn't get a shot of that, but we tried to get a good shot of the moon. There was one bright star that really shone underneath it too. It was too beautiful to describe and obviously the picture doesn't do it justice. We were all outside as a family staring at the sky! Our nightwatchman must have thought we were crazy! Well, I could share more, but I'm afraid I've bored you as it is. 4 more weeks until my Mom comes and we are getting excited and counting down the days. I'm also so excited about Bernadette, a girl that I just hired to help me in the kitchen! Woot! Today she came and washed all my dishes, cleaned my stove, washed my kitchen windows and I taught her how to make coffee cake! So, having her help out with stuff like that will help me stay on top of the kids and their school work. It just gives me a little breather a few days out of the week. She comes from about 9-12:30. She and her hubby are serving in a church about 15 minutes from here. They are newlyweds and are really struggling financially. They have been begging for work. They came this past week actually to tell us that they only had 100 francs in their pocket (500 francs is 1 dollar) and that was the last of their money. They wondered if we had any work that day for them to earn some money. So, this job really helps them, and it really helps me too. She will learn to bake and I will have help with our breakfasts. And...the dishes!! I hate dishes!! That alone would be worth it!!!

Ok...I'm done! Have a great day!!

Saturday Evening Post

2010-09-18T16:54:00.010-04:00

It is Saturday evening, and I know that I promised you an update yesterday with pictures, but I do live in Africa after all, so I guess I shouldn't make promises. Anyway, our internet was out all night and Saturday morning until 9. So, I honestly couldn't post. :D (for once I have a good excuse!)

My week was a blur. I am not sure I could even recount any details, but I did get all the pictures off the cameras that will hopefully give all of us a smile!

First up...My silly kids!

I'm not sure what sparked this idea, but they were getting ready for a big snowstorm. I had to laugh at Drew's hat choice. You can see Faith Ann in the back lookin' kinda sad. I'm not sure why she wasn't participating in all the fun. But she decided to imitate her siblings the next day, and this is what she came up with for snow attire: Gotta love the princess panties...

Drew is a pretty good artist in my opinion, though I am sure every parent must say that about their kids. He is always asking for paper to draw on. Here is his interpretation of Monster's Incorporated: Ben has been spending much of this week at Mbingo Baptist Hospital with Emmanuel from our church in Bamenda, who is very ill. He learned that he has tuberculosis in his bones. Evidently it is literally deteriorating his bones. He has some fractured bones right now even, and is in constant excruciating pain. He was already a small man, but Ben says that he is literally a skeleton. Today Ben and Matt along with Primus and TomMike went to visit him. Primus couldn't even stay in the room he was so broken. He is barely recognizable - he has wasted away to almost nothing. While they were there, Ben always has opportunities to pass out gospel tracts. He got a picture of one man reading Drew's story...the perfect thing to read at a hospital! Thursday was meat day. I suddenly realized on Wed. that we were out of ground beef. So Ben went first thing in the morning to get some fresh beef. Once he buys the meat, he brings it home and begins the trimming process, which is a LOT of work. But Ben has it down to a science. He didn't have time to finish everything unfortunately, so I had to finish it up and do the grinding:

We interrupt this broadcast for a public service announcement....this is a test....this is a test of the emergency blogger system... Ugh! So, I have this whole post ready except for this last picture and the introduction to our new family member and I suddenly get this blogger message...Error 400. What?? I couldn't do a thing on blogger last night. Couldn't log in, access my dashboard, upload pictures nothing. I shut down my computer and rebooted. I finally gave up and headed to bed, but not before googling that error message. Evidently it is a random message that people get, and they recommended clearing my cache, or switching browsers...etc...Well it was too late. I figured I'd just come back tomorrow - now today - and finish my post. Thankfully no error 400 today. So, here is our new pet. And I need your help. We need a name for this little guy, who is so cute btw. She has taken up residence in our laundry room, complete with litter box and seems quite cozy in there. She loves to whine and meow, but she also loves to cuddle and purr, so I think she is getting comfortable with us.
Ben came home from his visitation on Thursday and said, "I got a surprise...bring a bowl of milk." I knew what that was and squealed. The kids still didn't catch on. So we all rushed to the laundry room, and there was our adorable new kitty! So again, I need names people! :D Respond with some ideas and I'll run them by my kiddos. If we choose the name you responded with....you win..............drumroll please........

nothing, except for the fact that our adorable kitty will bear the name you have chosen! :D

No Title

2010-09-16T17:58:00.003-04:00

I have no title for my post. I'm a bad, bad, bad blogger! and I've left all my peeps hanging the past few weeks! It really is just getting harder and harder to keep up this 365 project. I love blogging, but don't like being stuck on having to do it every single day. I think next year, I'm going to do project 52. Rather than 365 days of pictures, pick out one highlight of the week, or something. This week I have been terrible. I haven't taken one picture! Ben took a picture of the kids yesterday. They were all dressed up for the snowstorm...haha! I won't reveal too much because I plan on coming back tomorrow (last day of school for this week!) and posting some photos. We also have a new addition to our family that I'll share (no I'm not pregnant!) and I will try to take another interesting photo tomorrow too. Then I really need to try and remember to dig my camera out each day this coming week! So, I just wanted to quickly pop in and say I'm sorry, and that I'll get some pictures up tomorrow!!

The last few days...

2010-09-09T17:50:00.008-04:00

So, I'll catch you up on the last few days. I figured I'd better post before my mom said something...hahaha!! Just kidding mom! :D

On Sundays, Ben walks to church early. We have Sunday School in Bambili at 8. Because it is such a long day already (we don't get home until 3) I usually get ready and head to church for the main service and Children's church. I drive the car since I have all the kids, and Ben walks to church. He snapped a shot of the road ahead of him as he was walking to church on Sunday. I got the sweetest email this week. Check it out:
This kid loves to email! I bought this typing tutor program for kids. Drew went through the whole program and he types better than his dad now! So, Ben set him up with his own email account, and he checks his email everyday. He's written and received letters from his Mommy of course :D, his grandma and his Mimi and Papa and uncle Jay. He is so stinkin' cute! So, out of the blue he sent me this sweet email. He is SUCH a good kid. So easy going...never complains. He is the reason I really wanted all boys, and one girl, rather than the other way around. I'm just kidding of course. I did want that when we were planning and talking about a family, but I obviously wouldn't change a thing now!

Tuesday was hamburger night. I made yummy ranch burgers that were far to small for the buns that I made. Oops! But the family loves burgers. The kids always ask for another one. And I don't skimp on the meat either. They just love ranch burgers. We also had some dill pickles that Susan found in Younde...Oh yum. What a treat.The girls occasionally ask Ben to show them his muscles (and he does have some nice muscles). It is such a crack up to listen to them..."Wow Daddy...that is enormous!!" It makes him feel good for sure. And then of course all the kids have to show their muscles too. Daddy does a good job pumping Drew up and making a big deal of how big his muscles are. :) And then my last pic, for tonight. I had something else on the camera to post, but Ben came quietly into the kitchen as I was working on the computer and said, "Grab the camera. Here is your 365 for the night." I was like, "what?" I was expecting some big hairy spider crawling across the parlour floor or something. But instead I found this: Emma is our sleepwalker. She takes after her momma. I was a terrible sleepwalker when I was little. I once tore all the covers and sheets off of my bed in the middle of the night and threw them out in the garage. And then crawled back into an empty bed and went to sleep. Several times when I was in high school, my dad would pound on the bathroom door while I was in the shower, only to tell me that it was 2 in the morning! Huh? I did that a lot. Anyway, she walked out into the parlour and curled up on the couch and I doubt that she will even remember it happened come morning!

Miss Me Yet?

2010-09-04T08:33:00.011-04:00

Haha! Yes...I've been MIA this week. School keeps me very busy, and when the end of the day comes, and the kids are in bed...all I want to do is crash...not blog. Oh...and one more excuse, the power has been terrible this week! So, am I forgiven? Good...

My last post was Friday, Aug. 27. On Sat. the 28th, I went to a ladies meeting up in Sabga. We have these every other month, and Rosemary Craven was our speaker this month. She talked about the potter and the clay and it was SO good. I needed to hear every bit of what she had to say. I was especially encouraged by the verse, Psalm 40:2, "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." And I was challenged to be a pliable, moldable piece of clay for my Lord.

I took Faith with me and while we were away, the kids were playing hard outside with all of their friends. Ben got this great shot: and please ignore my oldest daughter. She wears her socks like that all the time thanks to Ben and I keep telling her she looks like a nerd. I told her today in fact, that when she goes to school in America, all the kids are going to make fun of her. She insists on having her socks up like that...and with flip flops?? Oh my...

Sunday was a great day, and my picture (that I don't have yet) will be borrowed from Susan. Yeiters have been having car trouble, and everytime they parked, and shut off the car on Sunday, they had to push start it to get it going. I cracked up as I watched Susan and the kids pushing the car, with Matt behind the wheel! haha!

Monday was a stay at home Family Day. Ben went to visit Emmanuel in the hospital again, and Matt borrowed our car in the morning, so I was home with the kids. If you think I'm a bad wife/mother after me telling you all my cooking woes last week, you are going to love what was on the menu for supper Monday night...Chocolate ice cream with crushed peppermints. Yum!

Tuesday Ben got some speakers put in the bus. The last time we traveled together we tried to bring our ipod and some speakers and listen to some books on mp3. Well, the bus was just too loud. So, he paid an electrician to put in a whole system where we put our music on a thumb drive and tune it into an fm frequency and it plays via radio. I have no idea how it works, I just know that we can now listen to music when we travel!

On Wednesday the kids were outside playing and Emma came running in screaming about this huge spider with a shell on it's back. You know me and bugs! I had to go look! I wish this photo could give you an idea of how big this guy is. HE is big! He was feasting on a wasp when we first found him. We have seen him capture a few things actually. He is still in our garden and we keep checking him out!

Thursday was a rainy day. In fact, we sat at our church for an hour in the car waiting out the rain. Hilary and Michael and Jude finally showed up. Ben shared a couple illustrations from a Watchman Nee book he is reading and we had a time of prayer together. For my pic of the day, I got this cute shot of Emma doing her school project for Bible. She had fun and spent far too long on it, but she's been playing with her little finger puppets ever since.

On Friday ... something very great happened. :) Susan's parents arrived in Cameroon, and with them, my Birthday and Christmas present from my hubby. I'm working on getting everything transferred over, and all my photoshop stuff loaded, and avg and yahoo messenger. It is taking some time, but I am already loving it. It is SO fast! and sorry to my brother. We just couldn't join the mac family now. Maybe some day. :)
And then, finally...today. A nice relaxing day. Ben went to their very first men's meeting. It went well for a first time. I was home with the kids getting my computer organized. I made the kids sit down and watch Anne of Green Gables. NOt really made them, but told them about it. They loved it! I went out on the porch to feed Rex and saw what I think is a lady bug! I've never seen one here before but you can check it out, as I obviously got a picture of it! Isn't it pretty? Drew had fun playing with it for a while.

Ok...so I'm finally caught up. I was going to write that I was so proud of my mom again for not saying anything...but she blew it when we talked this morning. I was even in the process of putting the photos in order on my computer and had blogger open. I'm only giving you a hard time Mom! YOu know I love you! The grandparents enjoy this blog more than anyone b/c it keeps them connected with the kids. But I'm thankful to all my readers for your patience with me!

TGIF

2010-08-27T17:34:00.004-04:00

It is Friday and our power is back on! Yay!! I'm so thankful for that! We were very conservative with our showers and never ran out of hot water! So, that is nice, and again I'm thankful for our generator. I don't know how we'd survive without it sometimes :D

The kids are glad it is friday b/c we are done with another school week. 3 weeks down already! I can't believe it!

Ben went to town for outreach while I was home with the kids busy doing school. He snapped this picture. Just a glimpse of stuff we see on an everday basis that might surprise some people. We get so used to these images, we don't give them a second thought really.

4 people, a couple of them quite large, squeezed onto a motorcycle taxi. These bikes scare me! And driving with them coming at you from all sides is even more scary. They are just crazy drivers. They will pass on the right or left and just freak me out. I will never encourage a visitor to ride a bike taxi here. I've seen too many wrecks.

When Ben got home we headed up to the Needham's house for dinner. The Needham's are in the states, but Sam and Abby are up there as Sam is doing several trips this week with the airplane. So, the Yeiters and us went up there for a spaghetti dinner and some great fellowship. I especially enjoyed cuddling with the Sanderlins precious baby, Chloe. It is so nice b/c I can snuggle and then walk away and get a good nights sleep! haha! (now watch one of my kids wake up sick in the night.....)

Oops...Behind Again

2010-08-26T17:20:00.009-04:00

I have been severly neglecting my blog...I'm sorry! and I must say that I'm SO proud of my Mom for not saying one word about it! :D So, I'll update you on the last few days rather than do each day separately. I'm pretty proud of myself for having stuck to this 365 project this long. I think I've forgotten to take pictures about 4 times maybe? Not too bad really. We are nearing September, so I think I've done pretty good! Alright, enough bragging on myself lol! I'm just buttering you up to say that I forgot to take a picture on Sunday... :( So, I'll start my updating with Monday!

The kids did school and we headed to lunch. The lady in the food market told Ben that she'd have fresh broccoli on Monday, so Ben called her and sure enough she did. We went to Bamenda and bought 23 heads of broccoli!! So, I spent all evening cutting and trimming. I was kind of disappointed in the fact that they were going bad. So it took me quite a while to cut all the bad parts out and prepare it for blanching and freezing. But, I'm not going to complain too much b/c we have really been enjoying this treat of broccoli!! She even threw in some cauliflower for free (maybe b/c she knew the broccoli was going bad?) And guess what we had for supper...broccoli and oranges! Mmmm! Tasty and healthy. I told Ben I needed to do better about serving fruit to the family. I'm terrible about that and the kids love fruit. It is just kind of a pain to prepare here. In the states you can just pop in a blueberry or a strawberry or an apple. Here everything has to be cleaned, peeled, chopped. So, I'm really bad about preparing fruit. I'm determined to give my kids fruit everyday, and they are so happy about Mommy's new resolution!

Another resolution I had was to make more breakfast. By now you are probably thinking, "What kind of mom is this lady! She doesn't feed her family fruit or breakfast!!" I know...you are right. I'm terrible about preparing breakfast. We eat cereal every day of our lives. In the states I wouldn't have it any other way! Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios, Special K Strawberry, MMMmmmmmm! I am a sugar cereal addict. But here, our choices are limited to about 2 things and that gets old REALLY fast. Kate doesn't even eat breakfast hardly. She is so sick of cereal. I even tried making homemade granola, but that didn't thrill the kids too much either. So, I guess I have to start making breakfast more often. That means more time in the kitchen and more preparation, but my family has already expressed their appreciation for my new resolution. So, Tuesday we had homemade biscuits fresh out of the oven and orange slices. We all sat down to breakfast and Emma's comment was, "This is like a family in a movie!" haha!
Our dog Penny was sick for a few days last week. She was miserable and I was really worried that she was going to die. The Yeiters had a dog die of similar symptoms. We called the vet immediately and he came out and gave her a couple of shots. The next day she could hardly walk! I was thinking, "What in the world did that vet do to her!" but by the next day she was back to her old self, jumping and nipping at my heels. Now that the kids are in school she doesn't get played with as much, so on Wednesday I went out and had a good ol' game of tug of war with her. She loved the attention!Wed. afternoon we had a doozy of a storm! Wow! So the power went out at about 3 ish...and it is now Thursday night and it still isn't on. So, who knows how long this will go on. I hope they are working on it, but am really thankful for our Honda generator! While we can't heat water heaters and do laundry we can at least run all the lights and the fridge and freezer. So that is a blessing. It has been raining like crazy and of course I'm loving it! We have water all the time now and that is SUCH a big blessing!! It has been freezing cold! But I love that too. I just love rainy season. I don't care for all the mud my kids get into, but I can deal with that. Today the kids did school on the generator. Ben left this morning to go visit one of the members of our Bamenda church who is in the hospital. Pray for Emmanuel as you read this. He was saved through the Yeiters - was their washing machine repair man, and has been a faithful believer ever since. He has had trial after trial in his life. Last year he was in a car wreck and his hand was shattered. He can't really use it anymore. Then severe back pain began developing and the doctors informed him this week that the bones in his lower back are literally deteriorating. We are in the middle of 3rd world Africa and I'm not sure what they can do for him exactly, but pray that God gives the doctors wisdom and for Emmanuel to get healing and relief from all the pain he is in.

On a lighter note, Ben picked up some speakers in town for our church bus. He thought it would be nice to have something to play some Godly music while the bus runs and also for when we use the bus for long trips to Douala. So he found some speakers and was cracking up at the name brand.
Ok...so I'm now back on track and I can't promise I'll always stay that way, but I will always catch up, so be sure to keep checking back!!!

Kitchen Duty

2010-08-21T16:46:00.004-04:00

Wanna know what I did all day today? ...I was in the kitchen (surprise, surprise...lol!) But here is the fruit of my labor.

Oh my ... dinner was good tonight. I cut up the last two heads of that broccoli and could have eaten it all myself. The entire family begged for seconds, but there was enough for everyone to have one serving. We all enjoyed it! I steamed it for about 6-7 minutes. Then I put it in the frying pan, and sauteed it with olive oil and fresh chopped garlic. Seasoned with salt and pepper...Oh yummm! Of course the lasagna was what took up most of my day. I made the sauce, made the ricotta. I peeled and pureed fresh tomatoes for the sauce. It was SO yummy! So next time I make this, who wants me to invite them? :D Well just so you know, you are all welcome, but it would be one mighty expensive meal!! :)

I also wanted to quick mention that if you are a digiscrapper or slightly interested in it, I posted a freebie on my digi blog. You can click the link in the sidebar to head there.

Faith's Pet

2010-08-20T16:52:00.004-04:00

Today I noticed a teeny tiny little gecko in our parlour. I called Faith since she was doing her school in that room, and she came running over and the two of us managed to capture it. She was so thrilled. That little thing was her new pet and she played with it ALL day. She tried feeding it saltine crackers, she told me at one point that her lizard was cold and she needed to find it a jacket. And I didn't realize it, but she took the thing to bed with her at naptime. That is when everything went sour. She woke up crying that she lost her lizard. So, who knows, that thing is probably still in her bed somewhere. I tried to encourage her that her pet lizard was still in the room with her and would be there to catch all the icky bugs that come in her room. She seemed content with that, and even told me later that she saw the lizard under her bed. I kinda doubt that...but hey, maybe she did. It is just that lizard is so small, she'd have to crawl under her bed herself to actually see it. But she thinks he is living under her bed, and as long as she is happy, I'm happy. Here is her pet.

Traffic Jam

2010-08-19T16:45:00.002-04:00

We got into a little traffic jam on the way to Bible Study tonight. But what adorable traffic it was!

This sweet baby goat and it's brother or sister, were just laying down in the road while Mama goat was cleaning them. They didn't bog things up too long. As soon as we got close they jumped up and got out of the way, but we had to stop and get a picture of this adorable little guy. He was so little. Makes me want one for a pet! He could mow the grass!

Our prayer meeting went well. Attendance is down during the holidays as all the students are out of town, but we had a handful. Ben teaches on Thursdays and he usually calls on people to read verses. Kate and Drew are always wanting to read, but they often forget their bibles. They forgot theirs tonight and ended up using mine, but it is good incentive for them to bring theirs and also to listen closely so when Ben calls for readers!

We came home tonight and enjoyed our broccoli. I made some homemade broccoli and cheese soup and it was SO yummy. The kids loved it too and we have just enough for one person to eat a bowl of it tomorrow. I used two heads, so I'll have to come up with something a little different for the next two heads.

Town Treats

2010-08-18T16:37:00.002-04:00

Ben brought home a real treat from town tonight!We don't see broccoli too often, and sometimes it looks downright gross. But this batch was so green and gorgeous, he bought four heads of it! We are in broccoli heaven and now I have to decide what I want to make with it!

Our day went well. The kids are plugging away in the 2nd week of school. I think we are getting into a routine. There are some things I have to keep reminding them to do, but they'll get it. It is so fun to watch them learn. Emma was studying about the moon and how the sun gives light to the moon. She was so excited about it and told me that she always thought that when we couldn't see the entire moon, that part of the moon was in a different city. But now she knows the whole thing is there, she just can't see it. It was really cute seeing her so excited about it all and even cuter listening to her explain it all to me. That is one of the joys of homeschooling...you get the thrill of seeing your kids learn!

Play-Dough

2010-08-17T19:20:00.000-04:00

The real thing is technically "Play-Doh" but since I made mine from scratch, mine is play-dough. :)

Well, we haven't had any play-doh around for a couple years now and it ends up being a little to heavy for luggage, so it never gets brought out. The last time I was in the states I made it a point to buy some extra cream of tartar to make the homemade kind. Faith needed to make it for her school, so we did it together and it was ridiculously easy and once their school was done, the kids played, and played and played with it all afternoon.At around 4, we headed to Yeiters for Mariah's birthday party. We had a great evening over there as usual. The kids always have a blast together and I think Mariah's day ended up being a special one!

Splish, Splash Time for a Bath!

2010-08-16T14:44:00.003-04:00

Back to the grind. After a crazy week last week with sickness, and trying to organize the first week of school, we had a relatively uneventful beginning to our second week. First of all, and best of all, there was no puking! :D The kids got going on their Bible before 8. We stopped and had breakfast at 8:15, and they hit the books again at 8:30 and were done by 12:30! So, we went to our restaurant! I would still like to keep up with our Monday routine of family day and just push the kids to start early and finish early. They did a great job today!

We came home from eating lunch and it started Pouring! Once the rain died down the kids went scrambling for their rainboots and went outside to play. Because of the fast, heavy rain, there were lots of great big puddles! Drew and Kate had a grand ol' time! Take a look!

Oh my...they were a mess when all was said and done, but they sure had fun! They came in for some warm showers. I don't know how they stood it! I was in my sweater, completely dry and I was cold today! But they were running and jumping and splashing, so hopefully the extra energy kept them warmer! I dread washing out their clothes tomorrow...

More critters

2010-08-15T15:15:00.000-04:00

Well, since Ben went to sleep last night with a bucket beside his bed, we just planned on keeping the family home from church. Whatever we had was highly contagious and we didn't want to spread the love, if you know what I mean. Ben woke up with a pretty decent headache, but thankfully he had no more stomach trouble the rest of the day. We spent the day as a family having our own Sunday School hour and had fun with sword drills. It was a great day to recuperate and we just enjoyed being together.

The sun was shining and so the kids wanted to spend some time outside. We sent them out looking for some food for Rex. With all the rain it has been harder to find flies, so Kate and Drew went grasshopper hunting. While they were outside they found this beautiful moth. And of course I had to get a picture of it. :D I hope ya'll don't get tired of all my bugs...

Tomorrow is back to the grind of school. The only one that has some catching up to do is Kate, but it shouldn't be too difficult!

Sick Bay

2010-08-14T16:33:00.005-04:00

Oh man...it really was my goal to avoid this whole stomach bug...but at 4:30 a.m. I knew it was finally my turn. Goodness...I was feeling so bad for my kids about that time. It was rough, and I won't get into any gory details. I finally went back to bed around 6:30. Ben left around 7 in the morning for a neighborhood workday, and my poor kids are so good. They stayed quietly in bed and I didn't even budge until 9. I got up and moved to the couch while they watched videos. Ben finally came home and I was up and around by then feeling quite a bit better. I headed back to the bedroom sometime late morning, only to find Ben in the bed with a bucket by his side. Uh-oh I said...He was very miserable the rest of the day.

I did manage to snag this picture of him...and even though he has that big grin on his face, he really was feeling awful. He was trying to fight the camera out of my hands. Thankfully for me, he was so sick that I won the battle! lol!He is gonna kill me once he reads my blog!

So anyway, I'm thankful these bugs don't come around very often. And I'm thankful that other than the occasional stomach bug, God has given us great health!

Superstitous?

2010-08-13T18:58:00.002-04:00

It is Friday the 13th....(the twilight zone theme is going through my head...) Well, in spite of all the negative hype around friday the 13th, it proved to be a very good day for the Sinclairs. Everyone woke up happy and healthy today! Kate ended up throwing up 4 times in the night, but when she got up she was as good as new. I wasn't sure how she'd do at school, so I gave her the option to take a break today, and do it tomorrow, or vice versa. She opted to take a break today (which I knew she would lol!). So, she'll be hating it tomorrow, but I can't get off track on the first week of school, so I'll have her make it up. At least the main subjects. I can just have her do the worktext pages in some of her subjects like Bible, handwriting and spelling to speed the day up. Anyway...the rest of the kids did school and by tomorrow we will be back on track. I'm so thankful that whatever this virus was, that it moved through all the kids quickly. I hate it when stomach bugs drag on for a couple days! I just hate to see my kids sick!

Ben got this funny shot of Penny's house today. She won't sleep in this house at all. After all the work Ben put into it...he isn't happy about that to say the least. She does go in there though because we put her food in there. Well, the birds have figured that out too, and are quite brave now that we don't have any cats around here anymore! haha!

I bet once Penny gets bigger she'll go in there. We have this old woven basket outside that she sleeps in. It is hilarious b/c sometimes you will go to the door, and she will hear you, and all you see pop out of the basket is her little head. haha! so cute! She will outgrow that basket though, and hopefully learn to like her house.

Sit Down and Get Comfy...

2010-08-12T19:27:00.017-04:00

Ok...so I'm behind in my blogging (what's new) and I finally sit down tonight after cleaning up after not 1, not 2, but THREE puking children, and I go to plug my camera in and get some pics off of it and the battery is dead. Normally I try and stay in order, but I thought tonight I would just post on the actual day that it is (Thursday, August 12) and catch you up on this week, and then try to get back on track for next week. So, grab a drink, sit down and get comfy and get ready to tackle my blog post. :D

First of all, I'm sitting here wiping the tears from my eyes after watching a clip going around on facebook right now. Maybe you've seen it...video clips of loved ones re-uniting with soldiers? Wowzers...talk about get the kleenex out! I have no idea what in the world the music is in the background, or the verse at the end from the book of Moses??- ignore that part, but the videos are just so sweet. One little girl just about did me in! When the camera focused on her, I thought that she might not even remember her daddy she looked so young, but they cut the music out so you could hear her tiny little voice..."Daddy? I missed you daddy! I love you!" Oh Man!! Buckets of tears flowing out of my eyes. Sometimes I just enjoy crying...it is cathartic. Anyway...sorry for rambling.

Ok - my last post was for Saturday and would you believe it? Neither Ben nor myself got a picture that day. But I can at least re-cap it for you. Ben woke up sick...Hmmmm, now that I type that, could it be that whatever virus he had last Saturday is still floating around the house and that is why my kids are puking today? Quite possibly. Anyway, he was up early in the morning and finally crawled back into bed around 8 a.m. and I got up with the kids and shut the door and turned the fan on and let him sleep. Once he finally got up, he ate some breakfast and was feeling a lot better. I didn't think he'd have been able to do it, but he went to the church at 1 p.m. to hold the last Holiday Bible School meeting. Thank God he got over it quickly. I stayed home to get ready for school. I got a lot accomplished and they had a great finishing day to Bible School.

On Sunday we headed to church. Services went well and after our Bamenda service we all stuck around for quite some time b/c it was pouring rain. It was a good opportunity to fellowship with everyone. We got home quite late, but I always enjoy rain in Bamenda. It makes the service so much cooler! I made BLT's for lunch, and once I get the camera battery charged I'll insert the picture of the kids eating them [HERE] :D

Monday, was back to school for the Sinclair kids. As usual they were all excited (for this week anyway!). I took a ton of pics Monday and have enjoyed scrapping them this week in fact (I'll share some layouts at the end). I'll post a few of my school pics since I'm short some other pictures! :D

Here they are...ready for the day. Excited to meet their new teachers via DVD and look through all their brand new books!

Drew is now a 4th grader!? Wow...still sinking in for Mommy I guess.

Sweet Kate...enjoying her first day. For now I have her in the parlour. We will see how it goes. The first week or so is a trial to find out where everyone needs to be.

Haha! I just love this pic of Emma. She is excited to be in the first grade. I think. Her first week was a bit uncertain...I have her in the kitchen with me so I can keep an eye on her. And before I continue...does that phrase sound odd to anyone, "I have her in the kitchen with me." It actually sounds like I live in the kitchen. Well, folks...I DO! :D

Oh my... Faith Ann's first year of school. She is an official K-4 student and she can't WAIT to do her phonics!

She is the only one who got a brand new outfit for today. It wasn't planned, I just happened to find it while I was doing all that cleaning. It was something I forgot to give her for her birthday.

So, all in all Monday was a good day. The school year usually starts out organized, but by the end...chaos. We didn't go to town b/c of our first day of school, but also b/c we were invited to the Yeiters house for Autumn's birthday party. We had a great evening with them, and even though we got to bed late for our first school night, it was well worth it! I have another picture from the party to insert [HERE].

Tuesday went well in spite of the late night. Faith Ann was sick in the night and threw up in her bed...so yeah, Ben could have started all of it the previous Saturday. Anyway, I was frustrated because we had no water all day and I had pukey sheets to clean out. I finally ended up doing it at around midnight when the water finally came in enough to use the shower head for spraying stuff down. Other than all that, the second day of school went great and the kids were done in record time. I'm not sure why I was feeling so much pressure, but by Tuesday I was feeling stressed. I failed to even get a picture on this day (shame on me!) :( Faith Ann ended up doing school on Tuesday...whatever this virus is, thankfully it runs it's course pretty quickly.

Wednesday went well. Drew had a longer day than the girls, but that is the way it goes. Sometimes he will be the first one done and other times the last. The kids usually end up racing each other to see who can finish first. Thankfully they haven't started that yet. Ben went to town and when he got home, brought me a gift, and a sweet note encouraging me to keep on keepin' on. I really don't know why I felt so stressed, but I did. We had a good date night though of chicken pizzas. That helped me relax. And unless Ben got pictures on Wed....I don't have any for this day. Have I mentioned that I've been under stress? Evidently stress makes you forget how to operate a camera. :)

And that brings me back to today. I got out of bed to get the kids going on school only to find out that Emma threw up in her bed. Great...more pukey sheets. Thankfully we had water today. Drew said he didn't feel so hot either. So, I dubbed it a no school day. Our first school disk in every subject only has 4 days on it anyway, so to keep it to one disk per week, it worked out well to take a break today. By about 4 p.m. Emma was feeling better, and Drew started vomiting. He threw up right before bed tonight, and as far as I know hasn't been up since. I warned Kate that her turn was coming. She just smiled at me as if to say, "yeah right." Well, I put her to bed in a seperate room and told her to take a bucket to bed with her. Wouldn't you know it, right before I came out here to write up this post (at about 11:30...yeah, I know it's gonna be a late night for me) I heard her call my name as I walked by. She said, "Mom...I threw up two times." "In the bucket?" I asked. "Yep" ... "Good girl." So basically the only one left to get sick is...oh, Me! Please pray I avoid it.

Be sure to check back tomorrow and see the pictures that I have added to this post. It is really, really late now, and I better get to bed! Oh, I almost forgot to post a few layouts.

More fun and games

2010-08-06T13:38:00.001-04:00

Another day of HBS. I can tell the kids are getting worn out. Emma is so giddy at bedtime!

I stayed home today. We start school on Monday and I have so much to do. For one thing, Diane is gone to Ngounderie for a month, which means I don't have someone to help me mop my floors or clean my bathrooms. You might think I'm spoiled (and I am) but house cleaning is so time consuming here. What Diane can do in one hour, I can't do in two days! I'm serious! I get interrupted by "Mom I'm hungry!"...or "Time to make dinner!"...."Gotta put the dough in the bread machine" ..."I'm thirsy!" ...not to mention when I move from room to room I get sidetracked. I'll be working on the parlour and head to my bedroom to put something away and notice the load of laundry that hasn't been put up, and get going on that and as I walk into the bathroom realize the sink needs to be cleaned and...before I know it, I've forgotten my first task of cleaning and mopping the parlour! I realize you all have the same struggles, but you also have aids that I don't have...like dishwashers, constant water and electricity, or convenience items for speeding up the meal making process. I'm not complaining in any shape or form. I said from the beginning of this blog that I was going to be transparent so you knew about the life of a missionary wife/mom. Life is just different here, and I am adjusting (still!), but housekeeping is one of those things I'll never fully conquer. I have come a long way though. When we first moved here I could barely get dinner on the table each night by 7 p.m. We now eat at a normal time! :D So, anyway, I worked from the moment I got up until I went to bed and still didn't accomplish what I wanted to, but it did help to have the kids out from under foot, other than Faith Ann. She stayed home with me, but one is so much easier than all four!

So, my reports of HBS are from Ben, but he said that everything went great. They had about the same number of kids, but they all had a great time and two girls went back to trust Christ as Saviour, so it was definitely a profitable day because of that alone!

He got a couple pictures of game time, and I thought they were so revealing of my daughter's competetive nature. Notice here that Kate's friend is clearly posing for the picture, while Kate already has her mind on the race. I wasn't there, but I can imagine her strategizing here, explaining how they were going to run the race, "Ok...let's both start with the outside leg first."

and here you can see one girl is having a blast, just enjoying the game, while the other girl (who shall remain nameless haha!) is focused and quite possibly irritated that she isn't in the lead.

*sigh* that is one thing we are really trying to drill into Kate...how to be a good loser. How to rejoice with those that do rejoice as the Bible tells us. It is VERY difficult for her to lose and it is that selfish nature coming out. Pray for us as we seek to train and raise up godly kids. It is a challenge for all of us parents!

Well...I'm off to finish mopping that parlour! :D

Nature Freak

2010-08-05T13:10:00.001-04:00

I'm not really a nature freak, but you might think so. I know I post a ton of pictures of bugs, and animals etc... but we see some of the most amazing critters here! Today the kids came in screaming that I needed to come and see this bunch of worms outside. Well, I went to check it out. From a distance it looked like a big fat caterpillar crawling across the pavement, but upon closer inspection it was hundreds of small worms all moving together. Weird to say the least, and it creeped me out and I sprayed it before I thought to get a picture of it. Ben said that it was probably some rare type of beautiful butterfly larvae. :D Oh well. They are all dead now.

On a much prettier note, this beautiful moth was caught in the gate of our courtyard. I am guessing that our nightwatchman spotted it and stuck it in our gate, b/c it was perched on a stem from one of our rose bushes that grow on the side of our house. I was acting pretty freakish trying to get a picture of the thing too, b/c Penny kept trying to eat it and I kept getting onto the kids for not holding onto her tight enough. But I managed to get several good shots of it.

Today was day 2 of our Holiday Bible School and we had 1 kid shy of doubling our attendance. Two kids got to pick out a big prize for bringing the most visitors and hopefully that pumped the others up to bring more kids tomorrow. Today was different in that it rained ALL afternoon, so our games had to be inside games today. One game that was a lot of fun to watch was candy on a string. Two kids get a candy tied to the end of a string. I'd say the string is about a foot and a half long. They hold it out in front of them and when Valerie blows the whistle, they have to stick the end of the string in their mouth and try and bring the candy up from the bottom and get it into their mouth without using anything but their mouth. It sounds easier than it is. Here is a picture of Jetum trying to do it...she wasn't very successful.Kate is really good at it. I've never tried it myself, but she says her strategy is to twirl the string around her tongue as she brings it up into her mouth. It must work, b/c she won both times that she played!

Jude did a great job with the story today and gave an invitation at the end. Two girls came back and I was able talk with them. After hearing clear testimonies of salvation I was able to encourage them from the Bible that we can know for sure that we have everlasting life. One of the young ladies, Paulette, comes from a Catholic background and is struggling with the assurance of her salvation. Pray that we will continue to have opportunities to disciple these young kids. Some of these children will never be allowed to step foot in our church door other than these few days of Bible School. It might be the only time they hear the gospel in a years time. Please pray with us that we will see fruit that remains.

Holiday Bible School

2010-08-04T12:46:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of Holiday Bible School here in Bambili. The kids were so excited to be a part of another week! The first day is always a slow start, but by the time it was game time, we had around 21 kids I think it was. Ben's job is to do the music for the week. I am teaching a Missionary story today and tomorrow, and then Dereck is teaching one on Friday and Sat. Jude is teaching the main Bible story (Jonah) and Valerie is in charge of the games. Here is a shot of our very first game...tug of war. Man...these kids here are tough! and I learned that mine need to toughen up! :D The two teams are the elephants and the Lions (Kate and Emma are on the Elephants and Drew and Faith are on the Lions.) One little girl on Kate and Emma's team is the cutest thing ever. She is so teeny, and Valerie called on her to do the sack race. I thought Ben got a shot of her racing, but when I went through the camera, I learned he didn't. My word...for a tiny little thing, she took off and was pretty much finished by the time the other girl even started! and I didn't even think she'd be able to do it at all! Look at how adorable she is!
So, anyway, the first day was a success and we encouraged the kids with candy and prizes to bring as many friends as possible tomorrow!

Macro

2010-08-03T17:50:00.001-04:00

Ben loves to play with the macro settings on his camera, and he also got some lense reversal rings...or something like that, that he uses to take some really close, close up shots. He plays around with it from time to time. (You can check out a whole album of some of his pictures HERE.) Today he got this neat spider shot.
You can see a faint outline of the web which was pretty cool. You can always click the image to get a closer look, though I suspect neither my Mom nor my mother-in-law will choose to do that! haha!

God No Di Sleep

2010-08-02T17:39:00.000-04:00

Family day Monday. As we were headed out to our favorite restaurant, we were behind this motorcycle taxi. The sign on the back of his bike was worth taking a picture of. "God no di sleep," is pidgin for God doesn't sleep. However muchacho isn't pidgin, lol! and I have no idea what FBI really stands for. Maybe he is an undercover agent? Anyway, we giggled at it, What you can't see is the other person stuffed between the girl and the driver!

Lunch was great as always and we sat there for a while while it poured down rain. I shoulda brought my sweater! It was downright cold! On our way home we ran into Valerie, who had just returned from a graduation in a city that is right by the ocean. He brought us some treasures from the sea, and the kids were so excited. I was especially intrigued by this one: Valerie said it is a sea flower and that a fisherman brought it to him. I just love it!

...and I know you all are thinking it...Valerie is a HE?? yes...an odd name for a boy to be sure, but in Cameroon Valerie can be for a girl or a boy.

Church

2010-08-01T16:52:00.000-04:00

Just an ordinary day at church. The differences were that Yeiters were out of town and our attendance was very low for some reason. Because Susan wasn't there I brought our piano and attempted to play for church. I am in no way, shape or form a piano player. I have basically taught myself what I do know, which isn't much. I took some lessons from a lady in our church when I taught school for a year, and I also had a college roomate give me lessons for one semester, but that is basically it. Having piano accompaniment really does add to the service, so I wanted to try. I'm not sure if I added or detracted...hopefully I blended in seamlessly and didn't stand out too much. You are probably thinking, "How in the world can someone play hymns with not even a whole year of piano lessons!" Well, google the Hymn Fake book. It is wonderful!!! Of course, I am limited in what I can play, but this book along with the Gospel Fake book gives me quite the repetoire. Everything is in the key of C, you just have to learn some chords, which are spelled out in the back of the book. It makes it sound like I actually know what I'm doing! I'd love to truly learn to play the piano...like, pick up a piece of music and play, but at my age and with everything going on in my life, I doubt I'll ever learn. But I love these fake books. I usually sit down and play about a half hour every day. It is relaxing for me. Anyway, the only picture we got today was this one.
You can see Drew up in the front row with his arms around his buddies. And Tom Mike is probably giggling in the picture because he is leading music and the pianist can't keep up with him!

Sour Puss

2010-07-31T16:44:00.000-04:00

Hahahah!! This pic just cracks me up! Ben was the one who snapped it, and when I was going through the camera I saw it and LoL'd! Faith Ann was bugging me for candy, so I gave her these sour skittles to have. Just typing that makes my mouth water! I hate sour candies...ack! Faith Ann could eat those things with a straight face! Obviously, Drew could not!

Uh-Oh

2010-07-30T15:27:00.000-04:00

That would be Faith Ann's hair...and yes, also her gum. I am not sure how it happened, I just know that she came into the parlour crying. It definitely could have been worse! I tell the kids all the time to keep their gum in their mouth, but she claims that it just fell out - which happens all the time believe it or not. I finally made a rule that if your gum or candy falls out of your mouth...too bad, so sad. I have no idea how stuff falls out of their mouth all the time! I did see it happen the other day though. Faith was showing Emma the color candy she had...and it fell right onto the floor. So, that must be one way they end up losing it. Somtimes it pops right out when they are attempting to blow a bubble too. Oh well...thankfully she didn't lose too much hair. Of course she was more sad about losing her piece of gum than those pieces of her hair!

Beautiful Butterfly's

2010-07-29T17:19:00.001-04:00

We do get some beautiful butterflies and moths around our house. We also get some HUGE ones. The other night I went outside to talk to our nightwatchman, and I seriously thought a bird was dive bombing me! It was a gargantuous (is that even a word??) moth! I shoulda taken a pic! Oh well. I did get a picture of this beautiful moth/butterfly (I can never really tell the difference, but I do think this is a moth.) Isn't it pretty? The kids love to go critter hunting, and moths and butterflies are their favorite thing to catch. Recently Kate has become pretty adept at catching crickets and grasshoppers. The neighbor kids have taught her how. So, when Rex hasn't eaten well in a couple of days, Kate and Drew will go around the house looking for grasshoppers and crickets. Kate will catch them and hold them in her hand until rex zips his tongue out there and nabs it. It is so funny!

I totally forgot to write about this on Sunday, but we found another new and unique creature (the rainy season must bring them out...I tell ya!). Here is a picture of it:

It looks like a snake, doesn't it? The one in the picture is obviousy very tiny, but the one we found in our yard, was about a foot long! So, imagine our thoughts. The girls come running in the house screaming that they saw a snake. Chastity, the girl that was here over the weekend, has the thing strung over a stick. I told the girls to get in the house and stay in! Ben went out and investigated. He was pretty sure it was dead, but to be sure went to cut the head off. Well, as he began examining it, he found that it was quite hard to determine where the head was because it had no mouth! So, he reasoned that it must not be a snake after all. He came in the house and googled it, and quickly learned that is called a snake worm, or a blind snake. We never got a picture of the one we caught, but I found this shot online so you could see what it looks like. Wierd, huh!? Wierd and cool all at the same time. Our friend Hillary told us that he's seen them before and that one variety is a beautiful bright blue color.

You just never know what a day will hold when living in Cameroon...

The Bees Knees

2010-07-27T16:42:00.000-04:00

Our house is surrounded by tons of gorgeous bushes, plants and flowers. Because of all the amazing flowers we have, we also have a ton of birds. I hear the most amazing melodies around my house. Today, as I was in the kitchen, I heard one bird singing out in the courtyard I think...it sounded like a beautiful recording! Not only do these birds sound so amazingly beautiful...they also look amazingly beautiful. They are all shimmery and bright! We've tried to get some good photos of them, but nothing ever turns out clear enough for me. One of these days, I'll post some beautiful photos of my birds. Well, our family has turned into bird lovers, and we came up with a great idea to make a bird feeder. These birds we see look kind of like hummingbirds, but they are bigger and land, rather than hover. We thought however, that if we tried making a hummingbird feeder of sorts, with the colored sugar water, that they would like it, and it would also give us a place to watch them. Ben found a chicken feeder, and I boiled and colored sugar water and we placed the feeder right outside our parlour window, so we could literally eat breakfast while watching the birds. Well, our little plan didn't work exactly as we had imagined. Take a look: And here is a closer look: While I do appreciate bees and all that they do for us, this is definitely not what we had in mind. In the end, we had to take down our ingenious bird feeder. Evidently the hummingbird feeders you buy in the store are designed to keep the bees out...and ours obviously wasn't. In fact, several of them drowned in all that sugary goodness!

Sleeping Beauty

2010-07-26T16:59:00.001-04:00

We enjoy our family day Monday. Today was chilly and rainy...and I loved it! Ellen and Chastity headed up to Sabga first thing in the morning to help transport a bunch of tables and stuff at camp. Thank the Lord she had her keys :D So, we asked her to join us for lunch at our favorite hamburger joint and they decided to go ahead and eat with us and then continue on their way out of town. We had a yummy meal. The Asa-Neh restaurant is the fastest one I've ever been to in Cameroon...so we love it, and today was no exception. The food came out quick and we had a lot and it was yummy!

We said our goodbyes and headed home to relax. It was a perfect day to do that too...dreary, cold, rainy. I put Faith and Emma down for a much needed nap, while Drew and Kate quietly watched a video. I couldn't resist catching a shot of my sleeping beauty:
Ok...so I'll be honest. I snagged a couple of sleepy shots for a scrapbook page I was working on. :) lol! But they still are super cute. I got another one of Emma too. Seriously though...I need to get Faith Ann to quit sucking her thumb! All three of my girls have been finger suckers and I've had to break each of them. I thought I'd never break Kate. She was the worst one of all of them. She sucked her pointer finger, and she sucked it all day long. Thankfully Faith only sucks her thumb in bed. So, she is my next project! But she still looks so sweet!

Happy Sunday

2010-07-25T16:33:00.003-04:00

We had a great Sunday today. Ellen Doyle and a friend of hers, Chastity, were still staying with us, so they rode with us to all the church services. Kind of a funny story...not so funny for Ellen but we can look back and smile now. She got home pretty late after Felix's and Evette's wedding. She has a nice big truck, so she was helping return rental chairs and do a number of other things. Well, she got to our house so late, and was so tired after a long day (long week really) that she locked her keys in her truck. Well, her truck is really nice, so we considered getting someone to try and pick the lock, but she didn't want to ruin her truck and I don't blame her. So she had another set at her house in Foumban (about 3 hours away) and we got someone to send it "voyage." With the "voyage" system you can send just about anything across Cameroon...they just add it to the public buses that are coming your direction. It cost Ellen about $3, so it isn't too expensive. Anyway...all that to say, the car was packed today, but thankfully Ellen got her keys back and was able to unlock her truck tonight! :)

Ben got this adorable picture of Faith Ann singing out of the hymn book. She is always so adamant about having one...and I'm not sure if you can tell which direction it is facing...upside down! She always tells me she is going to read to me. And I humor her...I tell her to go ahead and read to me. Because of that she believes that she can read. Every once in a while I'll catch the kids saying, "Faith you can't even read!" and she'll respond, "Yes I can...Mommy said so!" So, naturally if she can read, she should have a hymn book on Sunday.

Wedding Fun

2010-07-24T17:59:00.005-04:00

Well, today was the big wedding day for Pastor Felix and Evette. It started out rainy and dreary, but by the time Ellen and I drove down into the valley of Bamessing it was clearing, and while a bit cool, turned out to be a beautiful day! We had to get the cakes to the church to set up before 10. So, Kate and Emma were our helpers, sitting in the backseat with the cakes to make sure they didn't tumble upside down. While still on our driveway, before we even got to the tar road, Kate let out a big..."Oh no...Mom!!" and she just burst into tears. I was like, "What in the world did you do!!!!!!" She said Emma had told her to look behind them and Kate, without thinking, put her hand on what she was probably thinking was the seat to turn around, but what was actually a cake! Ahhhh!! That girl is SO blonde sometimes. So, one of our cakes had Kate's big handprint in it. Poor Ellen...all that work, and one of my girls has to mess it up. I just felt bad, but it truly was an honest mistake on Kate's part. She just wasn't thinking...she really was trying to take her job seriously and I know she felt awful. Oh well...Ellen is such a good sport and so easy going about the whole thing. When we got there we tried to repair it, but it wasn't really working. Kate managed to just smoosh one side, so we turned that part towards the back wall and the only way you could really see the problem is if you were standing behind it, or directly over it. Most people probably had no idea. It all worked out in the end. Ellen made three box cake mixes...she saved an 8-in round for the groom and bride and cut the rest of the cake to serve over 200 people. Imagine how tiny a piece they got! haha! But that is how they do it here...you just get a teeny tiny bite! Unless, of course, you have big bucks, which most people do not have.

Susan and I just told the kids to stay outside and play during the wedding. They weren't disturbing at all and that way 6 seats were free for other guests, and they weren't crammed in a stuffy room for two hours. Before the ceremony even started, Kate found this amazing critter...one that I've NEVER seen before: Here is a closer shot (and you can always click on the image to make it even bigger):
Isn't that the wildest thing you've ever laid eyes on? It was the hugest caterpillar I've ever seen in my life and there was no way in the world I was gonna pick it up. We managed to get it on that stick to get some good photos of it though. The kids also found a big lizard that they played with, saw a chicken eating a frog, and also a chicken laying an egg! What an educational day they had! haha!

The wedding was very similar to last weeks. The differences were the processional time. This one went much faster. Ben also had a different role this week...he officiated the wedding and gave the vows (his very first wedding in Cameroon!) and Matt was the one who preached the message this week. Everything went great and it was a big success. The gospel went forth and I think the entire day brought glory and honor to God! Here is a shot of the bride and groom during the recessional
What a good looking couple!!

Amateur Cake Makers

2010-07-23T17:40:00.001-04:00

We have another wedding coming up this weekend...Felix and Evette are getting married on Saturday, and Ellen Doyle offered to do the cake for them. She asked me some time ago if I minded her coming and using my oven and kitchen to put some cakes together for the wedding. I said sure, and beginning Thursday night, the cake making began. I didn't do too much on Thursday, but on Friday I began helping Ellen out with the roses for the cake. We had great aspirations for this cake...but it all looked much prettier in the picture and in our minds than it turned out in real life. So, here is what we wanted it to look like...and what it actually looked like:

LOL! It just makes me giggle when I look at that picture. But being Cameroon we were sure that the bride and groom would love it. Cameroonians love bright colors and gaudy things, so this cake was perfect for the occasion!

I've never done too much with buttercream or royal icing. I really wanted to learn how to make a good rose. I even watched youtube vids and tried to do exactly what they do...all to no avail. Maybe I'll take some cake decorating classes next time I'm home. Or maybe I'll just stick to fondant and master that first.

Visiting Neighbors

2010-07-22T17:25:00.000-04:00

One of our neighbors came to visit today: Haha! I'm not sure from which house he hails, but we had fun chasing him around the yard. He didn't seem up to chatting with us, and ran the opposite direction whenever we tried to get close, but we had fun chasing him anyway and managed to get a few pictures. The kids had a good laugh about it.

Holiday Bible School

2010-07-21T17:02:00.000-04:00

We normally call it Vacation Bible School in the states, but because of the Brittish influence a holiday is a vacation here.

Ben took the kids into town with him and I was home with Faith today while they went. Because it is Wed. he kept them with him all day. He got some good visits in while they kids were busy in Bible School. He did get a picture of Drew playing the review game, Zonk, at the end. Poor kid picked a zonk on his first try. Ben was telling me he felt bad for him. However...in spite of that...his team won all three days and came out the final winner for the week! He was so pumped about that, and all the kids came home raving about the week and showing off the fun prizes they got for being there.

Reminiscing

2010-07-20T18:45:00.000-04:00

Today the kids went to Bible School again, and I was home with Faith and Trinity again. Another relaxing day for me, hehe! Actually, I got a big project accomplished and I'm so glad I got it done! Our hall closet has been such a catch-all. We put doors on it this year, and it is now the perfect place to stash all that last minute stuff when company is coming! So, I tore everything out and started organizing and throwing stuff away. While I was in there I came across this blank DVD. It wasn't labeled at all, and my first thought was to just throw it away. Do you ever just get in those moods? You are on a roll cleaning and you want to toss anything in sight...especially stuff that has been stuffed in a closet for seemingly forever, and you never missed it to begin with? Well, I decided to quickly pop it into a dvd player and I'm SO glad I didn't toss it!

Nearly a year ago Ben dug out our old VHS tapes...home video stuff, and burned it all onto one DVD. Most of it was video of Drew from the time he was little, up until we had Kate and lived in Cameroon. So all the material spanned about 4 years time. He burned it, and that night the kids watched it and it disappeared! I was sure it was a labeled DVD, which is why I just overlooked that one...because it obviously never did get labeled. As soon as I started watching it the kids heard and came in begging to sit and watch the whole thing. They laughed and laughed through that entire thing. Drew was SUCH a ham when he was little! Oh my word...I miss that little baby side to him! Why does time have to move so fast!

Mechum Falls

2010-07-19T18:00:00.002-04:00

Isn't this waterfall amazing? Ben headed to Befong this morning to pick up some men from Benakuma and take them to Camp Joy as this is men's week. Since we are in rainy season now, this waterfall is a sight to behold!

I spent the day watching Faith Ann and Trinity, while Matt and Susan took the rest of our kids to Bamenda for Holiday Bible School (vacation bible school). Susan came up to me on Sunday and asked if we could make that trade and I am so glad she did. My kids were pumped to be able to go, and it also meant that Trinity would get a nap instead of being in town all day. There are a couple ladies from Matt and Susan's home church in Indianapolis that came to help run the HBS's so that worked out well too. And of course Ben was gone most of the day running the bus from Befong to Bamessing. So, our family was gone in all directions today, but it was a great day, and we all came together at dinner to share our fun experiences. I think I got the better end of the deal really. I stayed home, with two quiet little girls who played together like little angels and took a nap all afternoon! haha!

I also wanted to add a picture of little Anneline. Ben finally found one while he was going through his pictures on his camera. Somehow he overlooked it before.
This is a picture of her and her big brother Luis. He was so pumped about having a baby sister too...I remember when he announced to me that she'd been born. Pray for this little guy, too, as he deals with her loss.

World Cup Highlights

2010-07-18T17:50:00.000-04:00

I didn't watch the world cup. Well, I think I caught about 2 minutes of one of the games when our nightwatchman was watching it one night, but I'm not a big sports fanatic. I do always enjoy hearing the entire village cheering or booing when something happens. I can almost always tell what is happening in the game by the sounds I hear coming from below our hill. It is great! But the biggest highlight of the world cup for me, was this awesome billboard.
Isn't it great? Cameroon's team is the Lions obviously. I just love how cultural this billboard is. That lady, all smiles, fully dressed in her African clothes, donning her football cleats. I just love it!

Here Comes the Bride

2010-07-17T15:21:00.001-04:00

Before you read this post about Valentine and Bernadette's wedding...be sure to head back to this post to read about their traditional wedding. I posted it a bit late, so it doesn't actually show up on this page.

African weddings are always very interesting. This one had me smiling and giggling some...but all in all it was a great day and a beautiful wedding.

Going along with custom, the wedding was to start at 10. Ben left quite early to pick people up in the church bus. Someone borrowed our little red car, but promised to have it back at the house by 8 a.m. I needed to leave at about 9:45. The little red car wasn't returned until after 10, so once Oliver arrived with it, the kids and I hopped in and headed to Bamessing (Gateway Baptist Church). I don't enjoy driving here, but the 30 minute drive was uneventful. I arrived in Sabga, which is just before Bamessing, and passed the groom. He was standing by a taxi, chatting with someone. He was decked out in jeans and a t-shirt. So, even though I was late...I wasn't late. The wedding probably ended up starting at around noon. I was in charge of the video camera. That was fun because I was right up in front of all of the action. The bride and groom finally arrived and Genesis, who was the MC, got the ball rolling. They don't have rehearsals, so he has to announce every single thing... "Alright...it is time for the bridal party to enter" Then the bridal party starts coming in the back. This part had me laughing inside...I wish I could pop some of the video up on my blog...I'll have to figure it out and give clips, so you can see. The ushers (who were all ladies) came in with palm branches and bamboo (or something like that) all tied together and they stood opposite each other and created a canopy of sorts for the bridal party to walk through. For decoration, they had it tied together with pink.....toilet paper. Yep! Good 'ol Toilet paper. They use colored toilet paper for a lot of decorating here, especially at Christmas time. Anyway, the bridal party comes swaggering in kind of. It is hard to explain. We normally take deliberate steps, but they, arm in arm with their partner, step out in unison and to the side. Each step is taken in rhythm with the music (which was "Seek Ye First" and the girl that sang it probably repeated each verse 50 times!). When I saw them coming down the aisle like that...I thought to myself, "This is gonna be a lONG Day!" haha! Everyone FINALLY made their way in, and each step of the ceremony went smoothly. Ben preached the wedding while Pastor Julius did the vows. Matt and Pastor Earnest prayed a prayer of dedication and there were 2 special musical numbers. After the ceremony...and the bride and groom are announced as husband and wife and they kiss (which was so great!) they have the recieving of the gifts. Genesis called certain groups to come up and give their gifts to the bride and the groom. Talk about humiliating! If he calls you and you didn't bring anything....wow! After the gifts, came the recessional and then photos. By that time I was ready to corral the kids and head home. I wasn't going to stay for the meal, b/c I knew that they probably weren't going to have enough food for everyone (there were A LOT of people there). So, I found all my kids except...guess who.

Yep, you guessed it...Kate. Ben finally sees Autumn Yeiter and asks her where Kate is. Her response was so cute...Wherever the bride is...that is where Kate is. Kate was enthralled with the bride. And Bernadette was a beautiful bride! Sure enough, we found the bride and we found Kate. I told her to get in the car and she started crying. She said that the bride said she could get a picture taken with her. Well, Bernadette and Valentine were surrounded by people, friends and family. I was pretty sure she wasn't saving a place in her photo shoot for Kate. She doesn't know her that well. We were there to support Valentine mostly. We've known him since before we even moved here and he invested several years into our Bible Baptist Church ministry. Well, Ben told her to run up there and he snapped a quick picture of her. As you can see Valentine and Bernadette had no idea she was even up there. Right after Ben took the shot, he heard someone muttering, "Who is that girl?" haha! But she was SO happy that she got her pic taken with the bride. lol! She couldn't stop talking about how beautiful she looked. She loved her beautiful dress. I think my favorite part of the whole ensemble was that big white purse that she carried down the aisle. And coming in at a close second, are Valentines homemade lace gloves. :D

Car Repairs

2010-07-16T16:33:00.002-04:00

Ben goes into town every Friday for outreach and he also does our shopping. Yes...he does all our grocery shopping. You might wonder if I miss that part of life, grocery shopping that is...but don't worry, I fully make up for it when I'm in the states! Wal-Mart here I come!!! lol!

Anyway, today he had to go into town earlier than normal to get some repairs done on the car.

Fix Broken Stabilizer Bar........................$7.00
Rebuild the entire exhaust system...........$8.00
Fix Starter..............................................$5.00
Taking pictures of a Cameroon car lift......Priceless

Sad News

2010-07-15T16:54:00.001-04:00

We went to church tonight at 4:30. Our service went well. I had a little class for my kids in the Sunday School room, while one of our young men from Bamenda came to preach for the adults. After church, Hillary informed us that our neighbors little baby died. Ben has been discipling Christopher and his wife on a weekly basis. She had a little baby in January of this year and little Anneline (I'm not sure how to spell her name) has been sick from the time she was born. She had a constant cough, and we helped them financially on several occasions so that they could take her to the hospital and get the medicine that she needed. They recently diagnosed her with asthma, and she seemed to be improving, but she took a turn for the worse this last week and died at 8 this morning. We immediately left church and went to their home. We told the kids no talking...no questions...only respond if someone greets them. The house was somber, and many people were there visiting to comfort JoAnne. Christopher was actually on his way to the hospital to get some different medicine for her. They had to call him and tell him to come home. It was very sad...and always very interesting to see how people grieve. The culture is so different here. I wanted to sit there and cry and just thinking about losing a 6 month old baby brought tears to my eyes, but they are dry eyed, and crying is considered shameful. I don't know...sometimes you just need to cry. It helps you grieve. I feel bad that JoAnn can't break down in front of her visitors for fear that they will scold her. Pray for this family as they go through this time of trial. We also learned that this is the second child she has lost...her first baby died as well. We don't know any details, only that it wasn't a newborn. So, she is having to go through this all over again...I can't even imagine. We visited with her for about 10 minutes and tried to comfort her. She told us a little bit of what happened, then Ben had a word of prayer with all that were in the room. The weather seemed to match the spirit of the evening...cold and dreary.

I didn't get a picture for today (shame on me), and I wanted to post a picture of little Anneline as a newborn, but Ben couldn't find the picture. He thinks he deleted it b/c it came out blurry. If we do end up finding it in the future, I'll be sure to post it.

I'm thankful that this family has recently trusted Christ, and pray that they find HIM as their source of comfort during this difficult time.

The Birthday Girl

2010-07-14T18:06:00.000-04:00

Nothing official happened today, but I had to be sure and take a picture of the birthday girl on her actual birthday. Her adorable little princess nightgown was one of her gifts from Mimi and she wore it all day and for bed...she loves it!

I wanted to give a quick update on the little boy that was hit by a car...amazingly enough, he is home! He had no permanent head trauma, which amazed all who saw him the day of the accident. His arm from the shoulder down was completely shattered, so pray that will heal well. And continue to pray that our friends, their neighbors, can have an impact in their life because of this accident.

Party On!

2010-07-13T16:17:00.001-04:00

So, Faith Ann's Birthday party was today and it was a lot of fun...for me anyway. :) And Faith had fun too, although all my kids kinda had a breakdown. I have no idea why. We invited Yeiters over and I decided to do a lunch party and just make a ton of food that we could just snack on through the evening. I cooked up two stromboli's and two pizzas and Susan made a salad and of course we had cake. The cake was a hit...to everyone but Faith. Not that she didnt like it, she just didn't notice it. I put a bunch of Beauty and the Beast figurines on the cake tray along with the cake to go along with the theme, and as soon as she saw those she grabbed them off and started playing with them. We had to get her attention to blow the candles out! But hey, she was happy and that is what counts. At least the other kids appreciated the cake! :D We also played some games (this is when my kids had a breakdown)...musical chairs and Who am I. I put a sticker on their backs, either a Sesame Street, Winnie the Pooh, or Princess character and they had to go around asking everyone yes or no questions to try and figure out who they were. It was fun but got frustrating when they couldn't figure it out.

So, all in all it was a fun evening. The kids enjoyed playing together and the adults did too! lol! We ended our evening by playing a close game of tribond, with the men as the winners (this time anyway!) Anyhoo...Here is the birthday girl!

Tea for Two

2010-07-12T05:17:00.000-04:00

Monday (family day) was a relaxed one. I slept in really late. I took some cold medicine before I went to bed and it knocked me for a loop, so I slept later than normal. We ate lunch on the late side, because Diane came up to mop my house (she usually comes on Wed., but she will be gone this week.) and that put us behind schedule. It was no big deal though, we enjoyed our leisurely day. We got home so late, that the kids didn't even get a nap. I started working on Faith Ann's birthday cake and spent all evening (til 2 a.m. actually) working on it. It was fun though. Sometimes cakes stress me...but I had fun. And they always turn out a little funny looking...this one looks like Mrs. Potts when she has turned 80.
She looks a little saggy and has a granny mouth. But, she still is cute, and hopefully Faith Ann knows who it is haha! I also have a set of Beauty and the Beast Figurines that I'll put around Mrs. Potts as part of her gift. So, her party is tomorrow (Tues.), but her birthday is actually Wednesday. Wednesdays are a bad day for parties though, since Ben is gone til 8 p.m. so we decided to do it a day early like we did with Emma. I'm so excited...I love giving gifts to my kiddos and seeing them excited! Birthdays are so fun!

Puff Corn

2010-07-11T18:46:00.001-04:00

Today was a great day in church. My cough has been pretty bad, so I was thankful I made it through teaching Sunday School. Susan was home with Autumn who was sick, and so Matt asked me to teach her class in Bamenda, but I just couldn't do it. My voice was shot and I was coughing my brains out. So...Ben taught the kids and from what I hear, they loved him!

The day ended up being pretty long and we didn't get home and settled down to eat until 5 p.m. which is really late for us. So our evening went pretty quickly and before I knew it, it was time to put the kids to bed.

One nice treat for our evening snack was popcorn. Here in Cameroon they call it Puff Corn and what was so unique about it, is that our Nightwatchman, Michael, grew it in his garden! How cool is that!

A different kind of wedding

2010-07-10T04:10:00.000-04:00

That sure doesnt' look like a wedding, does it? Well, this is what they call the traditional wedding here in Cameroon. Most people have three wedding ceremonies here. They have the legal wedding, where they have to go to the courthouse and get married. Then they have the traditional marriage. This normally takes place in the Bride's village. The groom and his family all go to the bride's village and pay the dowry price and give gifts and basically beg for the families permission to marry the bride. This was the traditional wedding of Bernadette and Valentine. Ben took his video camera and also got a couple shots with his regular camera. He said the entire day was a big drama. The grooms family brought a ton of gifts in to the women of the bride (Aunts, mother, grandmothers, cousins, sisters etc...). There were cases of soft drinks, fish, palm nuts, and a bunch of other stuff. I don't even know what was in there. But the ladies kept saying stuff like, "This is all my daughter is worth?" and asking what if question. "What if she loses her arm...are you going to keep her or send her back and get rid of her because she is now useless?" The men were at a loss sometimes of what to say. One guy kept trying his best not to laugh. There were a bowl of palm nuts there and one old Ma was complaining that they weren't covered. So the guy that kept giggling pulled a bill out of his pocket and laid it on top of the nuts. The ladies kept complaining that they could still see the nuts...so they kept adding money to cover it. Finally Valentine whispered for them to go out and get some banana leaves to cover it. It was hilarious. After the men give their gifts, it is the women in Valentines family that take a turn. They all danced around a bowl of money and were expected to keep tossing money into the bowl. The music kept going and going and the ladies kept looking at each other like....Uh...we don't have anymore! haha! Several ladies from our church were there b/c they are so involved in Valentines life they are like his family. All in all it was a very interesting day to say the least and Bernadette's family gave Valentine permission to marry her and I'm sure Valey's family walked away broke!

Life in Cameroon

2010-07-09T17:21:00.004-04:00

Today was an intersting one for Ben. A reminder that life changes in an instant.

He went up to teach at Camp Joy. It is about a 40 minute drive from our house. On his way home, he stopped in Sabga, to talk to a couple ladies that come to our church. They all heard a commotion and saw a woman running up the road with a child in her arms who had just been hit by a taxi driver. The driver took off immediatly and didn't even stick around. Ben was the only one around with a car, so he and the young lady with the child, Mami Regina, and Mirabelle all climbed into his car and they rushed to Mbingo Baptist Hospital...about an hours drive away. As they passed through the first Gendarme checkpoint they saw the taxi driver who'd hit the two year old little boy. Ben later learned that he did the right thing. Often people who run over pedestrians (and it happens often here) will get killed by a mob of people right there. So, they take off to the closest police checkpoint to report what happened and to protect themselves. Ben said that the driver looked awful...he was sure it was a pure accident. The gendarme waved them on through...he continued on to the hospital. He said that the little boy was in and out of consciousness the whole way. One side of his head was swollen and misshaped, the arm that the car hit was twice it's size at least and the other side of his head had a big scrape where he'd been slammed to the pavement. Once they were pretty close to the hospital he woke up and was screaming. Of all the crazy things, they had to go stand in line to register him once they arrived at the hospital!! Rather than have an emergency room for immediate treatment they had to go register and get the "little pink book." (I could tell you some stories about their dumb pink book...for another post.) I just wonder how great an emergency you have to have to get immediate treatment. Ben and I discussed it a bit tonight. Maybe if you'd severed an arm...no, they would probably make you stand there with a towel wrapped around it while you waited in registration. Sometimes this country amazes me and makes me really thankful for the health care in the states. I realize that the cost of health care is ridiculous, but we have good doctors, and we can call 911 when an emergency happens. America is blessed beyond measure! Anyway, Ben stayed there for a while until the ladies that he brought were ready to leave with him. He put a big chunk of money on the child's bill and we are praying that he makes it through this accident and that somehow this incident can be used in their life to draw them to God. I know those ladies in Sabga who are neighbors to this little boy have shared the gospel with their family. Hopefully they will have more opportunities to be a light and a testimony to them, and that somehow through this tragedy they might come to know Christ. The mother wasn't even there when her baby was hit...she was in Ndop about 20 minutes up the road. An Auntie was watching him (she was probably only 16.) Evidently she was working in the kitchen when this little guy ran into the road. The way the roads are, so curvy and everything, it is possible that the taxi driver had no chance to react once he saw him in the road. My picture for the day is of the child's ward at Mbingo Baptist Hospital. No private rooms here...Ben said the room was full of small children.This is where that little boy will stay. Pray for this family..for their need for Christ, and for healing for this little boy.

Sugar Rush

2010-07-08T17:15:00.001-04:00

When Pastor and Julie were here visiting, they brought us a ton of candy. Aside from gum, the kids favorite pick is the "lick-a-sticks." Those things are pure sugar. Whoever came up with that idea was brilliant. Color some sugar and package it up. And kids love it! Unreal. We only have a few really, and I've spread them out over a long period of time. Check out Drew's sugar mouth Yeah, I pretty much made him go brush his teeth immediately.

Puppy Love

2010-07-07T16:59:00.000-04:00

We sure love our new puppy...most of the time. When she isn't peeing or pooping on the floor anyway. She isn't doing too bad, but sometimes I just get sick of watching her and send her outside for an hour or so. She sure doesn't like it, but she is getting used to it little by little. I'll admit though...I'm a softy. I feel bad after a while and bring her back in with me. She loves, loves to be with us.

Today Ben bought her some new dog dishes.
We worked out a new system with Michael, our nightwatchman. He is going to cook her dinner every night, and at the same time cook some for himself. It works out well, really. I don't have to worry about feeding the dog, and we buy the ingredients and feed both the dog and our nightwatch. Michael likes it...and I like it. Anyway, we needed some dishes that he could cook the rice in, that would just double as the dogs dish. So...he went and bought these from Hillary - Michael's son. Remember how a few months ago we had our roof completely redone? Well, these bowls were made out of the old zinc that we took off of the roof! Hillary took the old zinc scraps that were too small to do anything with, had them melted down and made into these pots. Pretty amazing!

In the doghouse

2010-07-06T16:52:00.001-04:00

Now that phrase, in the doghouse, has meaning. Ben actually has a place to sleep when I say that to him. haha! Just Kidding! Seriously...I have never said that to him.

The doghouse was Ben's, and the kids big project Monday and Tuesday. It was fun watching it come together. After Daddy and Drew painted the exterior white, the girls and I had fun dolling it all up. It actually has a few more additions than in this picture even. When Emma got up from a nap, she added a few more flowers and some clouds. It was fun, and now Penny has a home. :) She won't go in it...but she has a home. lol!

Puppy Tails

2010-07-05T17:10:00.000-04:00

We are enjoying our puppy. I'm sure it will take her a while to feel settled. I put her in a different place to sleep last night. She didn't make as big a mess, but she ended up getting a gash on her leg somehow. I have no idea how that happened. I bathed her and cleaned her wound. She hasn't favored that leg at all, and doesn't complain when I touch it either. So, I think it will be ok. I felt bad. Ben started working on a dog house for her today, so from here on out she will have a place to sleep.

I'm really glad that Faith Ann has taken to our newest family member. She is deathly afraid of dogs and I'm hoping that having our own will erase some of her fears. I don't mind her having a healthy fear of dogs, but when we are with people who have a pet that is calm, I don't want them to have to chain up their dog because Faith Ann is so petrified. Hopefully Penny will help with that.

RED white and blue

2010-07-04T16:49:00.000-04:00

Happy 4th of July. I definitely miss being in the states for the 4th. It is one of my favorite holidays. I hope you all enjoyed the fireworks (or shooting stars as they call them here) for me. We haven't enjoyed a 4th of July celebration in the states for a long time actually. Since Faith was a baby. Every once in a while, Bamenda will shoot fireworks for their independence day and we can actually see a few of them from our parlour. :D

Well, Ben came home from Benakuma on Sunday. He arrived at the house around 4 p.m. He was SO sore...aside from the fact that he rode on a small motorcycle for 3 hours (between two grown men), he also got fried by the sun being out without any hat or sunscreen for several hours. They did drive through the rain for about 45 minutes, and he ducked behind the driver to avoid the bite of the rain as they flew down the roads. The driver was going quite fast too though, so Ben wanted to look and see where he was going. He felt like if he was watching he could brace himself if he thought a wreck was impending. Anyway...all that to say, it was an experience of a lifetime and he came home looking like a lobster.By bedtime he was looking more purple than red. You won't hear him complain though...God really blessed this trip. The believers were encouraged and several people trusted Christ as Saviour!

I woke up late, missing Sunday school. The sinus infection/cold (whatever it is) seemed to be getting better, but this morning I woke with a splitting headache and my sinuses completely blocked. I guess my body decided for me that I needed more sleep because I never even heard my alarm. I jumped out of bed at quarter til 8 to get the kids ready for the main service. I remembered the puppy and went to see what damage had been done. Ewwwww! that is all I can say. I grabbed her up, and held her at arms length and rushed her to the tub. She got a scrub down. Once she was clean, I handed her off to Kate and headed to tackle my hallway. It was pretty gross...but nothing that a rubbermaid mop bucket and a bottle of bleach couldn't handle. So, I cleaned up that mess, and then got the kids ready for church. We worked very hard at penning the dog in the courtyard, but everything we tried to do, she managed to escape from. So, I decided I'd put her on the front porch, hoping she wouldn't chew here way out. We took off for church. We had a great service. I was in Children's church and had 20 kids. They were all very attentive and were able to answer all the questions about David and his being anointed as King of Judah, and ultimately of Israel. We then rushed back home...with my whopping headache, and the fact that Ben was gone, I wasn't planning to go to town.

I told the kids, that as soon as we got home to rush around to the front and check on the dog. Well...that little turkey managed to get out! She chewed a hole in the screen and Kate found her running around the front yard. I'm so glad she didn't run away!

So, there is my day...I kind of told it backwards, but that is ok. We ended our evening with Apple Pie for the 4th of July. The kids had fun introducing their daddy to the newest member of our family and while he won't admit it...I think she is already growing on him. :D

A New Puppy!

2010-07-03T16:25:00.003-04:00

I have been bugging Ben about getting a dog for a while. He has always been "thumbs down" on the idea of getting one. They will bark, and howl etc... Originally I agreed with him, but lately, especially since we lost our kitty, I have thought about how much fun it would be to have a dog. No kid should grow up without owning at least one dog. So, he said he'd give it a try. The Loeschers, a missionary family in Foumban, posted pictures of a recent litter of their dogs puppies. SO, so cute! I knew they would be trying to find homes for them b/c they are heading back to the states soon. So, I started dropping hints to Ben. I wasn't exactly sure if they still had available puppies, but when Carol and Walter Loescher visited us one afternoon, she asked me if we needed a dog. So, I started pressing Ben for an answer. If it was no, I'm sure I'd be sad...maybe even complain, but that would be the end of it. However, He finally agreed, so today Carol headed to camp Joy to pick up some of their campers, and she brought me a puppy! Last night I told the girls (Kate and Emma) that if they went to sleep (they slept in the guest room as a treat and were so rowdy!) that I had a big surprise for them the next day. They went to sleep immediately. All morning they bugged me and discussed amongst themselves what they thought the big surprise was going to be. They finally all agreed that it was going to be a trampoline (????...not sure where in the world that came from!). So, Carol finally called and asked me to meet her at the main road to get the dog. I told all the kids to hop in the car and away we went. I was so excited that I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face. I just knew they would be thrilled! And they were thrilled!! Well....all of them except Drew. Poor kid...he was SO disappointed that it wasn't a trampoline after all. Oh well... The puppy started growing on him though. We decided on the name Penny b/c she is the color of a penny...and it just fit. That is what the Loeschers actually named her, and it was so perfect that it stuck. We still batted a few ideas around. I knew were were getting a female, so I thought the girls would love Princess. Kate wanted to name her Rosebud. But, I think we have decided to stick with Penny.

Poor Penny is without her mommy for the first night of her life, and squalling like a baby in the next room. I'm glad that Ben isn't here for her first night, and hopefully tomorrow night her cries will be less and less (really...just like a baby! haha) I was going to keep her on the front porch. Well, I put her out there while the kids and I watched a movie tonight and she hollered like crazy and I caught her chewing the screen! I was afraid she'd chew her way right off the front porch and run away. So, until we can get some kind of dog chain, she will have to stay inside. I might have a mess on my hands in the morning, but no biggie. My house is all tiled. I actually locked her in the little mud room/entry way between the kitchen and the parlour (it is where we hang all of our shoes and store purses and stuff) and that little stinker got the door open somehow. She ran right over and tried to hop onto the couch. I put her up there just to see what she'd do, and she curled up into a little ball and started falling asleep again. If I let her sleep there tonight she probably wouldn't make a peep, but she needs to start learning to sleep on her own. I hope we can all get some sleep tonight...including my nightwatchman. He is probably on the verge of shooting me right about now! haha!

Anyway, sorry for being so verbose. I can't keep any story simple. Here is Penny.
Isn't she cute! I just love her color. In fact the Cameroonians have commented on her unique coloring. She is part lab, golden retriever and german shepherd. Hopefully she starts behaving so Ben will let me keep her!!

What a mess!

2010-07-02T19:01:00.005-04:00

Last night I put the kids to bed because Ben was on the computer talking to his Mom. I had worked very hard all day yesterday b/c we had water, which has been rare lately, so I took full advantage of it and washed everything in sight! All the kids bedding got washed, sheets, pillow shams, comforters, stuffed animals. You name it...I washed it! So, I get them in bed, and light the lantern. I've mentioned that we leave one lit b/c the power goes out quite often in the night and we want the kids to be able to see their way around if they have to get up and go to the bathroom. It is quite dark when the power goes out. Anyway, I didn't realize there was a special trick to lighting the lantern. Ben is usually the one who takes care of that part. So, I light it, and head into the kitchen where I wait for Ben to finish chatting with his Mom so we can spend some time together...as he was leaving the next day (today). About an hour later, we head to our bedroom. The hallway was FULL of smoke. The flame of the lantern was high...licking the very top of the lantern. Thankfully our walls are cement and there is nothing near it that could catch fire. If we'd been in the states, we'd probably have had a fire on our hands. We rushed around and got a fan at the end of the hall, and opened windows and started airing the place out. Thankfully our house is FAR from airtight. None of our windows (and we have a LOT of them) really fully close. They just overlap, so there is tons of ventilation in the house. The smoke and haze cleared out quickly. We took a quick assessment of the damage and realized we had a mess on our hands. Well, this morning you could really tell. Check out the lantern:
Everything was covered in that black ash. All the kids bedding...the kids noses were black where they'd inhaled it. Thankfully we still had water all day today. The kids got a bath immediately, and I also gave my washer and dryer another good workout, and re-washed everything I'd washed the day before. I wiped down all the furniture and mopped the floors twice. I had my nightwatchman, Michael, clean the lantern for me. It really was a huge mess and took me most of today to clean. Tonight, I lit the lantern in the parlour, right before devotions, so I could watch and see how it burned. And thank the Lord for another day of water. I think I would have cried if our water had gone out!

Here is the only cool affect caused by the soot I can't believe that little spider in the middle survived all that smoke inhalation!

(p.s. Be sure to scroll down, I've added about 4 posts. I'm all caught up I think!!)

Picnic on the Porch

2010-07-01T18:43:00.001-04:00

Ben is traveling this weekend to Benakuma, so he wanted to do something special with the family today, since he is leaving tomorrow morning. He suggested a picnic. Well, it was raining, so we had a picnic on the porch! It was fun. I wasn't feeling all that great, but I mustered up enough energy to make some biscuit pizzas. They are pretty fast, and better than your average pbj...Kate helped me too, and that made it go faster.

She has become quite a helper lately. I can always call on her to shred cheese, chop veggies, stir something in the pot. And it is good quality time that we can spend together too. The other day we were listening to Patch the Pirate and the song "Cherish the Moment" came on. Goodness that song makes me cry. I try not to really concentrate on the words b/c inevitably I'll cry. When the kids think that song is about to play, they will ask, "Is that the sad song?" Well, when Kate was in the kitchen with me, she asked me why it was so sad. I just told her that it makes me realize what a bad Mom I am. I shouldn't be constantly frustrated with my kids, but cherishing every single moment with them. Kate just looked at me and said, "Mom, you're not a bad mom? I get frustrated too ya know." ... I'll be honest, Kate is the one that makes me pull my hair out the most. That girl is going on 8, and she is so troublesome! Not in a really rebellious way, just like an inquisitive 2 year old. I'll have an important computer or camera cable, or kitchen utensil that I'm missing, and inevitably Kate is the one that took it. She is such a stinker. She literally weighs her decisions in the balance...is what I want to do worth the punishment that I'll receive? And usually the answer is yes! I know that if we train and raise her to love the Lord, that God can use that tenacity for His honor and glory, and that is my prayer.

Tooth Tales

2010-06-30T18:58:00.006-04:00

Emma's teeth are dropping like flies! She was giggling today because she couldn't even eat her supper. She has to modify...and bite with the sides of her mouth. It was really cute. She is, of course, really excited about a visit from the tooth fairy.

I realize I've been delinquent in my blog posts, but considering that it is July...I think I've done pretty well keeping up with my 365 project. Besides, with my Mom hounding me, I can't miss too many days. (love you Mom! haha). I know that I haven't posted for Sunday or Monday of this past week, but I promise I will. Just remember to scroll down in the next couple of days to see them, b/c I go in and adjust the date of my blog posts. I'd like to keep them in chronological order, b/c I'm considering printing my year in a book when all is said and done. So, if you see that I've missed a day...be sure to always check at a later date, b/c I always try to come back and update. The reason I'm not posting Sun. and Mon. tonight, is b/c I'm feeling pretty icky (sore throat, major headache, stuffy head :( boohoo, poor me lol!) and the pictures are on Ben's camera and I don't feel like getting it right now. (not the greatest excuse...I'll admit) However, I'll do my best to pop those days up tomorrow. Now...I'm off to bed!

Green with Envy

2010-06-29T18:50:00.000-04:00

Meet Emerald:The prettiest chameleon I have ever seen. He belongs to the Needham's, but the Yeiters are babysitting him while they are in the states. I wish my camera could really capture the true coloring of this chameleon. Just amazing. And he can go from bright green and torqouise (sp?) to near black in a matter of seconds really. It is amazing. I love Rex...but I sure wish he had the same coloring. Hey...maybe Rex is really a female?? I have no way of knowing. I have always heard that in nature the male is usually the most colorful, so if that is the case with chameleons, then Emerald is definitely a male.

Yeiters came over to spend the night again, and so they brought their chameleons with them (they have 2 right now). The kids enjoyed another day together and it was really a lot of fun. Matt is out of town, and Susan is without internet, so we spent most of the day online Christmas shopping for our kids. We both got a lot accomplished. We had planned to do some scrapping together, but got engrossed in shopping and never even opened photoshop. We really enjoyed our fellowship together!

Ovah-load

2010-06-28T18:04:00.002-04:00

Another fun day with the Yeiters. We have been able to spend a lot of time together lately, and we have certainly enjoyed their company! Our mission today...head to the hospital. The Sanderlins are a new-er missionary couple serving about an hour from us. In fact, they were just at our house on Friday and Saturday. Right after they left, she went into labor. I was planning to go to the hospital with them, to be a patient advocate of sorts, but the timing was odd. It was Saturday night, pretty late in fact. That would mean I'd have to spend the night and also not be there the next day for our busy Sunday. I was disappointed. I mean who doesn't LOVE to see the miracle of a birth!? But, it really did make sense for me not to go. It turns out that she had to stay in the general ward with other new Moms because they didn't have a private room. So I'd have really been stuck. Anway, all that to say, she had a baby girl! And she had it fast too...I didn't mention that, but her labor went super fast! I'm still jealous thinking about it! (just kidding lol!) Anway, Susan had Elena and Elias Sanderlin, and her 4 of course, and we had our 4, and we all piled into our car and headed to Mbingo Baptist Hospital. We tied our record again, 13 people in a 5 passenger car. Of course most of the car was occupied by tiny kids, and they can pretty much squeeze anywhere. And that is what they did. We got stopped just a few yards from the hospital entrance by the safety patrol (I can't remember their official title)...who said that our car was overloaded. Ben explained that our friend "put to birth" (that is how they say it when someone has had a baby) and we were watching her children and visiting them at the hospital. He let us through...not exactly sure what he'd have done anyway...dump a few kids out of the car, on the side of the road b/c it was too full?? haha!

We kind of killed three birds with one stone while we were there. We got to see the baby, and both Autumn and Drew had eye checkups. So, we were there for a while, but we got everything done that we needed to. From there we headed to our hamburger joint. What a sight...three adults with 10 kids - all so close in age. The kids were very well behaved though, and we had an enjoyable meal. Then back to the house for NAPS!! :D

Susan and the kids spent the night, and the Sanderlin kiddos were picked up by Rosemary. It was an eventful day, but we had a great time!

Sunday Visitors

2010-06-27T18:36:00.000-04:00

Fred Kusik (I really hope that is how he spells his last name) has expressed interest in coming to Cameroon as a missionary. He's corresponded with both Yeiters and us and finally made plans to come out. He decided to come before the birth of his first baby. Well, he got to the airport only to find out that his flights were cancelled b/c of that icelandic volcanic ash that was a problem at that time. He finally rescheduled and was here to preach for our services today. Matt has been taking him all over the place to get a very quick glimpse of the country. It is definitely a whirlwind trip. He is only here for a week, but maybe we will have a future missionary family coming to Cameroon in the not too distant future!

Directly after church we headed over to Yeiters house and spent the afternoon and evening with them. We had a lot of fun. The guys sat around yacking...The kids played so well together...and Susan and I played Mario Cart!

Who's Your Favorite?

2010-06-26T17:33:00.004-04:00

The kids still take turns sitting with their Daddy, and we continue to read through the Terrestria Chronicles. We are on the last book (sadly) and have enjoyed it immensely. The kids are learning a lot.

I always love when it is Faith Ann's turn to sit with her Daddy. As soon as she realizes that it is her turn, her first comment is directed at me and goes something like this, "Mom...tonight I sit with Daddy and that means Tomorrow I can sit with YOU!!"

Clearly, sitting with Mom is the ultimate prize.

Yahoo!!

2010-06-25T17:14:00.001-04:00

I'm thankful for our internet connection this term. We have had some rough times with it in the past, but thankfully the continent of Africa is becoming more technological. When we first moved here, I rarely spoke to my mom. I think she might have called me once a week, on Saturdays. She found these decent phone cards to use. We also corresponded via email every few days, but Ben had to drive to an internet cafe to get it and to send it. What a pain. Now we have wireless internet in our home. We have two computers online and for the most part it works great. We still have our glitches...but hey, so does Comcast!

One thing I look forward to is my DAILY chat with my mom. I just plug in my headphone/mic combo, and we call computer to computer for free. When we actually need to call a telephone number, we call computer to phone for like .01 cents a minute! It is awesome! The kids are always wanting to talk to Mom, but recently Emma has shyed away from it. She told me that she was "Shy of Mimi." Not sure exactly what that meant, but Drew and I giggled at her and I told her to get over to the chair and put the headphones on and talk to her Mimi! She looked so cute standing there, blowing bubbles while she was talking with my Mom. I'm so glad my camera was sitting right next to me. :D

Making Friends

2010-06-24T14:56:00.001-04:00

This adorable goat was tied up in our church property during Thurs. prayer meeting. We see them everywhere...and in the rainy season people tie them up in grassy areas to graze. In the dry season they roam free as grass is harder to come by. We once had a mama goat and her babies living on our front porch for a while. I guess they felt comfortable there. :D This particular goat was pretty easy going and the kids had fun feeding him a package of saltine crackers that they happened to have.

Services went well. Our attendance is down during summer months. The students are gone for the holidays, and we also have Camp Joy counselor training week, and a couple of our people are involved in that too. I really enjoyed the ladies prayer time in spite of the low numbers. I got to know Margaret and Isabelle quite a bit better tonight. I never really knew much about them. They began attending not too long ago. I always enjoy praying with the ladies and enjoyed the bit of fellowship afterward as well.

Birthday Girl

2010-06-23T16:25:00.001-04:00

Well, today is Emma's offical b-day. She asked me this morning if she could have some new clothes. I was like, "Emma...we celebrated your birthday on Monday b/c Daddy is gone today, and I already told you that you'd get all your presents at your party." She was a good sport and was understanding though.

Her actual birthday ended up being a lot of fun for her. Our power went out sometime in the afternoon and our nightwatchman, Michael, was the one who flipped the breaker box off. He told me that there was a power line on fire and that we should cut the power. Sure enough, I could see from my yard a power pole completely engulfed in flames. I have no idea what the whole story is though. Anyway, once the fire was out, we went to turn the breaker back on, only to find out that the power was actually out then. They must have been working on it. Well, Susan lives on that side, so she was affected by the power line all night. She called me around 6 and said, "Can we come over and stay the night?" I was like, "Yes! Come over!" We had a great time. The kids were beyond excited! Oh my...they fell asleep SO late, and woke up at 6:30 a.m.!! Susan and I were up at an ungodly hour too, but it was so nice to be able to just sit and chat. We have been so busy...she has been especially, that it has been hard to get together. So, that turned out to be so much fun. (you can tell I'm writing this the next day, though my post date is actually June 23 :D ) So anyway, all in all Emma had a great birthday, full of lots of fun and very little sleep. haha! She is already looking forward to her next one. I keep trying to explain that it is a whole year away! and of course all the other kids are so ready to have their own birthday after seeing Emma's fun cake and all her presents. Faith Ann is next...July 14th and she is a very impatient little girl too! I'm glad hers is so soon.

more snail tales :D

2010-06-22T16:05:00.000-04:00

I already wrote a few weeks ago how our kids love to hunt snails. In fact that huge one we found that day is still hanging around in our courtyard. We have lots of plants and moss growing on the little sidewalks in the garden area in there, so that thing has been thriving in that place. A couple times I have walked outside to check on laundry or something, and almost stepped on the thing! Well anyway, we go from one extreme to the other I guess, because check out this itty bitty one that Kate found today:
Feel free to click on the image for a little larger view, otherwise it is pretty hard to see! ;D The kids were pretty excited about it. I can't believe that Kate and her daddy actually found it! It is so tiny!

Birthday Bash

2010-06-21T17:54:00.004-04:00

Let me first start my post by saying that I've done a ton of updating to my blog. I have been posting out of order and trying to catch up on some missing days. So, I don't want you to miss out on some pictures. If you are interested in catching up, click on the month of June in the sidebar (to the right) and start at the beginning of the month to find out all that has been going on.

Now on to our regularly scheduled program....:D

Well, Emma's birthday is Wed., but b/c of our crazy schedule, we decided to have her party earlier rather than later. She didn't contest it.

This past week I have been scouring the web for cake ideas. I've suddenly developed this desire to be a professional cake decorator. Obviously it is not happening, but I'll try my best for my kiddos. Kate's 2nd birthday party was the one that inspired me to try my hand at cake decorating. Kathy Whitely was here, and she just told me how easy it was to come up with a creative cake. To prove it, she whipped up a blues clues cake in no time flat. It was then that I made up my mind to make my kids birthdays special. We can't take them to Chuckie Cheese, or head over to the party palace to pick up specialty matching cups, plates and napkins. So, my way of making their birthday special is to make their cake special.

Ok, so back to the cake for Emma. I got her a Belle doll with matching horse and decided to do a princess theme. So, I dug out the marshmallows and confectioners sugar today and made up some fondant. She looks a little silly...a little plump in the hips...but here is the finished product:

Yeah, I've got a looooong way to go before I can be professional haha! But all the kids were amazed! We got a lot of giggles in as we began eating her dress! We had the Yeiter kids over to celebrate with us...and we had a great time!

And since Emma's birthday is officially not until Wednesday (she will be turning 6), I'll highlight the birthday girl then.

Happy Father's Day

2010-06-20T18:13:00.000-04:00

Happy Father's day to all you special Fathers. I appreciate my Dad so much. The other day one of the kids came to Ben with a broken toy...and of course he fixed it. That is one thing I remember about my dad. If something needed fixing I always knew I could depend on him to take care of it for me. He is also one of the few people that I feel safe riding in a car with. I don't know why I mentioned that... :D But, it's true. I feel completely safe with him.

And another special shout out to the father of my 4 beautiful treasures. Ben is such a great dad. He always takes time to be with the kids. They can count on him to be there and he proves it now in the little things, "Daddy, wanna play a game?" ... "Sure!" When the big trials come down the road of life, I know they will feel free to always come to their Daddy b/c he was always there for them when they were small.

The kids were pretty excited about celebrating Father's day. They each colored and put together special coupon books for Ben. He has been happily redeeming them all evening. He's gotten big bear hugs, and big kisses. He even got the dessert of his choice...Cherry Pie! That was Kate's coupon, so she helped me put it together.

About the cherry pie...I got pretty frustrated with this stinkin' cherry pie, I'll admit. I have one jar of cherries left. In fact they were past their expiration date, but that sure didn't deter me. We can't get them here anymore...at least we haven't seen them in a couple of years, so the jars that I'd been hoarding, I used very sparingly. So, now on June 20, I'm using my last jar. Anyway, I followed the recipe to make this pie, but I could NOT get the juice to thicken. I kept adding more cornstarch and finally flour. I gave up, and decided Ben could have cherry soup pie! As it was baking I talked to my mom on the computer. She laughed when I told her about it and said that I would have Cherry jelly in that pie when it was done baking. She was right. Usually cherry pies are a bit runny when they are fresh out of the oven...not mine!
But, Ben said it tasted ok, and that is all that matters. :D

Go Cameroon!

2010-06-19T18:37:00.000-04:00

If anyone is a soccer fan (or football fan) you know that the world cup is going on right now. Cameroonians as a whole are serious football fans. Michael, our nightwatchman, borrowed this huge tv so he could watch the games. Cameroon played tonight, so Ben wanted to watch a bit. Thanks to me he missed the first (and only) goal that Cameroon scored (by Eto). Thank goodness for replays! :D

Here they are engrossed in the game. Sadly Cameroon lost. The country is in a state of mourning tonight as their football team has to pack their bags and head home.

Little Helpers

2010-06-18T09:31:00.000-04:00

Another day of water...so nice!! I have learned a little trick with my dishes...I just announce that I need someone to do the dishes, and the kids know that whoever speaks up first, gets to wash. So, today, Emma volunteered first. Faith wanted to help too, so I put her at the rinse sink, and she had fun getting all the bubbles off of the dishes. It is so nice that the kids are getting old enough to help out around the house! I love it!

We are looking forward to pizza tonight...with Mozzarella!!

Wake Keeping

2010-06-17T10:07:00.000-04:00

That is what they call the night before the funeral. Our neighbors daughter died, and Ben went down to see the family and be encouragement to them. Pa Mbako, the father, has made a profession of faith and occasionally attends our church. He was showing Ben the grave that had been prepared for his daughter:
They don't normally tile the insides of graves, but his daughter was an important person within the African Union. Ben said the grave was enormous. Once the coffin is placed in the tiled chamber, they will cover the top with wood planks, and then they will pour a cement slab over the top of it forming a sarcophagus. We will most likely be listening to music all night, as the wake keepings are a time of music, drinking and eating. It seems the later they get, and the more they drink, the louder they and the music become. Almost as if they are attempting to drown their grief.

Work!

2010-06-16T17:43:00.000-04:00

Another day of water!! Still laughable...we couldn't get two straight days of water for the life of us last week. Well, I'm not complaining. In fact I took advantage of that water and washed every bloomin' thing that I could find dirty in the house. I got ALL my laundry done (that hasn't happened in a WHILE!) and I cleaned my bathroom, the house got mopped, and all the dishes done. It was a very productive day, and I am TIRED! :D

Ben got home around 6 p.m. and he brought a treat with him!

We haven't seen Mozzarella in about 2 months and boy do I miss it. We have Edam cheese (a dutch cheese I think?) and it is ok on pizza...but just not the same as Mozzarella. So, that was a treat.

Thank the Lord for cheese and also for Ben's safe return home. He saw 2 serious accidents on his way home and it was just another reminder of the Lord's constant protection!

Jigger Update

2010-06-15T17:34:00.000-04:00

Recently one of my readers asked for an update regarding Faith Ann's toe. For a while we weren't sure what was happening...we even thought that some remaining jigger eggs had rehatched, but I have been faithfully cleaning it and applying neosporin. Finally the skin started peeling off and this is how it now looks: If you look you can see the hole where the jigger was imbedded. Ewww! But, it looks good so far and from what I can tell, we shouldn't have any jigger babies on our hands. lol.

Ben is currently in Douala and I'm home with the kids. Pastor and Julie left today and are headed to Zurich for a couple days and then finally to Chattanooga. We so enjoyed our visit with them and all our kids were sad to see them go. Especially Faith Ann...she calls Julie, Nana, just like Julie's grandkids do. When we were home, it was Julie who was so good with Faith and helped her to adjust to the church nursery. Up until that point, Faith had never really been separated from me. I was ready to throw her in the nursery, but Faith wasn't ready to be apart from me. Julie helped with that transition and Faith got really close to her. She is best buds with Julie's grandson Kent. :D

Another ironic moment of the day was that our water came in. We have struggled with the water ALL week. Pastor and Julie only got 1 hot shower. Now how is that for treating your guests!!! We can't be accused of not trying. Ben spent a lot of time on the phone with the plumber. We got water for about a day and a half, but then it went out again. So, it is a bit funny to me, that the water finally decided to come in about half an hour after our guests left to go home. I keep saying...they sure got to experience life in Cameroon!

The Potter and the Clay

2010-06-14T16:34:00.007-04:00

Today really was full of fun. It was our last day with Pastor and Julie before they headed home and we decided to visit a local pottery place in Bamessing. I've been there shopping before, but have never had the full tour, and it was so neat. After learning about where they dig for the clay, and how long they dry it and wet it and strain it etc...he finally took us to the potter's wheel and threw a lump of clay on there. That was my favorite part...watching as he formed that lump into a beautiful vase. Pastor had just preached at the graduation on this very topic. How we are the clay...and God, the potter, is forming us into what he wants us to be. Before this guy had to place the clay on the wheel, he had to knead it and beat out the air bubbles. What a picture! Sometimes we have to go through some pain and heartache...to make us more pliable.

After our tour, we went into the shop, where we browsed through all the finished products. Pastor and Julie found some nice souvenirs to take home. We hopped back in the car to head home. Cameroon was playing Japan in the world cup at 3 p.m. We'd been advised by the U.S. Embassy to avoid crowds and being on the roads during main events. If anyone got angry at the way the game was going...and we happened to be there...let's just say it can be dangerous. We think that we look so different than the Japanese people, but the Cameroonians lump us all into one category, "White Man." So, if they were looking to take their rage out on a white man for how the game was going, we didn't want to be there.

I spent the afternoon working on a cake. Pastor's birthday is tomorrow, but since they'll be traveling, we wanted to have a party tonight. He loves to fish, and whenever we are home, he and Ben take fishing trips together. So, my cake was a fishing theme and I love how it turned out! My mom got the little fisherman and gave it to Julie secretly before they left. Isn't it cute? I also put together a Mexican meal...we had tacos and fajitas. yuuuuummy! I made the tortillas last night, so thankfully the meal preparation was easy. I wanted to give myself plenty of time to get the cake done. I found the picture online and pretty much copied it. The ducks were the cutest part...and Julie had the hardest time eating hers! haha!

We weren't sure what to get Pastor for a gift, but when Ben went shopping with them on Friday, I told him to keep his ears open. Well, Pastor kept asking about this elephant carved out of ebony. He never did end up buying it. After they shopped they sat down to lunch and the restaurant was out of cold drinks. Ben took that opportunity and told them that he'd run out and get some cold drinks. They probably wondered what took him so long, but he went back to that store and bought that elephant! So sneaky!!

We have certainly enjoyed their stay and are so thankful for our church family that sent loads of suitcases full of wonderful treats with them. Thank you so much to my Calvary family. We love and miss you all so much!!

Silly Pic!

2010-06-13T18:31:00.000-04:00

Ok...not much to write about today...just a hilarious picture to share.

Pastor and Julie brought a ton of gum with them for the kids. All my kiddos have been practicing their bubble blowing skills, and all of them are getting quite good. I wanted a pic of one of them blowing a bubble...and I scored a winner!

Sunday Sermon

2010-06-13T08:52:00.000-04:00

It is always a treat to listen to someone preach besides Matt or Ben (no offense guys) lol! And especially when it is your home church pastor! It has been such a blessing having them here. Like Preacher's new shirt?

After our service in Bamenda, we had our quarterly food and fellowship. Everyone brought plenty of food and I did something I 've never done before....I hired my meal out! Wow...that made my life SO much easier. We just hired someone to make a huge cooler full of Jelloff Rice! How awesome! I'll definitely be doing that in the future. It is always so stressful trying to prepare a huge meal before church...especially since our first church is at 9 a.m. Not to mention they don't particularly care for white man cooking. I always try to make something that I think they will eat (beef stew over rice etc...) but every time, I see plates full of my food at the end of the meal. Oh well...no worries from here on out as we will try to find someone to cook for me. Then I know everyone will like it!

Graduation Day

2010-06-12T17:35:00.002-04:00

Today was pretty full. The Fundamental Bible Institute had their graduation, so our day started early. We drove the church bus and picked up a load of church people at three corners at 9:30ish (we were on African time lol). We headed up to Sabga and arrived well after 10, but since they were also on African time the ceremony hadn't started yet. I can't even begin to tell you how packed that place was, but the graduation was well organized and turned out to be a wonderful event. I got a picture of Eugene there with his cap and gown. I love the home-made graduation caps. Pastor is out of focus, but he preached the message for the graduation. After the ceremony we went to all the homes of the graduates and ate a lot of food. Pastor and Julie were troupers and tried a little bit of everything for the most part. My girls were there to eat anything that the rest of us wouldn't eat. Kate in particular is my best eater. I say that as images of fish head are floating through my mind. Yes, she ate those too.

We finally got back home at around 4 and we were all pretty tired. I didn't do too much for dinner. I made omelets for pastor and Julie and the kids had some bacon and crackers and cheese. But we had pretty much had our fill of food for the day. Everywhere we went we were fed! :) That is the African way!