Pictures!

I told you before that Pictures are a cultural issue here in Cameroon however I feel like I’ve been here long enough that I now know when pictures are and are not appropriate…so I’ve started taking some. I’m going back through my Cameroon posts to insert pictures when I can, so please scan back through and see what you can see…now. In the meantime, I’ve made a few minor edits, and moved the dates of a few posts to reflect when the stories actually happened. Enjoy!

Note: I chose not to bring my big camera to Cameroon for a lot of reasons, so these images from my little camera won’t be the best quality. Please bear with me.

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What I should be doing…

Back when I was in school…I didn’t read much for pleasure. I could list off 10 or 12 seemingly-wonderful books that I started years ago, and never finished. A large part of that was the computer, the fact that there’s no room in our house without a TV (unless it has a toilet), and that I was just quite busy in my life. Mostly…I’m a slow reader, and with all the school assignments, there were always things that I should be reading, but would likely never finish. I started reading for pleasure after graduation from college, discovered why people read for fun, but even without homework..my days were so busy with meetings, friends, church, bills, responsibilities that I never got much time to do it.

I know what you’re thinking…reading just wasn’t a priority. I could have read a lot more if I had put it as a priority….and I suppose that’s my point in this post. How many priorities war for your attention?

Missionaries and Pastors often have a complex…they will work themselves to the bone. We think “Hey, God needs me finish this task right away.” It’s one thing when “supervisor Joe” drops a financial report on your desk, you still head home at 5 o’clock, but another when you’re fulfilling a command of God, right?  We seek to be or find the hand of God, and lose track of the face of God.  How many overworked pastors overlook their families. In their zeal, how many missionaries get burned out and end up going home, step on the toes of other missionaries, or even worse, the toes of the locals in the pursuit of God’s work.

Since arriving, My team leader and I have been focused on the task of the remote training.  It doesn’t help to be under the influence of a professional workaholic, always bringing work home to get in a little bit more effort.

• Learn the programs
• Anticipate problems
• Make a plan
• Write the manuals in English
• Translate the materials into French.
• Correct the French.
• Correct the French.
• Prepare the course.
• Prepare the computers.
• Get train tickets.
• Try again..
• and again..
• Get to to the training.
• Teach the Course. (in French)
• Solve the problems.
• Prepare the Computers for the second course.
• Teach the second course.
• Solve the problems.
• Head home..and prepare to teach the same course again in French and English in other regions.

That is what I’ve done…and God has blessed our efforts….but what fell by the wayside in our zeal?
Friends back home, friends here, a project our director wants us to focus on, eating well (I haven’t made it shopping in weeks), my Blog is 3 weeks out of date, my Inbox worse than that, one of my good friends is having suicidal thought again, and try as i might, I’ve not been able to comfort her. My room is a mess (ok, so that’s not new), I need to update my finances, haven’t been preparing for the Israel trip in Feb, I hadn’t spent much time in prayer, and my Bible reading was nearly a month behind, had barely talked to my family….and how many months has it been since my last newsletter?

This Wednesday, During a day of community prayer and fasting, I got half caught-up on my Bible reading…but I’ve still been pretty distant to everyone.

This morning, I slept in a bit, and got ready to head to a training meeting at 12:30.  The problem is that the training meeting actually started at 9:30. So…missed that, and I was really looking forward to it.  Things broke down a bit and i got quite mad at myself…thankfully, my Uncle Charlie called me at that point to bring me out of it.

So today, I’m trying to find a new balance of prayer, rest, and effectiveness.  I remind myself that while stillness is needed sometimes, prayerful action is equally effective in maintaining my relationship with God. I’ve caught up on some of the long-lost emails. I’m updating my blog, and I’ve talked to a few early-risers back home.  I have so many things to thank God for.  He really has been holding me in his hands since my arrival…well, since before I was born.. 🙂

If you’ve contacted me here, and I haven’t gotten back to you, I’m truly sorry.  I do appreciate any communication I get from you all, and as you make it possible for me to be here, I need to be better at communication.

Training

Ok, I’ve so much to tell you about the last 2 weeks, but why not start by showing you?

The first week, we were teaching a new version of a translation software that most of the users had been using already.

Pierre, Ndokobai, Jenni, and Philip, correcting the a Bible	Greater North Regional Office (GNRO)
In class...	A participant laughs to his table partner.
Week 1 Class, Paratext Course
Week 2's Class, FLEx Course
Philip (a linguist and my roomate for the 2 weeks) and myself	Gédeon (Acting Regional Director) and myself

A participant, Paul, Gédeon.

Chaotic Good

Ok…so where did I leave off? Oh yes, Yaoundé…
Jenni and I set off into the night, clickety, clack. With stops, I think we averaged about 40 mph the whole trip. I put on headphones and slept a coupla hours at a time, before being awakened by a screaming child, sudden outburst, or slamming door. I had a full breakfast served to me in my seat…this was 1st class, by the way. A good western Omelet, steamed milk, baguette, papaya, croissant..served on a silver platter and for about $5.

Go on with my breakfasty self...

Anyways, except for the jolts, and an outburst by my riding partner, the ride was relatively uneventful. It has been said, that if you have enough money and you stay in one place long enough in Africa, someone will come by with the item you want on their head and sell it to you. This statement, seemingly true, also holds true when on a train. At each village/station, there was a crowd of people selling their wares… bananas, manioc, water, live chickens. As well, there will be a child calling out for your empty bottles, presumably to become the water bottles for the next train. At 2pm, we arrived at the end of the line. From there we were to take an 8-hour bus ride on the one paved road to our destination. Thanks to a friendly ticket-seller, we got bumped to the first bus leaving town. (I was glad I’d taken the time to ask how he was before asking for the tickets.) Once the bus was full, the bus waited 20 minutes, then left the station. We were only able to suggest changes to the nearest window for temperature control. Off we went into the evening…

Things I learned about Northern Cameroon Buses:
There are no restrooms. They only move once full. Every 2 hours, the bus stops for Muslim prayer, and you must buy food or take care of your needs on the roadside, or by leaning out the window like on the train. Just before dark, I saw one of the most beautiful rainbows I’ve seen in a while.  (Click to enlarge)

By 8pm, my snacks were running low, so I wandered off into the darkness to find food, we thought we were near one of the cities…but as it tuned out, we were sill an hour short of it. I found a vendor selling pork that seemed to be cooked well enough over an open fire and some little bready puffs. Add that to my grapefruit juice I’d been sipping…and voila, c’est dinner. The very knowledgeable Chadian nuns traveling alongside us got off a stop before us, so we had some issues knowing exactly what villages we were passing in the dark. Sometime just after dinner, I was feeling weak, fuzzy, and exhausted. I kept finishing sentences I’d started half an hour or hours before. I wasn’t delirious, I had just been generally awake and sitting for so long. It being night time on a bumpy road, I decided that reading was not the best idea, so I put on my iPod. Too much time to think & worry…hmm what had I forgotten to do? An audio-book of Romans came up. Well, I’d forgotten my sunglasses in our porter’s car, but something more vitally important. I hadn’t prayed the whole trip. I had plenty to thank God about. We’d been saved from an extra night on the train by not getting those tickets. The bus was still rolling. our porter had taken care of us. I’d found food, and water was still in good supply. In my prayer, I prayed about the age-old weakness problem that was coming back worrying whether I’d have the energy to teach, prayed for the course, my French, friends and family. I listened to 1 Corinthians. I prayed for healing. I listened to 2 Timothy. “For God didn’t give us a spirit that makes us weak and fearful. He gave us a spirit that gives us power and love. “`~2 Tim 1:7. Sounded like I was living the first spirit of weakness and fear, at least at that moment. I told God, that at that point, I didn’t have the strength to give all these burdens to Him, but I wanted him to take them, and keep them. We are more than conquerors in Christ. Immediately, my eyes shot open. And I was no longer weak. 100% change, at least for the time being. The fear passed, and I finished the trip by praying for each of the 70 passengers by seat number. It strikes me now that I forgot to pray for the driver………..done. We arrived a the bus stop at about 10:30 pm to meet our contact. And 100 or so of the next day’s passengers were already camping out at the station. We had a meal with Gédeon and his wife, and went to bed around midnight. Gédeon agreed to start off the course and the installs, so we had to be up at 9am, instead of 7. So that’s the trip, To be continued…again.

Train..ing

If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans. ~Albert Einstein?

To say the least…our trip to the far north to run a software training did NOT start as planned.

The Cameroonian train company overbooks with their reservations, so even though we had a man at the train station at 5AM both days, we didn’t get our train tickets to leave for the far north for Thursday or Friday as intended.    Friday evening, Jenni and I had “confirmed” tickets for Saturday evening.  Keep in mind that this is a 24-hour journey at best, and we would be teaching a course in French at 8am on Monday.  We left the compound early for our 5 o’clock departure.  (The roads were closing behind us at 4 for the president’s convoy.)  Upon arrival at the train station, the train was late.  Our porter found first that the track had been blocked by a derailed cargo train, so we alternated between waited in his car and little trips out into the parking-lot-marketplace.  We read till it got too dark, then switched to Sudoku by street-light. The people in the train who had left the night before had spent an extra 12 hours on the train in the middle of no-where, so thank God that we hadn’t been able to book that trip.  (There is only one track, running more than halfway across the country, so nowhere to go but back.) Because of all this, the train had been 11 hours late leaving heading our way.

It arrived an amazing 5 hours late, and after 2 hours of refueling and cleaning, we boarded the train…7 hours after arriving at the station. We were originally supposed to have a 1st class sleeper car, but instead, we had been downgraded to 1st class seated for the first  16-hour leg of the trip.  I’d call these second-class seats after living in Europe, but the Cameroonian 2nd class is a row of wooden benches.  So…16 hours…with the lights on, jolting back and forth. and front to back.  Let’s just say, each time the train starting moving was a heart-stopping experience.  We left at 10PM Saturday night…The mosquitoes are attacking, and I’ve been instructed to go to bed…so to be continued… (If you’re the sort who doesn’t like suspense…click below for a spoiler.)