Nwa – Arrival

This story will have to be divided into 2 or 3 parts.  The return trip deserves its own entry.

Abraham, one of my students was over for dinner and talking to one of my housemates.  The soccer game was pretty loud, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation.  Suddenly Abraham turned to me and said “You like adventure, don’t you?”.  I said “yes”, and it was settled, I’d be going with a group to Nwa at the end of the week.

Why were we going to Nwa?  The Yamba people, who had had a translation in the 70’s, were dedicating their revised New Testament.  The roads were promised to be bad, and the SIL helicopter was waiting for parts, so there would only be 1 missionary there besides myself, Ginny Bradley, the Transalation consultant.  Abraham didn’t disappoint on his promised adventure.

Friday afternoon, I finished up class before lunch and went home to pack.  Hours passed…and about 5pm, Abraham called me to say that it was time to go.  I put on my pack, and hiked towards the seminary gate.  Abraham met me, and we walked to the meeting point, an intersection within view of the center of town. Some others were already showing up…and the total count was 11 passengers.  Abraham had arranged that a vehicle from the Nwa council was coming to pick us up.  Soon, a red pickup arrived…and despite my time here, I was surprised to find that this would be the ride for ALL of us.  We crammed in, 3 in the front seat (including me and the driver), 4 in the back seat of the cab, and the rest spread across the benches and open space of the 4-foot truck bed…and we were off.

(From here on out, times are estimated, I’ll try to go back and correct the times by looking at my photos.)

30 minutes from Ndu, one of the fan-belts shredded.  Our driver, Ibraham, turned off the engine and went to retrieve the shrapnel.  We only had about 3 hours of road ahead of us (if all else went well)…so we’d be fine without it, right?  Asphalt turned to gravel, gravel turned to dust, dust turned into rocks…and we were getting further and further from large towns as our engine efficiently converted every drop of water in our radiator into steam.  The driver, having delayed us leaving Ndu, was now impatient to get home, so he chose the shorter Rom road instead of the longer and better road. The Rom road, as they called it, looked more like a dry river-bed than a road, and we bumped up and over rocks and boulders at what seemed to be 20 feet-per-hour.  Imagine going over rocks as big as suitcases, and what this must have been doing to the unlucky souls in the bed of the truck. Often, they would get out and hike up the trail in front of our headlights, easily making better time on foot.

We started on a cycle of stopping at the bottom of every hill to refill several water bottles from the nearest stream, and dumping those bottles into the radiator just after we topped the next ridge.  One of those times, our only source was a trickly of water coming down the rockface. I had the idea to cut one of our empty water bottles in half and make a funnel.  This funnel served us well.  Nevertheless, about 10pm, the truck stalled out on an up-slope.  We were then reminded that the fan belt served 2 purposes…running the fan, and running the generator that charges the battery.  After so many stops and starts, the battery was dead.  You know, it’s possible to start a manual vehicle by pushing…and everyone got out to push.  Even with all that oomph, you try getting momentum pushing a truck up a narrow rocky road at night.  We couldn’t turn around, so we tried starting the truck rolling backwards, a seemingly impossible task. Someone in town was called, and we would wait.  By this time, it was quite cold and the wind was blowing up the valley, so most of the Cameroonians retreated into the cab of the truck, and some walked on to the next village.  I was highly amused by the situation at this point, and so I grabbed a sweatshirt out of my truck and covered myself with the truck’s tarp.  I put on my iPod, and within moments, I was snug as a bug in a rug, quite enjoying no longer being cramped in that cab.  I don’t know how long I napped there after making some phone calls, but eventually the motorcycle arrived with a battery.  A little while later, we were on our way again, promptly cresting the last ridge before the village of Mbem.  It was here that the front axle started to move and wobble.  We limped slowly down the mountain, still having to stop when the truck got thirsty, and picked up a few members of our group in the next small village.  There were quite a few more push-starts of the vehicle.

At almost 11, we pulled up to the Baptist Health Center at Mbem, a room had been reserved for me just in case, and it was decided that I would use it. Just before crossing the bridge into the compound, the front of the truck kneeled, and would go no further. Abraham and a couple of others led me through the dark to the Field Pastor’s house, who eventually led me to my room/trailer, a place reserved for traveling teams, pastors, and missionaries.  The next morning, as I rode with Ginny in her vehicle to the ceremony, I found the truck exactly where I had left it, and the driver promised it would be fixed soon.  Only later did I find out that our wheelchair-bound companion had called a motorcycle that never arrived, and he ended up sleeping in the truck as the other guys walked the next 15 or 20 miles to Nwa.

End of Nwa: Part 1.

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Catching up…Ndu

Ok, so Iam going to try to catch you up to today, now that I seem to have good internet and a moment to breathe.

Spiritual Warfare:

Thanks to all that prayed for my time in Ndu.  I had been warned about the spiritual darkness that hung over that area, all the things that push back adainst the church and seminary in that area.  Thanks to the hedge of protection, I saw very little of this influence, and it didn’t seem to touch those around me.  Just after I left, I heard reports that there were traditional religious leaders surrounding the seminary campus and that they had attacked one of the students.  As I said on Facebook, don’t stop praying for the seminary where I was teaching, Cameroon Theological Baptist Seminary.  There is so much hope flowing through all those students who soon will be Christian leaders in churches and Bible translation.

Language Technology Class:

Class went very well, despite the power problems in the evening and the general lack of Internet since September.  Most days that I had class (M/T/T/F), there was power during class.  This was as encouraging as it was useful for teaching a computer class.  As I said before, I had 8 students, and 2 students ended the class with a perfect score.  We spent a lot of time on Paratext, the main Bible-translation software.  Even though it was all new to them, they followed and learned quite well.  Critical thinking skills, though not what they were used to using in class, made a strong showing.  In just a few weeks, they became (mostly) confident users of the application, and were in general very excited to learn about any way the computer could help them.

You must understand that the computer can not do the translation for them, but the powerful tools make it much easier to type, read, analyze, research, check, share, and print every word.  Beyond class, the guys and lady were very encouraging.  When you put a prayer request in front of a roomful of seminary students, there’s powerful prayer right there on the spot.

In-Reach:

For a time, the outside world passed me by, my slow cellular internet allowed some email through and a few Facebook posts.  When I was not teaching, grading, or preparing materials, I took the peaceful time as a retreat.  The successes, challenges, and business of the past years slowed down.  I took enough time to truly thank God for all the faithfulness he’s shown to me.  He’s protected and guided me through French School.  He’s given me angels as partners, who have continued to faithfully pray and support this ministry, even when I’ve been slow at feedback.  He gave me the amazing chance to work under Jenni and learn from/with her.  He brought Kevin into the Training Department, who has now inherited it from me.  He gave us interesting challenges each day to solve with those that bore them.  In prayer, I was able to process and think back to dealing with Shawn’s death, helping to keep the Peach Palace running in the interim, my colleague Jenni moving to Chad, struggles of single life, all the daily pulls of people needing support, and my second job of Field Security Officer.  I don’t think I realized how much stress I’d internalized to keep moving until I was able to pass it all back to God.

The Petersens:

After some time of quiet solitude, as explained above, God gave me the Petersen family.  They were part of a Wycliffe Associates work team, and had stayed longer than the rest of their group.  I was hanging out with Drew, Marie, and their 3 kids a LOT.  They were such a blessing, getting me out of thinking about myself or my work and getting me to have fun.  They took me in, fed me often, and for a time, they let me into their inner circle of love.

Kyle (known to me as “Avocado” due to a you-had-to-be-there joke) is a teenager who worked in the Library and sometimes worked with his dad doing concrete.  We connected and had lots of fun talking about nerdy things.  Ellie, 14 years old, was there to work with kids, and spent much of her time at the child-care center.  She’s a little bookworm with an imagination as wild as her brothers’.  Last but not least, there was Levi, the youngest.  At first, his opinion of me was largely based on what i had brought to play with, but we got along quite well very soon.

Each Sunday was “Pancake and Praise” night.  They started a new tradition that got the missionaries out for something a little more familiar.  Drew and Kyle led worship as we went through praise songs.

They do story time each evening, and so I sat with them (with their 12-year old son curled up next to me like a cat) and listened to Drew read.  The first book was a story about 2 knights playing out a story from Revelation.  I would sit and draw an image from the story as he read, and then share it with the group at the end. They were closing up their 10 weeks here in Cameroon, so later we started the “Re-entry” book together. (“Re-entry” is a well-respected book designed to help missionaries return to their home countries and avoid some common pitfalls.)  The idea of the book seemed a little “theoretical”, and I probably wouldn’t have read that on my own, but it was very helpful, so that was good. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one going through those challenges and questions.  It makes me feel a little less solitary…but we’ll get to my re-entry in a later post.