Speaking of fruit...

One of our watermelons - perfect for Christmas dinner!

This is a little late for Thanksgiving, but we wanted to share one of the things we are thankful for in our life over here.

One of the joys, or perks, of living in Cameroon is the access we have to tropical fruits. YUM YUM. It has been our joy since we first came here to be able to get watermelon all year round. Can you imagine how much fun it is to serve fresh watermelon with Christmas dinner? Among our other favorites are fresh pineapples, guavas, bananas (of course - do you know how many things you can make with bananas?) soursop, and avocados, papayas...and so many more. Oh, and how could I forget mangoes?!

One of my favorite places to stop and get some delicious, refreshing fruit is not far away at a small fruit stand on the side of the road (places like this are everywhere along the roads here, and represent a major source of income for many Cameroonians; most of our fresh fruits and vegetables are bought at stands like this one). The man who is usually there selling is debilitated in his legs, probably from polio or possibly from a birth defect. His arms are quite sound, though. He rips the top of pineapples off with no trouble at all. He sells only a few kinds of fruit but he has plenty of them and they are not too expensive. The pineapples are best if I'm ready to make fruit juice out of them because they are usually very ripe. The oranges I got last week were perfect!

This is a soursop (picture from Wikipedia)

All these tasty things, however, don't take away my longing for fresh cantaloupes, blueberries and strawberries. Charis misses the variety of apples available in the States and Daniel's favorite from our other home is peaches.

Our other home.... It is hard to stand, as we do, between two worlds, loving and missing the people and places and things from two continents at the same time; it doesn't matter where we are, we're still missing someone! But, I've always said that this constant missing of people and things helps us to remember that we aren't at home anywhere here on earth. We are citizens of Heaven, and one day we'll really be Home. And when that day comes, we won't have to miss anyone or anything ever again!

But until that day, you all have an open invitation to come on over to Cameroon for a visit so you can taste the wonderful variety of fruits that the Lord has made. Just make sure you bring me some freeze dried berries in your bags!

Justina's Joys

We need water. We all do. It is the source of life. My children are thrilled with the ice water that I bring them when they are doing their sports and I'm thrilled to have running water in the house today. For a variety of reasons that's not always a given here. People here in the grand city of Yaounde routinely say "there is no water in Yaounde". What they mean by that is that, in many neighborhoods, there is no running water because the water company can't keep up with the needed repairs. Many people go for miles to carry their water. My friend Emelda lives in a little corner of a neighborhood where the pipes had been broken for a long time. Eventually, one wealthier man who lived nearby decided he'd had enough and he dug a well. Now he shares that water with the others, charging less than what the city charges.

Here in our new house, we had to have a well dug. There are no city pipes out here and we are generally happy with that arrangement. We didn't like having the water cut off as it did regularly in our last two houses, often for days at a time. Many of our friends still live in that area we left and are still dealing with this regular situation of having no water. So we're very thankful to now have our own well. BUT, it needs to be deeper! There isn't enough water in it at its current depth, so it runs dry after a little laundry.

Even with our well, we still can't drink the water; we still need a water filter to clean it. If you can get your well deep enough, past all the contaminants,  to get pure water, then you could drink it straight from the tap, but that is a WHOLE lot deeper than our well will ever be. While living in our previous house we needed a new water filter and decided to try a standing filter (see picture). We've had these kinds of filters in the past, and generally have found that they don't produce enough clean water quickly enough to keep up with the needs of our large  family, and that, unfortunately proved to be the case with the new filter that we bought. So, when we moved to our new house, we got another kind, what we call an on demand filter which connects directly to the tap and filters as much water as necessary. Now that we have the new one installed in out new house, we've got as much drinkable water as we need. But, we still had this extra filter.

Justina's daughter, Casandra, with the new water filter

I decided to ask my new househelp, Justina, if she had a filter. She did not and the happiness that came over her when I offered her our old one was truly my joy to watch. She and her husband are so thankful for this clean water source for their family.

Water and Jesus, the true source of life. Next I need to find out if Justina has heard or read any of the Bible in her own language and see how her face lights up for that one.

Joys and Troubles

Our friend Cici

A friend just encouraged me. She came over to help us sort out some of our junk and simply asked how I was spending my time. Cici works at RFIS in the technology department and I don't know her that well but she's super sweet and runs a Bible club in her neighborhood. Kevin thought she'd be a good person to help us separate the trash from the 'maybe someone can use this' stuff. That is just what we did for about a half an hour this afternoon and she walked away with a few treasures for her 'kids' and told me to share what's left in the box with some neighbors. But in the midst of our sorting, I mentioned that I'm quite busy here in the house sorting through the accumulated junk from a family of nine and settling into a new home that has more than its share of challenges. I told her that I also need to find time to write to people, family and supporters. She replied with "of course, they need to know your joys and your troubles".

And it struck me that we don't often do a good job of sharing these things, especially our joys, with all of you. I often have a hard time writing our newletters and blog entries because everything is just, well, my life. I don't think you want to hear about how my roof leaks or how Daniel feels with a boil on his knee. I don't think it's important to tell you how I love to hear the birds sing out over the valley as I hang my laundry and how I stand there remembering that my parents did exactly what I did when they were raising my brother and I....moved out to the country.

Then again, maybe you do want to hear about my joys and struggles. After all, I remember that you care about our lives but you can't know how to pray and support Kevin and me unless one of us tells you. So here is a bit of our joy and struggle from yesterday.

I had already planned to drive across the city to the U.S. embassy (a long and very difficult drive in this city!) to pick up Kaiah's new passport. And I had already planned to try to visit my previous house helper, Emma, who lives in that area. What I didn't plan was a detour to visit Charis at her school because she'd "had a little accident" as the nurse put it. The nurse, Tirza, is one of the joys in my story. She grew up here and Kevin taught both her and her husband, Jordan, when they attended RFIS some years back. Tirza is now a mom of two and one of the most kind, gentle people I know. She "happened" to be there when Charis injured her finger while trying to get at a ball which had gone in a rain gutter. She and a classmate tried to move a large, rather heavy concrete gutter cover and it slipped. Don't worry, here is another joy. It did NOT crush her tiny finger! However, it did slide along her finger, giving her a nasty gash. Two steri-strips and some ibuprofen later, and she is good to go. We are giving her a strong antibiotic to kill those tropical germs and we gave her the tetanus shot because we hadn't gotten the booster yet. (One of my jobs for today is checking the dates on everyone else's vaccines!) Today she is ready for soccer tryouts.

I did succeed in picking up the passport and I did succeed in visiting Emma, which was a great blessing to her. And on the way home I even succeeded in buying some crackers that the children enjoy for snacks without making myself late for the end of quarter teacher conference meeting I had scheduled after school. However traffic was really hard to get through to get those crackers. I'm really glad they were in stock!

So that is a small picture of one of our days (admittedly a rather busy one). Nothing earth shattering or monumental; just us, living life here where God has called us to be. But it is good for us to remember (and to share) that, even in the midst of struggles, God is still faithful, and He provides moments of joy. The trick is being willing to look for them.