Getting down to business

We've been having a whole bunch of fun for the past month, resting, vacationing and preparing for the whirl wind of a year that is to come. Now it's time to get down to business. We are working this week on presentations and planning for visiting churches and even a mission trip!

Here are some pictures from our last 2 weeks of travelling...can you guess where some of these were taken?

Having fun!

We are having a little too much fun here in New England, can you tell by the pictures? Last week we spent a week with the Cranes (my parents, Curt, Chad & families) at Camp of the Woods in upstate NY (check out their website: COTW). If you are looking for a great family vacation spot, this is definitely the place to go! We stayed on the "beach front" of Lake Pleasant and enjoyed swimming, mini golf, the penny candy counter, arts and crafts, indoor and outdoor rock climbing, mountain hiking, music concerts, teaching from Tony Evans, classes for the kids during the week, excellent food and so many other fun things they had for us to do there. The only bummer was that we didn't win the sandcastle contest for our great sand sculpture of Lightning McQueen. Thanks Dad and Mom Crane for bringing us all to COTW!

We are now in Brattleboro, VT visiting the Agape Christian Fellowship for a few days. They are the folks who sent a team over to Cameroon in January to get to know us and the Baka. They have been extremely welcoming and it's been great to meet these folks who have been praying for us and have been behind the Baka ministry even before Nathan and I joined up with World Team. We felt like family, and we are having a GREAT time meeting everyone's families! More pics to come!

Fun at the Lake

Chad, what's Boaz saying to the DVD player?

I can't wait to post more about our experiences here in the US. Stay tuned...

WE ARRIVED!

Here are some of the things we did before arriving in the US. We put a roof on the addition, as well as a door and shutters for the windows. Nathan worked up until the last minute before we left the bush (I packed the car and put the final things in our container). We packed all our things in barrels and trunks in a sea container to be stored until we come back next year.

We made our rounds and said "goodbye" to our neighbors and friends from the village and from Dimako, including Kemi the monkey and the Catholic nuns who run the clinic that we take sick folks to each week.

We spent 2 days in Yaounde getting our paper work turned over to a lawyer who is going to follow up on our truck while we are gone. We did our final souvenir shopping and then got on the plane without much hassle!

The kids LOVED having their own headphones, TV screens and remotes on the plane. Swiss Air is the best if you have to travel overseas...check out the kid's playroom that we visited in the Zurich airport during our 3 hour layover, they had PlayStations, foosball, a giant connect 4 game and lots of other fun stuff to occupy our kids.

Our kids were experiencing new things and having a blast. The funniest was the look of horror on Boaz' face as he stepped onto the escalator (just imagine a surfer riding the waves ... looking really scared ... that's what Bo looked like). I think the worst parts of the trip were when Asher's ears were bothering him during take off and landing. Then, the Cranes met us at JFK in NY and drove us back home to PA. :)

Counting down...only a week and a day to go!

Wow...lots to do, lots of stress. We are so excited that we will be leaving for the US in just 8 days. Nathan's been spending all his time on completing the addition (except when I need him to carry stuff to the container for me), and I've been packing the house. All I've got left is the last stuff, the hardest part, where you just can't put "like" things together anymore and it's all odds and ends that end up just being thrown in a box or thrown in the trash pit. My "odd parts" bag is getting bigger as I find things that go with stuff I've already packed days to weeks ago.

We will be in the bush until Tuesday, so that only gives Nathan 3 more days to get a roof on the addition. The walls are 95% completed, and tomorrow Nathan expects to have the frame and tress up so that he can nail on the corrugated metal roofing on Saturday. All this, and he's had a horrible tooth ache since last week and needs to see a dentist. He started on antibiotics and that's helped some, it seems, but he's still popping the ibuprofen every 8 hours. Things have been going very well during the past week on the addition because of one of our Bantu neighbors, Komba (who's wife just had a baby and the baby is now the second baby named after me), who has acted as the "chef chantier" or foreman, and getting all the other guys to work more efficiently. We are praising God for this blessing! It's usually like pulling teeth to get the guys around here to work hard, but Komba is very kind, but firm, with the guys and they respect him.

The Abbotts left today with Darla the chimp and are going to drop the latter off at a zoo. They have a really nice facility and are able to take care of abandoned baby animals like "Baby Boo", the name that Desma affectionately gave the chimp. Check out their blog Jungle Abbotts, they will be posting some pictures in the next couple of days. Darla is super anxious to get home and will fly out from Yaounde on Sunday. We are so glad that she could be here these past 6 months!

I tried to post some pictures in this post, but our internet connection has recently gotten alot worse, so the pics will have to wait a few days.

Lord give us strength to make it one more week!!

Not to take away from my Mother's Day Post, but...

Wow...look who our team's been babysitting for the last 2 days (fortunately the Abbotts have been doing most of the work changing diapers and keeping her overnight). She's maybe less than a month old has taken to our kids in the past 48 hours, and the kids have really taken to her as well. What an opportunity, sad for her and for the chimp population in general...but our kids will NEVER forget this. Again, like Kemi, hunters shot her mother. Pray for wisdom over how to handle this situation (we would like to take her to the Limbe Zoo in Cameroon where they have a huge primate facility and can care for her and introduce her to a surrogate mother...but our neighbors don't like that idea, they want to make money by selling her, but we don't want to buy her from them because we feel like that would encourage more hunting of chimps, among other illegal matters).

Happy Mother's Day

I will never forget the good times with my wonderful mom! One thing that made the biggest impression on my life was the time she would spend with just me. She would take me with her to Shady Maple to do her weekly food shopping. We'd hang out and I'd "help" picking out certain things for the family to eat that week. Then, as we were leaving she'd always buy us a soft pretzel or ice cream cone AND let us go look around Good's Store for a few minutes AND buy me the newest book in the Mandie series if it was out (even when I was in college and was too old for Mandie anymore!!!). Also, I remember various times after church when we would stop by the carwash for the boys and Dad to do a quick check and make sure things were running smoothly. Mom and I would stay in the car because we were in our nice dresses and to keep me busy, Mom would make up all kinds of games and word puzzles for me to solve. Thanks for teaching me things like cooking and what substitutions will work and what won't. Thanks for quizzing me to help me study for test after test all throughout my years in school. Thanks Mom, for being such a great Mom, being there FOR me and WITH me, and loving me so well! Thanks for inspiring me to be a mom who is involved deeply with my kids. I hope that I can be as giving and loving to them as you were to me. And I promise I'll never tell Chad and Curt that you said I was your favorite (nudge nudge wink wink) ! :)

I'm so thankful for my mother-in-law as well! Thanks for having Nathan and for encouraging and supporting him as he grew up to be the man he is today. Thanks for always being his biggest cheerleader for his desires to serve God on the mission field! One example of this that is so awesome is when you let everyone know that for your 50th birthday (that was just last year, right?) your desire was for your friends and family to send support to World Team for us, instead of spending anything on you. Thanks! And thanks for showering me with your love, in the various forms that it came (among other serious things: the color orange, smiley faces and socks -- by the way I'm not bringing any socks back from Africa...so if you see any that you know I'll like get them for me please!). And I'm not embarrassed to tell everyone that I'm your "favorite youngest daughter-in-law".

I love you both and hope that you each have a wonderful day! We will see you in just a few short weeks!!!

"They taste kind of flowery..."

This was Darla's response when Nathan asked her how the plantain chips tasted. Every week, our cook makes chips for us from plantains (similar to potato chips). He fries them in oil in a pot over the fire. This week, when he brought the chips inside I noticed that the empty bottle of oil was not our normal "used oil" container. I called out the window to Nathan, "hey, what does massage oil consist of?" His answer was that it's made up of mostly olive oil, grape seed oil (?) and a bunch of essential oils. Hence, the flowery tasting chips that got thrown out in the trash. Though the massage oil wasn't where we normally keep our bottles of oil, I guess keeping it anywhere in the kitchen in an unmarked bottle is a bad idea!

Outtie

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