RIGHT HERE!!!

The kids and I were making paper chain cut-outs of people, Christmas trees and birds and decorating them. Well, in the process Asher wanted to make other things out of paper...so he made a huge arrow and stapled it together. I became busy in the kitchen preparing dinner and was only half listening to the kids and simply replied "sorry" at the comment that there were no more staples in the stapler. A little later, I saw that Asher decorated the wall with his arrow. Very cute, pointing to the stocking, showing what his priority is this Christmas. When I looked at it a little closer, I realize that he had fixed it to the wall using a glue stick!!!

Advent

We lit the 2nd candle on our Advent "log" that Nathan made for us. We are going through a book that has ideas for each day to focus your family on the birth of Christ. One of the fun activities we've done was played "I'm going on a trip to Bethlehem and I'm taking..." going through the alphabet. We made it harder and tried to think of stuff that Mary and Joseph might have taken. The kids are getting into it, but Asher is a little concerned that in all of this remembering the real reason for Christmas, we are going to forget about the "getting lots of stuff" part of it. Hopefully he won't be too disappointed this year as there are no Walmarts or toy stores around here.

Anyhow, we are making new family traditions and singing through the Birth of Christ section in our hymn book, and playing and replaying the 3 Christmas CDs that we have. Simple, but memorable.

Family Time

After having 3 weeks of different guests, we decided to have a little family outing in the forest. We took a bucket with plantains, coco-yams, matches and a machete to have ourselves a little picnic. We waded through the mud and muck for a while, then followed the path to an enormous tree that had been cut down and milled. Avele followed us and we were glad for his company, though I was surprised that he slipped off without any of the other Baka kids noticing and following too! The kids climbed around the felled tree, which made quite a fun playground, while Nathan started a fire and cooked our snack and I swatted the filaria flies. We are so blessed to be able to step into a National Geographic magazine and have such amazing adventures!

Pets

Boaz is not only a chick magnet...but a critter magnet as well. For the past couple of days, he's been carrying around this rhino beetle on a leash so it won't fly away. Well, tonight he left it in the veranda and the dog kind of chomped on it. But, though he's sad about the big bug...he still has his pet chameleon and is actively looking for crickets to feed it.

Travel Troubles

Sorry for the view...butt, this is a common one when we travel nowadays. In the past 3 weeks Nathan has changed a flat tire at least a dozen times, and not always the same tire! Keep in mind that we only drive 1-2 times a week. You figure out the average! Compare this to our first term where he changed a tire (maybe) 3 times in 3 years. Crazy! I guess we need to take some time and replace the tubes, instead of having them patched...though it's always a different hole each time. But, Nathan's such a pro at this now that he has a system and his tire changing "kit", including the yellow tarp, handy at all times and can switch out the tire with the spare in less than 7 minutes! Other than the tires and a bit of shaking and wobbling that wasn't there before, and a few other minor details...we are praising God that our Hilux was able to be fixed and that we are making good use of it until we find something to better suit our needs.

The Carpenter

Nathan got this beautiful red wood from Bertoua (don't know the name of it) and made a shelf for Nandry. That's the real color, without any stain on it! Since the kids all share a room, this shelf goes next to her bed, giving her a little bit of privacy from her brothers. Nathan really enjoys projects like this where he can create stuff, and he's pretty good at it. Today he finally has some time to re-create the water tower that fell down shortly after we arrived. It's always neat for me to watch how carefully planned and purposed he is on the details of these kinds of things. Makes me proud!

Yet Another Thing...

Last night, after the lost in the forest trauma, and everything was calm, I was in bed and heard a crinkling noise. I wasn't going to pay it much attention, but then decided to check it out anyway. I turned on my handy flashlight that is NEVER far out of reach and saw this scorpion on the floor right next to where I'd just been walking and moving a plastic bag full of stuff. I don't know if it was in the bag, or on the floor when I had been there, but I'm so glad I didn't see it at that point!

This is only the 2nd time in my life that I've seen a live scorpion (that wasn't in an exhibit), first time in my house...but I guess this isn't impressive for folks from Texas. It was about 4 inches long from claws to where the tail curved.

I know this doesn't help anyone who is thinking about coming over to visit us, sorry! I really need to put all this stuff out there, because I feel like I am being bombarded by stuff that's trying to convince me how difficult and uncomfortable life is here. Keep us in your prayers!

Moment of Panic

This afternoon, the kids went for a hike in the forest with the Anderton boys (13 and 10). They were going to explore around a big tree in the forest. My understanding was that it wasn't far away...turns out it was over a mile away. As the sun started to go down, I expected the kids home at any moment. Nathan and I were getting dinner ready. We discussed going to check on them and make sure they were coming home, but we waited a few more minutes. Once it starts to get dark, it gets dark FAST. Nathan went out and started walking down the road in the direction that they kids left, and came across Reda Anderton also going in search of her boys. Reda told Nathan just how far away this place was that they were going, and Nathan rushed back, hopped in the truck and took off, hoping that the headlights would prove to be handy.

When I heard Nathan come back and say he was taking the truck, I started praying and shaking the whole time until I heard the truck returning. As soon as Nathan hit the main road, he saw Boaz and Nelson running to get home, and the others weren't far behind. Thank the LORD!

Lots of tears of relief from the kids and their Mama (me), lots of hugging, lots of thanks to God for His protection.

The kids made it to the tree earlier, played around for a while exploring the "cave" of another tree that had fallen, then decided to take a new path home. Aparently that path lead someone's field, and it was getting dark. The kids were coming up with survival tips like, "we can eat the macabo (root) so we won't starve" but they couldn't come up with how they would make a fire to cook it. They all stopped and prayed together at one point, then kept on walking towards the direction they thought the road was. Asher was crying alot by that point because it was dark and they had to walk across fallen trees through a swampy area. One of the branches he was holding onto broke and fell beneath him, and all the kids heard a hissing noise after that. HOW SCARY IS THAT? Nandry told me that she was trying to keep her emotions under control so that she wouldn't scare Boaz and Asher with how frightened she really was. She kept telling me when she got home how much she missed me and how bad she was shaking as she walked.

Finally they came to an abandoned house and recognized where they were in relation to the road and our houses, but they still had to make the long trek up a big hill and back along the road in the dark.

I think that Noah (the 13 year old) was pretty shaken up, and felt pretty responsible for the whole thing as he came to tell us what happened. We tried to calm his fears as much as we could that we weren't upset about it, just so relieved that they all made it back ok.

We are all the closer now as we "debriefed" with the kids tonight, and all the wiser as to what our limits are as to where and when we go into the forest, and how soon to start coming back!

Another cute thing, that actually set me more at ease, was that the Baka kids were playing soccer near our house, and they all joined in the search for our kids as night fell. I knew that if our kids were truly lost in the forest, the Baka could find them. My biggest fear was that something else didn't find them first.

I'm just babbling on and on now, but it's helping the tension release. Boaz, when he first got home, looked the least upset, just like it was another adventure for him. But later he told me he was very, very scared, just trying to be brave.

Ok, our internet connection is going to go off soon, so I need to wrap this up.

A Picture's Worth How Many Words?

Sorry, my brain is fried right now, we've had some exhausting days recently, but I really wanted to post some more pictures and stories. I'm going on the theory that a picture is worth 1,000 words (though Nathan and I were wondering if the phrase uses the word thousand, or million?). Well here are the photos to make up for my few words. Though I've already used over 50...
These are the mongulu (leaf huts) that are right near out house. They only take a few hours to make, but last a few months. I love this picture because it was just starting to rain and the Baka took their fires into the huts, so you can see the smoke coming out through the door and roof...does a leaf-hut have a roof?

In Contrast is our house, though very small and basic, it's still so much MORE than a leaf hut. Can you just hear the rain pounding on the tin roof? Deafening!

Nathan's being the hero here and helping tow our landlord's vehicle out of the mud with our Hilux (that's now white and working, mostly...though we haven't yet been reimbursed from the accident).

On his way to help the Andertons manage an army ant invasion around 11pm last night (though they were doing quite a good job even without him), Nathan found this snake in the yard. It's very docile and Nathan's trying to decide whether we are going to keep it as a pet, sigh. It's a burrowing python?

Ok, in this picture we are doing a reenactment of when the Pope came to Cameroon and the Baka people presented him a turtle as a gift. We didn't eat it...but some of our neighbors did AND wasn't it so nice of them to clean out the shell for us? Yes, it's now stinkily sitting on my window sill. I'm wondering if it won't make a good hiding place for the snake if we make terrarium.

And lastly, a good rainy afternoon activity for our kids and the Anderton boys: playing with the pattern blocks from the kid's math curriculum. Lots of creativity with squares, triangles, hexagons, rhombus' (rhombi? seriously?), and parallelograms.

And that was part of our week...

Someone's Dinner

Here's our teammate Jennifer with Joe and a (medium sized) jumbo rat that was caught with a jumbo rattrap in their house. Read the story behind this rat on Jennifer's blog. I tried to get Mixie to catch the mice in their house. Though she was intrigued with the smell, she didn't move from the time I put her in the house until 5 minutes later when she darted out. I guess she (Mixie the cat) could judge the size of the beast better than I and didn't think she had a chance.