D squared + J squared = Anderson

CABTAL turns 25

David — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:13:56 +0000

Today CABTAL (Cameroonian Association for Bible Translation and Literacy) celebrated their 25^th anniversary. It has been a week of celebration as they reflect on what God has been doing for the last 25 years.

I heard one story of a man who went to church all his life and he was listening to a Proclaimer in his mother tongue and he said, “Do you hear what they are saying?” He finally understood why Jesus had come and died for his sins. He immediately accepted Jesus as his savior and became active in his church and active in sharing the gospel with his neighbors.

I was reminded of the challenge of vision 2025 to see a language project started in every language remaining before the year 2025 and that will only happen when all the various Bible Translation organizations work together with the national churches.

Congratulations on 25 Years!

Different denominational church leaders praying for CABTAL

Our version of Snow

David — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:16 +0000

We know many of you are experiencing winter and snow. We don’t have winter, but are very cold when the temperatures drop to the mid to upper 60’s and we put blankets on the bed and wear jackets. We would probably have hypothermia if exposed to a real winter. Right now we are having the hot, dry season. It hasn’t rained one drop since late October or early November plus it is harmattan time, which is when the winds blow across the Sahara Desert and brings dust riding on the clouds and drops a thin layer everywhere. Walking and driving up and down our dirt streets is similar to walking and driving in snow. The layer is anywhere from ½” – 1” thick and swirls around with the outer edges more deep. Your feet slide around and your vehicle’s back end fish tails. I shared with the boys how this is our version of snow and they took a little too literal and did make “snow angels” plus were throwing it in the air and letting it rain down upon them. Those clothes took a lot of scrubbing with block soap to see the true color again.

Tracks in the dust, as close as we get to snow.

Road side ticket

David — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:00:21 +0000

It’s always a learning curve when you are living cross-culturally. You think you have it down and then something will always come up. We’ve heard this also from people who have lived cross-culturally for 30+ years. When you don’t have instant access to information and services that we are used to in our passport country, it’s hard to know when you are breaking a law. We try very hard to ask as many questions as possible and dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” but something will not be addressed. David found this out on his drive to Tombel for the New Testament dedication. He was stopped many times for this or that without any problems. He came across a roadside checkpoint stop where about 20 other cars were too. He was asked where his fire extinguisher was. He didn’t have and didn’t know it was a law to have one. He was fined and here you pay on the spot and receive the ticket receipt.

A few weeks after he received this ticket receipt, he spoke with a Cameroonian man, who had just returned from visiting the USA. He is part of the Children Evangelism Fellowship and went to the States for further ministry needs. He was being hosted and driven around by fellow ministry colleagues when a bad accident happened. This man was not hurt, but the driver was seriously hurt. The Cameroonian man started to try and push the vehicle to roll it over upright when all the sudden emergency personnel were on the scene and a helicopter arrived after that to take the man to the hospital. The Cameroonian man couldn’t believe what he saw because in Cameroon, when you have an accident there aren’t emergency personnel, you are on your own and therefore, that’s why it’s a law to have a fire extinguisher in your vehicle.

Flat Stanley

David — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:48:22 +0000

Flat Stanley arrived in Cameroon last week and has had a busy week visiting around Yaoundé. It took him two months to make the voyage from Dominca.

For those of you not familiar with Flat Stanley it is a 1964 children’s book written by Jeff Brown. Stanley Lambchop is given a big bulletin board by his Dad for displaying pictures and posters. Stanley hangs it on the wall over his bed. During the night the board falls from the wall, flattening Stanley in his sleep. He survives and is now as flat as a piece of paper. Flat Stanley can now visit his friends by being mailed in an envelope. There are even iphone apps for tacking him around the world.

Below are a few of the adventures that Stanley was able to have in Yaoundé.

Jonah and Flat Stanley ride the ride behind the new Mahima

Flat Stanley goes to PRS (Parent Run School)

Flat Stanley looking at Downtown Yaoundé from the top of the Hilton

Eggs

David — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:14:06 +0000

How fresh are your eggs? We know our eggs are fresh, however, there is an occasional rotten egg – pew wee. Today, as I was washing eggs, I thought one of my routine things might be of interest to you. We buy our eggs from a person on the road, who gets them from a person who pushes a large cart full of eggs straight from an egg farm (there are many homes with that indicate they have egg laying hens). This man collects the eggs from the egg farms to sell to the merchants on the road. We buy 30 eggs at a time (un plateau), but you can buy them individually too. They aren’t prepackaged, so you can either have your eggs placed lose in a sack or try to balance the flimsy cardboard with the eggs on top or buy a hard plastic egg holder, I was happy when I found the egg holder – we had many broken eggs before the holder. The eggs are not washed because they aren’t pasteurized. You can leave the eggs unrefrigerated for up to 2 or 3 weeks, once they are washed the natural protective layer has been removed and it’s necessary to refrigerate them. When the eggs are brought home, I wash 10 eggs to be refrigerated in soapy water and rinse them in filtered water. I dry them with a paper towel and place them in the refrigerator. As you can see they come home very dirty and they are brown. We haven’t seen a white egg since we left the States. That brings me to a question, why are the majority of eggs in the States white?

Water Filters

David — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:06:24 +0000

It’s necessary to use a water filter here because the water out of the tap is contaminated water, not only isn’t it treated, but it harbors bacteria and viruses that could make us very sick. We have been through many water filters trying to find the best system for our family. We have been using our current system for three months and were told we needed to change the sediment filter every three months. Today we changed it and took a comparison photo of the new cartridge and the dirty one needing to be replaced. If you ever wonder why our “white” socks are more of a reddish dirty color, you will know because our laundry water is tap water. We are very thankful for water filters so we can drink clean water!

Merry Christmas

David — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:59:15 +0000

Joshua and his classmates recite the Christmas story from Luke 2 from memory before the Christmas play.

TCK (Third Culture Kid), MK (Missionary Kid)

David — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:20:38 +0000

Our children fall into the classification of the title of this blog. We were talking with a colleague who has served over 20 years in different roles and in many different countries in Africa. She is a lot of fun to talk to and has a good sense of humor. We got on the topic of educational differences due to environment where we live. Below are some highlights of our conversation.

Confusion using American curriculum for a child who lives in Cameroon:

What color is an orange? The child raised in the United States would answer – orange. The child raised in Cameroon would answer – green. (Yes, that’s right our oranges are green, when they turn orange they are rotten)

Where does peanut butter come from? The child raised in the United States would answer – store. The child raised in Cameroon would answer – the peanuts come from the lady on the street in an old liquor bottle, then you grind them into peanut butter.

What are the four seasons? The child raised in the United States would answer – winter, spring, summer and fall. The child raised in Cameroon would answer – there are only two seasons, wet and dry.

Where do you buy shoes? The child raised in the United States would answer – the store. The child raised in Cameroon would answer – from the man with the shoe on his head on the street or the man pushing the shoe cart on the street or the person with a pile of shoes on the side of the street.

The things parents forget:

When you live in a culture/society, you see and experience certain things without giving it a second thought. When you are trying to raise your children to understand your home culture, while living outside of your home culture, it’s hard to remember everything they would just pick-up if they were living in your home culture. Below are some stories we have heard and I’m sure we will get to add our own after we return on furlough.

A child that has been raised in Central African Republic returned to the United States and started public school. Everyone stood up, placed their hand over their hearts and recited proudly the Pledge of Allegiance. The child looked around and followed the standing up and placing his hand on his heart, but what were they reciting?

A mother so badly wanted her daughters to look like all the other kids when they arrived back on furlough. She had her sister send her popular patterns and material so she could make clothes so the girls would fit in. She proudly disembarked the plane with her husband and two daughters following them. She wondered why the passerby’s kept looking behind her puzzled. She turned around and saw that her daughters were carrying their suitcases on their heads.

No Shoes

David — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:23:11 +0000

When we first arrived in Cameroon, we noticed how the majority of missionary’s kids didn’t wear shoes outside. Usually the shoes would all be together in one spot while the kids ran to play. Tonight while eating dinner, Jonah told us that he learned about a place where people can’t wear shoes because shoes don’t exist there. He said he would like to live there and be free from shoes. It cracked us up that he spoke of shoes like they are feet prison and how he would like to be free from them.

At school you will find all the shoes in piles or objects in Capture the Flag, but rarely find them on the students’ feet.

No jack, no spare, no problem

David — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:42:21 +0000

The drive back from Tombel started off bright and early. We had made it past the several checkpoints without being stopped; the large checkpoint checking for fire extinguishers was not open on Sunday.

We had almost made it through Douala when I heard a thud-thud-thud so we pulled over and one of the tires had picked up a piece of rebar. Having had adventurous road trips in the past I had checked to try and find the jack and tools to change the tire before we left and there was a jack but I couldn’t find the tire iron to loosen the lug nuts. So I grabbed my bigger socket wrenches and put them in the car thinking they would work if we had a problem.

We had pulled over near a soccer game, on the main road in front of the Douala international airport and within a few seconds had an army of helpers to assist us. So we grabbed the tools and tried to loosen the lug nuts, they were not going to move, I even had 2 Cameroonians that jumped up and down on the end of the wrench to try. So I paid someone to go try and find some tools for us. He came back about 5 minutes later with the tools in hand, we got the tire off and the spare put on and when they went to lower the jack somehow the hydraulic center broke and we couldn’t lower the car, so they lifted up the car and I pulled out the jack.

But when we went to leave the young man who had went and gotten the tools realized that a taxi that stopped to help us took some of the tools he had, so I had to give him money to cover the price of the tools so he could get his identification card back. I gave all our helpers a few dollars and we were back on our way.

With the weight of the car on the spare we saw the spare was very low on air, so we slowly drove about one kilometer to the gas station where there was also a “tire repair” center. We pulled up to the tire repair center and asked them to fill it up our low tire and asked them to patch up the inner tube that was punctured by a piece of rebar. I’ve had plenty of tires patched here, and normally they can do it in 10-15 minutes. After over an hour and half of sitting in the sun I asked him to stop working on airing up the tire and give it back to us. Every time he put the tire back on he caused another leak. So we had another tire to serve as a spare if needed on the 200 km we had yet to travel to get back to Yaoundé.

We had gone about another 50 km and we heard this horrible noise, the treads from the spare tire had separated from the tire. So now we are in the middle of nowhere, with no jack and no tools and there weren’t very many cars on the road. So I managed to flag down a friendly car who couldn’t believe that I didn’t have a jack or the right tools, but the lug nuts on my car were a different size then his and he suggested that we were only 15 km from the next town of Edea, this was where we had the car fixed on the way to Tombel, and since the inner tube was still good I could drive slow to get there. Taking their advice we started slowly going when a young man ran up beside the car, I really was going very slowly, and told me there was a problem with my tire. I explained I didn’t have the tools or a jack to change it. He asked me to pull into his grandfather’s field which was the next turn a few feet up the road, it didn’t really look like a turn but I took his word for it.

He gets his grandfather who asked where the jack and tools were and I explained that I didn’t have them, but we tried the socket wrench again, same results as before.

So he sent his grandson to find someone who had tools, he was gone for about 10 minutes and came back and explained that they had not gotten out of church yet but he called one of his friends. The tools arrived but we still didn’t have a jack, so he grabbed several small boards and stacked them up and asked me to back up the flat tire onto the boards, then he put a log under the frame of the car to help prop it up. He took off the tire, pulled the boards out but the car was not high enough off the ground to put on the tire that we had partially repaired earlier in the day. So they dug down in the dirt around where the tire needed to go. We put on the other tire and we were back on the road, these guys wouldn’t let us take their picture of the work they were doing nor would they accept any money.

So with our tire on with a slow leak we were off again. We made it to Edea and pulled into the first shop I saw that had tires stacked up out front that made me think they would be able to repair the tire. I once again had to explain that I didn’t have a jack and I didn’t have any tools. Well neither did they, but they knew someone up the street who I could rent them from. So I went up talked to him and negotiated a price on tool rental and then they took off the tire. I then looked at the inner tube and asked if they could just replace it, they didn’t have any, but they knew someone who did; the same guy who rented me the tools. I went back and asked him how much for a new inner tube, he told me and went to get it. But it wasn’t the same size. I told him no, I need the same size finally he found a used one that we agreed on a price after a few minutes. I took it to the repair shop and they had it fixed in 10 minutes. I also found a fire extinguisher in this town while waiting for the repairs. The others riding with me asked if I was going to repair the other spare tire and I told them no, if we had another problem we would park the car and take a bush taxi the remaining hour and a half to Yaoundé.

Thankfully we made it back to Yaoundé without any further incident.