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Sometimes I have to read over my last newsletter to figure out where we left off. Sometimes life just kind of chugs along, and when you have to write a newsletter, you look back and recognize that you’ve been busier than you realized!!
While I (Sonya) went to Nigeria in May to help in the school again, Jeff and our ministry partner here went to the Cameroon faith communities with his daughter and the young woman working in our house. They’re both around 19, and we want to help build a sense of community among this diaspora. Having these two young followers of Jesus come visit was a real encouragement and joy to the young people in these small, rather isolated villages.
Oh, how our Cameroonian friends LOVE an occasion for pomp, ceremony, and dressing up!!
I came back to help close out the schoolyear in the Banyo school and attend our fifth primary school graduation and year end program.
Shortly after that, Jeff had an invitation that he has been waiting for to come and sit with leaders in Nigeria and record one of the key leaders lay out and explain the main teachings of a man (initials of SIH) whom we consider an apostle to this people group. His influence, even after this imprisonment and death about 25 years ago, is still huge, and Jeff has since been working on transcribing these main teachings and coordinating them with Scripture.
Suit up for the motorcycle ride . . . ESPECIALLY the yellow, rubber boots.
Access to this village requires about 2 km of off-road ‘bush’ driving, then parking our vehicle on one side of the river and crossing a narrow bridge on foot.
There was a bittersweet milestone on that trip also. One of the young men (AA), who has grown up here with our partner’s family and has been an amazing contributor to our House of Prayer and our youth meetings, graduated secondary school. He traveled with Jeff back to his home village. He was recently working in our compound, earning some money, waiting for the application period for the gendarmerie (national police). When they announced that they will not take another round of applicants till after the October election, AA decided to go invest his time and earnings, so with his brother he has planted a crop of beans. He’s an extremely hard worker, so we are praying that he gets a good return for his money and, more importantly, that his strong but quiet faith resonate with his widowed mother and the young men in his village.
He has indicated a desire to get baptized, so we are looking forward to that and hope to be around when that happens. Baptism is a BIG step for our LRPG.
During a pause in the evening teaching – when it rains so hard on the zinc roofs that you can’t hear anything – Jeff entertained the young people with a video on his phone of one of our boys on a canoeing escapade.
Between Jeff’s two trips, I headed back into Nigeria. I had scheduled to go with Walter Grob to do some financial work, as well as school stuff, but he was unable to procure a visa in time. This was incredibly disappointing, but I went anyhow – for another one of those trips that didn’t go at all according to plan. I was fortuitously available to help out and take over class one for a week for a teacher who was in the city hospital with their child (there are no such thing as substitute teachers here), help review and reboot the new children’s Bible program, and work on a few other projects.
And then the Israeli bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities took place.
Everything slowed down while everyone waited to see what would happen. Anti-American sentiment among (the many) pro-Iranian Nigerians skyrocketed around the country. Westerners, particularly Americans, in the major cities were advised to shelter in place. The social media chatter caused my hosts to suggest that even though there was no immediate risk, and I am not American, that I go home early. It was impossible to tell which way things would swing.
So, between 9:00 p.m. Monday and 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, I tried to wrap up everything I had started and headed back to Cameroon. In the end, everything settled down, but we have learned to heed the cautions of our friends, even though it was very frustrating to have to abandon the other half of my visit and work on short notice.
I did get some updated information on the work on new House of Prayer and the new quarters for clinic staff. The latter is progressing, but funds for the former, which was the brainchild and gift of the late ‘Pa’ Bernie Lemke, have been exhausted due to an unfortunate incident, drastic price swings, and a few other ‘unforeseeables.’ We would really like your help to see this finished!! The basic structure is built and roofed, but the simple wiring, plaster, paint, floor, windows and doors, external toilet, and fence are still needed.
Staff quarters for the clinic in Nigeria.
House of Prayer in Nigeria at its current construction standstill.
Spring water catchment construction.
Since June, I (Sonya) have been happy to stay home for a while. I did a pile of work in the yard with various helpers and have started to harvest a handful of the black beans we are trying here. We definitely made a few mistakes, but I am getting something for my effort – and beans that can’t be bought here in Banyo. We have only a handful of ripe navy beans so far, but the plants are looking good. But the vines are heavy, and if I don’t check recently for ripe pods, they sit on the ground and start to rot or germinate.
I also wrapped up some details and the paperwork on getting a better powerline direct from the hospital to our compound, which had been planned but was complicated by the loss of power from the local power company for about a month!!
This equipment had to come from Ngoundere – about 12 hours away.
Early in July, I launched into a six-week “Holiday School,” which I offered only to students in the lower classes who needed some intervention with reading and basic math (plus a couple of functionally illiterate older ones). It’s full of those exhilarating and frustrating teaching moments when kids totally get, or totally fail, at mastering decoding or encoding, but overall, I am happy with the progress among these 12 and am (mostly) enjoying myself.
I’m still coaching a wee bit of badminton to kids two mornings per week (6:30 a.m.!!!!). I was playing some pickleball, which I had recently introduced to hospital staff, but it has absolutely taken off with the staff, and they never need me to round out a game!
While I hang out at school and the badminton courts every morning, Jeff is busy planning more teaching, after transcribing all his recorded material from Nigeria and hosting a varying array of daily visitors. He also completed a manuscript of a book on Athanasius and the Nicene Creed a few months back, and the ACTs Seminary in Nigeria had accepted to publish it. However, we haven’t seen anything yet, and Jeff was really hoping to bring some with him to Canada this fall, so it would be awesome if that could get finished this month.
I spend my afternoon and evenings taking naps (I forgot how exhausting teaching can be, and I’m not as young as I was when I did this full time!!), working in and around the house with various young helpers, and planning our upcoming mini home assignment.
Yes, you have heard correctly: we are making a two-month trip to North America. We are scheduled to be out of Cameroon for a conference, so since our financial support is well below where it needs to be, it made some economic sense to add the leg to Canada. We are focused on a few churches we have never yet gotten to visit, four NAB missions conferences / annual meetings, a couple of multi-church get-togethers, and a few new supporting churches. (and seeing some family in between!!). We DO hope to see many of you in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and North Dakota at one or another of these events – but sorry we won’t have many Sundays for ‘regular’ church visits.
Pray for us as we wind up August – Jeff is heading back to Nigeria this week, and the motorcycle paths, like all roads right now, are pretty slick. I will regroup for a few weeks in August and then try to exert some helpful influence over the start of the new schoolyear here in Banyo before we leave at the end of September. The road out of Banyo will be extremely bad at that point, but our conference is scheduled, among other reasons, to take our colleagues out of the conflict zone during the election, so we will grit our teeth and bounce our way over the first few hours on the road to Yaoundé again.
As always, we thank you for your support and ask you to continue to pray for and support us, and your brothers and sisters in this least-reached people group. We look forward to seeing at least some of you by the time the next newsletter is due!!