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Dear Friends and family,
We’ve had another eventful quarter of travel, but this time much of it outside of Africa.
Jeff’s trip to Nigeria that we mentioned last newsletter has been so helpful for our further understanding of the people we work with, and you might have heard some of that in our presentations if we were in your area this fall. All of this is going to be jumping off point for the next major writing project that our national partners have asked him to write, so pray that he gets the remaining research/information he is waiting on from another contributor.
Jeff’s new book travelled by plane, motorbikes, and automobiles (but no trains) and now by internet, as it is is available on Amazon. And from us in Winnipeg.
When she wasn’t trying to work through packing logistics, and struggling with a gradually defrosting freezer due to intermittent power in August and September, Sonya used August to finish her holiday school, recover from a sprained ankle, coach some badminton, and then immerse herself in the start of the school year in Banyo, working with a young, inexperienced class 2 teacher, trying to help her get a solid start to her year before we left Cameroon.
In early October, we met together with our NAB Cameroon missionary colleagues in Bruges, Belgium, for our annual retreat. We had a great time together reporting and updating our work and prayer concerns together, as well as setting goals and plans for the upcoming terms. And we made time for a bit of sightseeing in Bruges.
How many NAB missionaries can you fit in an elevator? Always one more!
For our ministry, we are beginning to actively work to identify people who would come alongside us, to work in both a similar mentoring and training capacity as we have done and in a possible variety of hands-on ministries, before we retire. (And no, we don’t have a plan or date in mind for that – that was one of the most-asked questions of this trip.)
After the retreat, we headed to North America for a short home assignment. We landed in Winnipeg a few days before Canadian Thanksgiving and have greatly enjoyed our time with all three children who are living there. For some reason, a majority of my Winnipeg pictures seem to feature one particular family member. . . .
The last few weeks of October, Jeff and I have been racking up the kilometers. We traveled to Calgary and Lethbridge to attend the Southern Alberta missions event and then shot up to Edmonton for some medical appointments and visits with friends and our home church at Wiesenthal. We then split up – Sonya stayed for the missions events in Edmonton and Olds, for White Cross shopping, to visit a couple of supporting churches, and to spend time with her family and some friends. Jeff went to North Dakota for a fantastic time at a pastors’ mini retreat, the AGM, a long-supporting church in Century Baptist in Bismarck (finally), and another church in Moosehorn.
We have been blessed to find new friends, prayer supporters, and possible financial supporters in each of these connection points.
We will be getting to see a few more Manitoba and Ontario churches through November, as well as the last of our boys, and then return to unpack in our Cameroon home in December. Pray for our application process for a Nigerian visa again – we hope to get an excellent one like last year.
Please continue to pray for us, and consider how to give for our support and/or for the Least Reached People Group. We have not yet gotten back up to 100 percent support and would love that pressure taken off our minds. And our Least Reached People Group project needs your continued support. There are ongoing ministry needs that are funded through that, as well as capital projects such as water projects and the incomplete house of prayer and staff housing for the clinic that we mentioned in our last newsletter.
We are planning to add Instagram to our list of ways to communicate with people, so stay tuned for that. But please continue to email, or even mail, us. We love to hear from you.
SO many of you this month have encouraged us with your interest in the work God is doing among our national partners through your questions, your giving, your prayers, and your care for us. We have been incredibly blessed on this leg of our journey by people who have hosted us and fed us. . .and fed us. . . and fed us. . .picked us up, loaned us vehicles, billeted us, and a host of other small and big blessings.
So, thank you, and God bless you all as you partner with us and our brothers and sisters in Cameroon and Nigeria.