I first of all want to say how sad we are that we have not been able to keep you all up to date with our adventures in Cameroon.  What we had intended for our blog to be, has not been possible since we have not had internet access.

But our thoughts have been with you as we are experiencing life here.

I hope some of you have had a chance to look at our friend’s blog @

marieanddrew-petersensinaction.blogspot.com.  The Petersen’s are here from Minnesota for two months as well.  They will be here four more weeks than us. 

They are here under Wycliff Bible Translation.  Although their purpose here is to have Drew working with cement repairing the front steps of the classroom building here at CBTS. Their family is here experiencing life with us and many of the blog’s she shares are what we are experiencing.  In fact, we often talk about her next blog.

The reason they are able to blog is that they had been given an MTN Internet Stick and for some reason, we have not been able to get it work on our computer, not for lack of trying.  The conclusion is that we may have a Firewall that is blocking it. 

Anyway, I have been journaling and so hopefully I can use this blog to fill in some of the gaps.  It is really hard to imagine how I will keep this short enough since there has been so much since we have been in contact.  I will try not to bore. 

Grap a cup of coffee and take a moment to relax and enjoy.

We have been trying to make the most of every experience here.  We are learning to live life simply, by necessity.  And although it has taken a while to adjust, I must say, I am enjoying this pace of life.  The work is mostly about meeting our everyday needs.

Our typical day, which is not all that often, is to wake at about 6:30 am.  That is late for Cameroonians.  We have roosters crowing and goats that have been tied on to our property nehing somewhere close to our windows by 6:00am. 

In the mornings I try to get to the chapel service at 7:30am and have the kids eat their breakfast and clean up before I get back to help them with their schooling.  Schooling is dragging out and I hope these last two weeks will be the most productive J. 

The afternoons are spent either finding some work for the kids to help out here at the campus, like working with Drew on cement, or dusting the books in the library, or finding places to play.  The boys usually find the latter.  The missionary family, the Rundus’ have children here our kids age, as well, the Petersen’s have 3 children as well.  They have all become very good friends.  The Rundus children don’t often have so many other white children hear to play with and what often happens is that they have videos or cd to watch.  We have been trying to discourage that and our kids have started to develop some significant relationships with African kids.

Abi always has someone peeking in the windows, wanting to play.  There is a primary and a nursery school on the compound and during their breaks some of the kids have made it a pattern to head to our place.  Unfortunately, their school break are in the morning and I am still trying to school. 

We have a cook named Martha that we are sharing with the Moline’s.  They are a couple here full time as well.  Tim is teaching and Amy is running the household.  She has been a great help to me as we deal with the Cameroonian way.  They have an almost 4 month old puppy that is Lab/German Shepherd mix named RJ.  The Rundus’s have RJ’s sister, Lila.  You can imagine how our boys are enjoying them.

Anyway, our cook Martha, is absolutely amazing.  She is very good at cooking Western food and especially good at baking.  Everything is made from scratch and so is amazingly delicious.  Unfortunately any weightloss that Dan and I were anticipating will not happen.

We have also hired a couple of female students, Obedience and Christina, who are sharing our household cleaning load.  Obedience comes on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.  And Christina came today and will come tomorrow.  Laundry for 6 people is too much for one person and so we are happy to support another student.  Obedience and her husband are students and they also have 5 children.  This is her first experience working for a Western family so her and I are both new at this.  She is learning our expectations and we are learning what to expect.  Christina is a little more experienced.  She is a widow and a mom and a student.  So both are in financial need and we are glad to help out.

Dan is now in his second week of teaching Jeremiah.  He loves to teach and the students are loving being in his class.  The Ephesians class went very well and when the Jeremiah class started he had over 10 students more than were on his original roster.  Everyone speaks very highly of him.  The hours for the Jeremiah class is out of the ordinary because it is an extra class this semester.  He is teaching on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30 to 7:30 pm.  And then on Friday he teaches for 1 hour in the morning.  It is nice to have him around in the days but the evenings become long without him.  But the course is just three weeks so it is doable.

When we first arrived someone said to us that 9pm is Cameroon’s midnight.  It is true because a day consists of the daylight hours.  And, typically the power goes out at around supper time for most of the evening.  So, what is true even as I write this, is that we walk around with head lamps or flash lights once the sun sets and the power goes out and find a comfortable place to wait out the power outage. 

So that is a long but quick run down of our life here.  There are so many individual experiences that I would love to share but too many for this blog. I will go to the Petersen’s and try to download this blog.  Maybe even get a few pictures in. 

We only have two weeks left here so our prayer is that we would live in the moment and make to most of our time here.  I had the privilege of being part of a women’s prayer meeting today and it is great to pray with the women of CBTS.  Pray for us that the relationships we have will be a blessing to those here and that we are a blessing.

Thank you for remembering us and being faithful with little communication.

Much love,

Andrea.