Books!

We put a few feelers out to see if anyone was interested in donating theological books for the seminary in Kumba, Cameroon.  We now have about 55 _boxes_ of books sitting in our garage!  We are still working out how to get the books to Cameroon, but in the meantime we decided to sell the books that didn’t make it through our first “culling” for the seminary, to help pay shipping costs.  We have listed the books at two places, please check them out!

Amazon

Alibris

Eyes to See

Just like just about every other morning, you wake up and get the kids some breakfast.  Your husband has already left because at this time of the year, his work requires early hours.  You finish the breakfast cleanup, send the kids to get ready for school, and enjoy a minute with your littlest before scooting the rest out the door so that they’re not late.  Then you head out the door yourself to get some work done before lunch.  After lunch, you get the toddlers to bathe and start dinner preparations; your husband arrives home and rests a bit before dinner, and you smile as you listen to your kids practicing soccer outside….and if you were to count your blessings, then healthy children, a hardworking husband, enough food for everyone, enough money to send the kids to school… these things would be at the top of your list.

This sounds a lot like a day a mom here in California could have.  In its essence, it is a mother’s day around the world.  In Cameroon, where we spent two weeks in February for our vision trip, it might be a typical day for a village woman.  Except the details…your husband is working hard to get the cocoa trees ready for the upcoming harvest; your kids are among the academically better-off in the village to be able to attend the private school, because the public school teachers might ..or might not.. show up to teach; you’re strapping your baby to your back to get some land cleared, by hand with a machete, to prepare for the coming rainy season; your toddlers bathe naked in front of your house with a bucket because that is where the water is…and so on.

One of the prayer requests God answered for us during our “vision” trip was to see the people.  When we first arrived, we were overwhelmed by all the strange faces.  We were followed by children crying “White man!  White man!”  It was easy to feel like Cameroonians were about as similar to us as Martians.  Yet, after living in the village a week, eventually we were able to “see” – the people there are people just like us.  Children disobey in church just like mine.  Women and men work hard to keep “body and soul” together there too.  And that comforts me because in God’s time, our little family will be living there too…

Cameroon…

We would like to share about our World Team vision trip to Cameroon, Africa.  We have posted other photos from our trip here.

We went to Cameroon February 11-27th, 2013.  We were in Bamenda for 2 days, Big Bekondo for 7 and Kumba for 3…it all adds up if you count travel time. (map of the southwest area of Cameroon, which is where the English speaking area is, the rest of the country speaks French)

After 2 days of travel (with our 3 month old baby Talia), we arrived on Weds night into the Douala airport.  The heat and humidity enveloped us like a warm hug (or like a “bear hug” as Nathan says) as we stepped off the plane.  The Brussels airport, with its colorful lights and duty-free shops and seemingly endless corridors and escalators, had reminded me of a pretty, carnivorous plant-like maze; the Douala airport seemed grungy (ie, tiles missing from the floor) and chaotic in comparison.  We had gotten a Facebook message the night before in Brussels that our contact had changed to Vincent, who would meet us at the airport, and Serge from one of the airlines might be able to help us get to Vincent.  When we made it through customs on the way to baggage claim, we were mobbed by the eagerly helpful porters for hire…some of whom were overly eager.  What a relief to be met by Serge, who shooed the porters away and got our bags for us, then directed us to where we could meet Vincent (who had been waving at us from the 2nd floor mezzanine).  We loaded up and after a quick bakery stop for dinner food, settled into our very nice room at the Douala Baptist rest house.  The next day we made it to Bamenda by the early afternoon, where we joined the homeschooling missions crowd during the last two days of their bi-annual 2 weeks of teaching get-together.  This is where we met the other World Team missionaries who are homeschooling their children, and some other homeschooling missionary families.  After a surfeit of strangeness, the homeschool conference was like a welcome reprieve as we were surrounded by like-minded (really neat, actually!) folks who are living the life we are aspiring to.  The constant smell of burning trash, the haze of the smoke and dust of the end of the dry season, the endless unfamiliar faces, the shock of AFRICA, all faded into an acceptable background roar…

It was in Bamenda that we were first able to make contact with the other people we had travelled half-way around the world to meet.  World Team is partnered with the Cameroon Baptist Convention, and so our first meeting was with the CBC head of missions.  As Nathan is aspiring to teach at a CBC seminary, it was an important meeting since the educational wing of the CBC is under the missions head.  Thankfully, we were given the “hand of welcome” and invited to continue discussions with the Kumba seminary.  There is also a larger CBC seminary in Ndu, and we were open to considering serving there as well, but only had time to visit the Kumba seminary.  After a wonderful 2 days of fellowship, we headed down from Bamenda to Big Bekondo with the Friesens, who were our WT hosts for the trip.  They have been serving in Bible translation with the Oroko tribe in Big Bekondo for 15 years.  On a side note, Cameroon has over 270 tribal languages and is one of the  most dense places left in the world where Bible translation is a real need; the Oroko language was purely oral until the Friesens and their teammates the Scotts worked out a written system.  Now almost half of the New Testament is translated into Oroko!  A neat use of technology: Dan Friesen was able to send the audio file of the Oroko translation of Jonah via cell phones (in person) to many Oroko leaders at a regional meeting just before meeting us in Bamenda!

Back to our trip.  We would be the only WT personnel working within the educational system of Cameroon if we ended up coming as missionaries, so our vision trip looked different than most others.  Even so, we stayed in the village of Big Bekondo for the majority of our trip.  Our first Sunday we worshipped with the Oroko people.  Tuesday, Nathan and Dan headed into Kumba, about a 45 minute drive during the dry season, so that Nathan could attend classes at the seminary and meet various people.  The trip went very well, except that wearing a tie gave Nathan heat rash around his neck!  Talia and I stayed in the village.  I found spending the week in one place to be just exactly what I needed.  Talia did as well as a 3 month old baby can do, getting plunked into equatorial Africa while not feeling great from taking anti-malarials, but she still found it difficult to travel much.  I have always, in every place I have visited (and the list is fairly long), preferred to get to know the people living there and taste life as it is…I am not the “a new tourist trap every 2 days” kind of girl. 

The village.  It’s more like a town in size, but felt like a village, especially as we were on the outskirts.  Goats and chickens and children everywhere.  I tried not to act terribly much like a gawking tourist, but we were so out of place…hearing “white man, white man!” everywhere we went…and then I discovered that the people actually _wanted_ me to take their photos!  We had some great meetings with local lay leaders while there, and were able to taste life as the Friesens live it which is not too different from life in “town” (Kumba).  We were spoiled rotten by their cook!  Fresh pineapples, buns, chips, oh my!

But, all good things must come to an end, and the end of our week quickly came.  To give us a better idea of what living in Kumba might be like, the Friesens took us into town the weekend before leaving and we all stayed with a Lutheran couple at their compound.  We also visited a Swiss couple who were teaching at the Presbyterian seminary.  Kumba is likened to the “wild west” and we expected it to seem wild, but after a week in the village we found that my prayer had been answered: God had given us eyes to see things as they were, not as a blinding disorienting kaleidoscope of stimuli.  Instead of masses of strangers, we saw mothers, kids, shop owners, gas attendants…in other words, normal life being lived by normal people.  Here’s a shot from a gas station:

We came to Cameroon because when we felt God calling us into teaching and missions, about 5 years ago, we knew that we wanted to go where the need is great for Biblical teaching.  We wanted to serve an already existing national church by providing free (for them, of course we would need to raise support) theological support staff.  We had narrowed our focus to either Asia or Africa, and after our RACE assessment with World Team, felt drawn to the Cameroon field.  While actually in Cameroon, we were made aware that “You Are Welcome” – the greeting we heard over and over – is genuine and the need is real.  The Kumba seminary we came to visit is short of staff and current professors are carrying very heavy loads.  The Cameroon church is established but struggles with some issues.  Our Big Bekondo pastor is trying to pastor 8 churches!  There is no doubt that Nathan could be of use there both at the seminary and doing lay leadership seminar training; now it came down to the question, “Can we live here?  Can we move our 5 children here and raise them as third-cuture kids?”  We heard the news of the French family’s kidnapping in the north of Cameroon by Nigerian muslim militants, while we were there, almost as a warning (the family has yet to be released or found yet, weeks later).  One of the words that comes easily to my lips when asked about our trip now is “sobering” – we feel that we saw the real difficulties and dangers of choosing to come to Cameroon as missionaries.

Yet that is not the entire story, nor even half of it.  Cameroon is gorgeous.  I love the tropics, so it isn’t hard for me to gush about fresh tropical fruits, warmth, opportunities and beauty.  We would be working in Africa, where our hearts have led us, yet able to speak English.  The people we met, even those who appeared stern at first, all gave us a uniform impression of welcome and friendliness.  The teammates we would be working with, Cameroonian and other nationalities, all gave us the impression that it would be an honor to work with them (please don’t take my lack of names or specific mention of anyone as a slight; I have a high sense of privacy online and so I do not want to make public mention of others here without permission).

In the end, this picture feels like our answer.  Cameroon is like the beautiful plant in the background; gorgeous but with thorns.  Yet while working and living there might be hard, like the volcanic rock in my hand, the promise of the reward of following God where He is leading us is like the lily, growing out of rich volcanic soil…and that is why we have chosen to go to Cameroon as missionaries with World Team.

Life Signs

We are in an intense period right now.  We are finishing up Nathan’s thesis so he can actually graduate (from Westminster Seminary California with a Master of Arts in Historical Theology), we are trying to find work to get some income in, we are preparing to go to Cameroon for two weeks with our baby while Nathan’s parents take care of our other 4, I am trying to get all my shifts in at the ER so I can “graduate” from Palomar Hospital’s Intern program, we are preparing to move in a few months….oh, and we are trying to catch up on homeschooling because we had to take a break when I had Talia!

I’m tired just typing all of that.    And if you would like to pray for us, we have just sent out a prayer letter.  Sign up here and we will send it to you!

I am a planner.  So I am trying to imagine all the things that I should be preparing for during our trip to Cameroon.  We will be going from this:

(Escondido City Hall)

to this:

We will not be in the city of Douala long, but will be visiting Bamenda and Kumba, which are more like this:This image of Kumba’s High School is, from what we’ve seen, fairly typical of public buildings.  No money wasted on planters, fountains, or new paint.  And this is definitely life in the tropics – I can taste the air just looking at this picture!

We have been moving towards this step for about 5 years now, and we aren’t even “there” yet.  I have felt frustrated at times, and at other times I feel gratitude for the preparation phase of our life taking place in clean, prosperous California and Canada.  It would be a culture shock, there is no doubt, moving from California to Cameroon, Africa.  And just going for two weeks will be intense and tiring and exhilirating and crazy and a whole lot more I don’t even know about yet!  We are planning on meeting with some people and exploring opportunities for Nathan to serve in a teaching role to Cameroonian church leaders.

It is very humbling to consider that God, as far as we can tell, has a plan for Nathan to serve in that way – there is no doubt that the verse from James 3 strikes fear into the heart!  “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.  For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.”

Nathan knows for certain (and so do I) that we are not perfect.  Hah!  As we say in the “About Us” page, if you are looking for sin in our lives you will certainly find it!  Yet, this verse also holds the key to our desire to serve in Africa.  For there are not many who can teach who choose to teach in Africa; and if our God is the God of the whole world, and all believers are our family, as we proclaim, then we feel we must pursue serving where the need is great… and we hope that our lives may also in some way encourage others to consider serving too…

We want this to be true of us:  For me, to live is Christ; and to die is gain!    (Philippians 1:21)

Books 4 Sale!

(we have moved all books into donate or sell piles, please visit our online stores to see if you can find any you like!)

Amazon

Alibris

The Hobbit: A Review

Nathan and I have been waiting to watch this movie for years, and last Saturday night we found childcare for our 5 kids (including newborn!), dressed up and saw it.  Here’s our thoughts (warning: spoilers!).

Our “fan creds” are decent; The Hobbit was one of Nathan’s favorite books and I’ve enjoyed it as well as reading the LOTR and The Silmarillion.  We don’t speak or write Elvish.    We listened to the CD recording in the car with the kids (up to the same point where the first movie stops) right before the movie to refresh our memories.

My overall feeling afterwards:  Bitter disappointment.  For me, the parts of the movie that I found “good” were sooo good, that it made the undesirable parts that much more annoying.  Nathan’s overall feeling afterwards:  How much arsenic does it take to ruin your favorite morning cup of coffee?  Both of us wish we could just cut out sections of the movie.

One of the best aspects of the original Hobbit story is its solid, small, adventurish nature (until the end which is fairly epic).  It is not an epic tale.  Written or inspired during Tolkien’s time in the trenches, it is a simple, dramatic story of a young man’s adventure with friends.  So there are no women?  So what?  The story carries itself along with appropriate moments of tension and times of calm, so that you end up “living” along with Bilbo.  The movie, after its initial starting scenes (which are almost completely taken from the book) then feels like a too-long, nauseating theme-park ride. Others have discussed the problem with the added frames/second; I can vouch for the lack of success of the technology, at least on the big screen.  I had to start covering my eyes fairly early in the movie to avoid feeling motion sick (and I am not usually susceptible to that).  Nathan thinks the movie will look much better on a tv screen.  I think our society is becoming more and more jaded, and that is so obvious in movies; where one murderous enemy was enough, now 5 are introduced.  The Hobbit movie feels bloated with unnecessary perils and enemies and rather than keeping the story’s suspense, it makes it almost silly.

The side stories that are added in add nothing to the charm of the movie; rather, Azog the pale orc chasing them around ruins the pacing, and the brown wizard/necromancer aside feels like a great big “Huh?” and distraction from the rest of the movie.  While the backstory on Thorin Oakenshield definitely adds to his character, it takes it too far into dark territory and glorifies violence far too much.   In fact, the whole movie has been darkened significantly.  This is an epidemic among modern films so I was expecting it but it is still noticeable enough to mention.  One reviewer wrote, “We have always turned to Tolkien for lessons on how to live, and if you can recover from the relentless barrage of action, you will be uplifted.”  This “uplifting” is accomplished in the movie by giving Gandalf pat little times of psycho-babble.  Really?  Of course, it’s hard to imagine how they could have added in Tolkien’s words instead, since in this work he did not make such speeches (he was writing a little adventure!), but imagining Tolkien saying that courage is not killing someone when you can, or that the world will be changed by people doing small acts of kindness, boggles the mind.  Bilbo shows almost divine grace (undeserved favor) to Gollum by sparing his life, and Tolkien’s genius in using Bilbo’s moment of graciousness as the turning point in his “redemptive” history in the LOTR is here completely misunderstood and called “courage.”

This sounds very negative, and we liked many parts of the movie, so I’ll mention that too.    Jackson’s take on the dwarf’s arrival at Bilbo’s house and the “cleanup” scene were just wonderful – in fact, I felt totally cheated when the scene ended at the time of the dwarves “Misty Mountain” singing – that could have been elongated rather than shortened.  And the music was just as good as I expected.  The tie-in to the LOTR beginning was done very well.  I shivered in the riddle scene (prompting Nathan to laugh at me ).  The trolls were done very well, although I really didn’t like how they changed the scene so that Bilbo is the “hero” rather than Gandalf – it’s too early in the story and feels forced.  I loved the scenery – again!    I liked the casting for every character, and I really wish they had spent scene time fleshing out the other dwarves, rather than introducing Azog.

Nathan says that the most shocking thing to him as a child reading the Hobbit was the death of some of the dwarves at the end; this character mortality is a significant part of the realism of the story.  In the movie, however, the company has become almost immortal, comic-booky; they survive unrealistic danger with pure natural consequence-defying “luck.”  Rather than shivering with Bilbo as he wanders lost in the dark of the mountains’ tunnels, we are visually stunned with such a plethora of diseased goblins (what? Did the plague hit right before they captured the dwarves??) that they look more like globs and the danger is made plastic.  Rather than a scene of Gandalf and Thorin turning bravely to face a tunnel-full of goblins, you have over 100 goblins all being thrown this way and that by almost super-human skill.  Isn’t it interesting that a society obsessed with safety makes movies of such over-the-top peril that the danger actually diminishes?  If I was a psychologist I would say that the Western world is plagued with fear.

I don’t know what rating to give the movie.  How do you rate something that is a mix of A+ and D-?  This is definitely NOT a film for kids, and the level of violence/gore was more than I felt comfortable watching (I eventually just started watching the bottom corner of the screen); even Nathan, who has a much higher tolerance for such things, says that the whole cave scene was just unnecessary.  Well, there you go – our review.  And if anyone with Peter Jackson’s ear is reading, please ask him to tone it down!  At least until the end when the story itself actually ramps up.    Because, most probably, we will be watching the next one….;)

PS – has the actor playing the Gandalf character been sick? He seems to have lost some…vitality… in this movie.  I hope not, it’s just something I noticed.

Thankful for Talia

Welcome to the world, Talia Renae Born!

I have put her birth story and name explanation here (also under the section called “births” at the top), if you are interested.

This post is where I want to say why I am thankful.  It being November, many people are posting daily reasons for thanksgiving; I have a whole bunch. 

• First and foremost, I am grateful that Talia is alive.  This pregnancy is the first that I have ever struggled with the fear of miscarriage (as my previous pregnancy miscarried), and I had that struggle even up to her delivery.  But she’s alive!!
• I am grateful that God gave us Talia, when I was struggling very much with “empty arms syndrome” and not wanting to be DONE with having kids.  And grateful that He gave our little family hearts and hands to welcome her.
• She is well, except for a broken clavicle (collarbone), which I have been assured will heal alright.
• She is “normal” – she does not appear to have any immediately obvious disabilities … this is not to say that we would not love her or welcome her any less if she did, but I have had enough close experience with the disabled to be grateful for her sake and ours that that will not be a challenge we face with her.
• Talia is an excellent eater!
• Talia seems like such a tiny little thing to me, and skinny…but I am grateful that she came out without tearing me!  And the way she eats, she won’t be skinny for long. 
• I am grateful that while I asked for drugs at the end of labor, there wasn’t enough time to get them, so she was totally without drugs in her system when she was born, and also I was able to fully control pushing her out (in 2-3 pushes).
• I am grateful for a good sister in the Lord, Jodi, who held the fort down at home for us while we were in the hospital.
• I am so grateful for all the friends and family who were praying us through Talia’s birth and current recovery.
• I am grateful that we have a family here, of our brothers and sisters in the Lord, who support us, feed us, pray for us, encourage us, and love us.
• For myself, I am glad that God has given me a body where every birth has started with my “water breaking” – the amniotic fluid leaking out a little – so that I always have had several hours to prepare myself for labor.
• I am grateful that I have a good husband, in normal life and during the extremes of labor and birth.
• We found out afterwards that where the umbilical cord was attached to the placenta was on the edge, not the middle (don’t ask me to explain what that means) but apparently that is the position that can cause the cord to get in the way during birth, cutting off air to the baby and necessitating a real emergency C-section.   SOO grateful that didn’t happen to Talia!!
• I hope this doesn’t come across as offensive, but I am grateful that I am a Christian and believe and trust and can rest in knowing that He is in control.  Another woman came into the hospital in transition right after we gave birth to Talia, and was put in the room next to me.  I could hear her very clearly (definitely a “natural childbirth”…ie, loud!) and having been there myself only a half hour before, I knew exactly what she was feeling…but her screams were ones of panic and fear and while I screamed a few times, I never felt that kind of panic or fear, just the pain.  So glad He is my Savior!  And it is my hope to share that hope with others, which is why we are planning to become missionaries….you gotta share news that great! 
• I am thankful that this time I gave birth at a hospital I knew very well, having been a volunteer on the birth floor for many months before Talia’s birth.  It was nice knowing the staff, what to expect, etc.
• I am grateful that we didn’t have to pay the hospital bills!  When we were in between health care after moving from Canada in 2010, and I had the miscarriage that had me in the emergency of the same hospital, that one day meant being sent bills for $10,000!  Seriously.  And that was a miscarriage.  Who knows what a birth would cost?  (and also thankful that $10K was eventually covered too!
• I am thankful for a network of friends who do things like lend me their breast pump, and plan a baby shower for Talia – it will be our first since our firstborn!
• Talia has been very calm and quiet when awake, and while we have no promises on that continuing, I am grateful that’s life right now!!

Well, that’s all I can think of right now… I may add more soon!