Ebolowa aka Rotten Chimpanzee

So it's been a while since our last post but considering our current internet and electricity situation I am sure you will all forgive us.

We have been getting settled into our new home in Ebolowa (which means rotten chimpanzee in the Bulu language---nice huh!) We have also been traveling to many of the villages in the southern province and preaching and assessing the needs of the church. We were able to travel to the village of one of our good friends, who is now a pastor there. It's a village called Ma'an and it's out in the middle of the jungle. I mean there is nothing out there. We were able to go and hold a campaign there. On our way we were praising God for our 4x4 STL truck, because we definitely needed it. We were slipping and sliding the whole way and actually almost got stuck in a ravine at one point, but we finally made it there after 4 hours (it should've only been a 2 1/2 hour trip but the road was horrible). The village has no running water, electricity, village restaurant, or anything. All they have to eat is bush meat and we ate our full of it while we there. The first night we arrived Joel preached and around 15 people prayed to receive Christ which is awesome. After the service the pastor asked us to stay because the women of the church had prepared something for us to eat. Yes, of course it was bush meat! We had viper, anteater, and plantains, but it was actually all really good except the skin of the snake I couldn't eat that. We then headed back to the little Auberge, took a nice bucket bath and went to sleep. The next morning was Sunday so we got to the church early and of course the women were ready to feed us again. They were so hospitable. What was on the menu for breakfast you might ask? Well, we had dried fish in eggs, black snake, leftover anteater, and plantains. Yum Yum! And whatever was leftover was lunch. I have to say that it really wasn't that bad at all. I have actually come to really like African food and viper in particular. Yes, it does taste a little like chicken and crab meat. It's kind of a sweet meat. Viper--the other white meat!!

Well, it was a really good time with the church there and with our friend Isidore. We also drove through many other villages that you wouldn't even know existed. There is so much work to be done here. It is amazing to see village after village just in the middle of the jungle and God has a plan for each one of the people that live there. It's hard to even know where to start sometimes because there is so much need, but we just continue to ask God to lead us and guide with what He wants accomplished here.

We have also been working with Book of Hope International and helping get that started in the southern province of Cameroon. Book of Hope is an awesome ministry to reach out to the children and youth all over the world. The books are actually in a magazine form and contain information to help students deal with issues they may be facing like sex, drugs, and family issues, and make right decisions. It also gives the students the opportunity to make the most imoportant decision of all, which is giving their life to Christ.

So we had our training for BOH (Book of Hope) in Yaounde and loaded-up about 45 boxes of books to be handed-out at the schools there. We did our first distribution in Yaounde. It was a small elementary school, but it was good to see how it works. We then helped with training a team in our city. We had the opportunity to go into one of the largest schools in Ebolowa for our first distribution with our team. We went class by class and gave out 2653 BOH books to the student. It was really fun and reminded me of my days in Master's Commission.

After Thanksgiving we are planning to help another missionary here with building a tabernacle for the village church in Ma'an. We will also be helping a team that is coming to build a tabernacle for the church in Ambam, that we helped plant 4 years ago. So things are going pretty well for our ministry right now.

The biggest frustration has been our electricity situation in our neighborhood. It has been cutting off 4 to 5 days a week. We have bought a generator but we can only use it for a few hours a day and it gets really hot at night without a fan. So please be praying about that situation for us because if it doesn't get any better we will have to move into another place in the city when our lease is up. Also, our dog Butterball died Monday morning. She was a really good dog and had a great temperment. We don't know why she died but we think she may have eaten a poisonous frog or something. There is a lot of spiritual warfare going on in our neighborhood and satan has been attacking hard, so please pray for our safety. It isn't always easy living here, but we know that we are where God wants us to be.

So that is an update on a few of the things we have been doing here. I will try to post some pics so that you can see where we live and what we have been doing.