We’ve been back in the states over six months now, so this update is long overdue; sorry.
A couple months after our return, and we were having trouble thinking through how to communicate, and someone saw us in church and said Wow, you look tired. This turned out to be a great summary of where we’re at. It wasn’t until we left Cameroon that I realized just how stressful and wearying it had been. Since then, we’ve had one emergency after another; I feel like I’ve been mostly putting out fires. I won’t bore you with the (very boring) details here, but feel free to ask if you like.
Transition has been hard this time around. How are you all handling inflation? Without even considering the obvious financial implications, the emotional implications of paying 150% of what we expect we should for just about everything, has been hard. And anyone who has bought a car in the last couple years knows that particular corner of insanity. Anyway, these are things you all may have been getting used to over time (at least to some extent), but it’s been hard for us trying to catch up with the changes of the last few years.
Kim mentioned in an earlier blog post that we are in Tolkein’s Houses of Healing. I was thinking about that, and the fact that Éowyn stayed in the houses some time after Aragorn healed her, saying “Shadow lies on me still.” Still, I look for the turning point, “these two of his charges prospered and grew daily in strength.” So for the moment, it isn’t clear where we’re headed.
But we have seen several encouraging signs.
Anna is doing much better, attending classes at school all day every day, and doing very well in most of them. And wrestling with teenage girl things, like how to bring Jesus to the lunch table, and how to deal with her friends’ various sexualities. It isn’t all easy, but way, way better than where she was at a year ago.
Joel is now in his second term at Le Tourneau, and doing well. He has had his share of bumps along the way, but he’s enjoying what he’s learning, and we’re able to help him with some things he finds more challenging, which gives us hope.
James looks to be on track to graduate in May! The last year we’ve been spending a LOT of time and energy working with him, trying to help him get through problems academic, personal and spiritual. I trust that we will look back on this period of investment, and praise God for his work through us and the many others supporting James.
We’ve had some financial difficulties this year, between a few people stopping giving, general inflation, and the craziness of the used car market. But we were given a 2006 Ford Explorer, which has treated us very well since, and for which we thank God daily. Several people have filled in some of the gaps with substantial one time gifts, for which we are also very grateful.
Thanks to each of you that are still reading this; I know I can be longwinded. I’ll close by asking for your prayers for the rest of this transition. For our complete healing. For wise decisions about future work, given our various family issues. That our lives would contribute strategically to the whole church glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.
Joel applying for his first job, on an ipad, during a sunbreak
We’re behind on getting news out, but we’re starting a furlough/home assignment year. Part of the news issue is that we’re much in need of rest. So if you haven’t heard from us, please don’t take it personally; most haven’t.
So we’re trying to get some rest, but can’t seem to stop moving around. We’re currently in Orlando, FL for meetings, and heading for a couple days at the beach. The current schedule has us starting to set up our furlough house in August (thanks for those already working in this!!). 😂
Joel stayed behind in Washington, starting work at a Christian camp today until he starts at LeTourneau University. It was surreal going through the application form with him, filling out form after form, most of which I’d seen before but only in paper, the whole process on an iPad… So we hung out outside the main office while he filled it out, and got to participate in a sunbreak. 😉 After growing up in the tropics, he has only seen jokes about sunbreaks…
Applying for jobs has changed. Lots has changed in the US since we spent more than a couple weeks here. We’re planning on occupying our house in Fort Worth to minimize transition stress, but things won’t be the same. We’ve heard of lots of changes in the church and wider culture since we left in 2019 (remember, before COVID?). Yes. We left BEFORE COVID. It will be interesting re-adapting to what’s going on now. If you see us acting weird, please be gracious with us as we figure this out.
I’m other news, I ran into a couple from Togo yesterday, and had fun chatting with them (in French) with no problem. 😉
We took this photo at the end of the day today, to celebrate our first tone rule, resulting in our first rule about how to write tone in this language!
It took us awhile to get there together, but I think it was worth it. We found eight different tone melodies in nouns of form CVCVC (where C is a consonant and V is a vowel). In isolation, each of the melodies falls in the second syllable. The same thing happens when you put a high tone or a low tone before the word.
But when you put either a high or low tone after the word, none of them fall anymore. This happens if you’re adding one or two syllables.
The short version is that the last syllable of the phrase falls. So it looks like the words have a falling tone in isolation, but that’s just because they end the phrase. The same thing with the possessive pronouns (high and low after the noun); they fall because they end the phrase, not (necessarily) because something in those words makes them fall.
So people will certainly be tempted to write this fall, as it is easy to hear. But as it is clearly attached to the phrase (rather than any of these words), it shouldn’t need to be written, except perhaps with a period.
For this interested in what “phrase” means here, so am I.😅 This may be an utterance, a phonological phrase, or a syntactic unit. We’ll need to investigate some longer utterances to find out.
This is a post for my engineer friends. I took a shower this morning for the first time in days, because couldn’t figure this thing out.
This is my second stay in this compound; before I stayed in a flat that had a nice hot water system, I think from a tank on the roof, which was basically just heated by the sun. So my expectations (from here and elsewhere) led me to think that the left knob was hot.
This was further reinforced by the fact that it has special plumbing, going straight up. The right knob connects to the toilet and sink, and to another spiget off to the left –classic cold water plumbing.
Turning on the left knob, you get low pressure –still not uncommon for local hot water. But turning in the right at the same time (to mix hot and cold), the pressure guess funky, weird noises clank, and very soon there are sounds of spraying outside, like there’s a leak somewhere. Turn off the right knob, and it stops –so I did.
But the left knob by itself is just enough pressure to be disappointed, not really to shower. So I gave up, and got to work on other things, like analysing tone.
Later I noticed that there was no plumbing to a tank on the roof, as I had expected, so the left knob was coming from the attic, not a solar tank on the roof. If that was the case, then the hose spilling water in the ground should be the overflow for that tank.
So…. <drumroll\> if the right knob was causing overflow of the attic tank, then it should be that the left knob wasn’t hot, but rather attic water, and the right knob was city water.
This kind of system is important where water is scarce, and where city water cuts off a lot. That is, use the right (city water) knob most of the time, and when it doen’t work, turn it off and use the left (attic water) knob. Then when city water comes back on, open both knobs and fill the tank in the attic (just until you hear the overflow spilling out the window).
So once I figured out that normal usage was just using the right knob, I got decent pressure. Heat would have been nice, but it’s hot enough here that cold water wasn’t really a problem. And it was nice to finally figure out how to shower. 🤪
The last post focused on workshop issues; this one will have more other life issues. This was the longest workshop I’ve done in Cameroon, and my first time flying within the country. For instance, we stayed at a Benedictine monastery, so we were able to buy fresh milk, from the above and a small number of other cows on the compound.
Downtown Yaoundé from the air
For those looking for some perspective on the capitol city of Cameroon (where we live), here it is from the air. You can see the taller buildings and larger roads going to a center area in the top third of the above photo.
I also got a photo of our neighborhood, complete with our house, the CABTAL building, the soccer field where we get to exercise (even in isolation), and even on end of the building of our local church!
Our neighborhood
Back to the monastery, apparently this order likes to keep busy, and to make things to sell to the community. This is where they make essential oils (from lots of things, with lots of cryptic names —cinnamon was the only one I recognized):
They also have a place behind the building where we stayed, where they microbrew a beer made from locally available ingredients. But as with many places, innovation, industry, and tradition go hand in hand. They also have a talking drum prominently displayed at the monastery entrance:
Talking drum at the monasteryHear the two tones of the drum
I didn’t ever hear anyone play it (other than me, in the above video clip), but these drums (found across Africa) are dear to my heart. They probably make no sense to most English speakers, but when you speak a tonal language, these drums are putting out the information that you normally use to make words. So the fact that these drums are used to communicate language, which is then understood at a great distance, is a testimony to the importance of tone in these languages. Imagine you had a drum you could hit that made the ‘p’ sound, and another that could make a ‘b’ or ‘k’ sound, and you could just pound out letters (on a drum carved from a tree, no less!), and so beat out the sounds of a word. Anyway, I think it is cool that something so uniquely African exists, that recognizes the unique value of tone in African languages.
I just got back from a workshop where we tested out AZT in a longer workshop, and things went well. I say “longer”, because it was supposed to be three weeks, but we had to isolate after the first day, because of a COVID-19 exposure (the first in our whole community in months). But we got tested:
Our first (negative) test
And then again:
Our second (negative) test
Anyway, it was good to get back to the workshop:
When we debriefed the workshop, I had two main questions for the guys. First, was the tool easy enough to use? One guy responded that he didn’t really know how to use computers, but this tool was easy to use. So that was great news. I had suspected this, and worked for it, but it was good to hear we’re hitting that target.
The other question was about engagement and involvement: did the guys feel like they were actively taking a real part in the work? Again, they answered yes. In the picture above, the guys are talking through a decision, before telling the computer “This word is like that other one”, or “this word is different from each word on this list”. Framing this question is important, because this is a question that people can discuss and come up with a real, meaningful answer, without knowing much about linguistics. If we were to ask them to tell us if this phrase had a floating tone in it (yup, those are real), we would be asking them to guess and make up an answer, since they would have no idea what the question meant —probably just like most people reading this post. :-) But floating tones are important, and we need to analyze them correctly; we just want to get at them in a way that enables the fullest participation of the people who speak the language.
I didn’t come up with this on my own; far from it, I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, who pioneered how to engage people meaningfully in the analysis of their own language. What’s new here is that these methods are modeled within a computer program, so the user is clicking buttons instead of moving pieces of paper around on a table. Buttons are not in themselves better than paper, but when we work on the computer, each decision is recorded immediately, and each change is immediately reflected in the next task —unlike pen and paper methods, where you work with a piece of paper with (often multiple) crossed out notes, which then need to be added to a database later.
The other major advantage of this tool is the facilitation of recordings. Typically, organizing recordings can be even more work than typing data from cards into a database, and it can easily be procrastinated, leaving the researcher with a partially processed body of recordings. But this tool takes each sorted word (e.g., ‘corn’ and ‘mango’), in each frame (e.g., ‘I sell __’ and ‘the __is ripe’) it is sorted, and offers the user a button to record that phrase. Once done, the recording is immediately given a name with the word form and meaning, etc (so we can find it easily in the file system), and a link is added to the database, so the correct dictionary entry can show where to find it. Having the computer do this on the spot is a clear advantage over a researcher spending hours over weeks and months processing this data.
Once the above is done (the same day you sorted, remember? not months later), you can also produce an XML>PDF report (standing again on the giant shoulders of XLingPaper) with organized examples ready to copy and paste into a report or paper, with clickable links pointing to the sound files.
Anyway, I don’t know if the above communicates my excitement, but thinking through all these things and saying “This is the right thing to do” came before “Huh, I think I could actually make some of this happen” and this last week, we actually saw this happen —people who speak their language, but don’t know much about linguistics meaningfully engaged in the analysis of their language, in a process that results in a database of those decisions, including organized recordings for linguists to pick apart later —and cool reports!
Screenshot of PDF (which has clickable links, though not visible in this screenshot)
I’ve written before about triviality, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about its application to our current times. That is, for missionaries and others working cross-culturally, there is always an element of adjusting to a new environment and culture. This includes how to find your bedroom light switch in the dark (if you’re moving house), but also how to not insult someone on the road, and how to not be insulted by someone else on the road —i.e., knowing when someones behavior should be offensive, and when it is just normal for your new environment.
But the kicker in all the above (and many other things to adjust to) is that knowing the new reality is only the first layer of adjustment. Being able to point to your light switch after thinking for ten seconds is not the same as being able to reach it intuitively —in the dark, and while still mostly asleep, when your brain is not really working yet. This is where the concept of triviality is helpful (to me, anyway!). Normal life has lots of trivial items in it: how to shop, how to make food, how to greet, how to get around town. There is some adjustment when these things change, but the goal is normally to move these things to a place were we just do them, without having to think through them each time/day.
So the twist that hit me this morning, is that whether we’re talking about culture shock, or reverse culture shock (or reverse reverse culture shock…), the transition is normally from one more or less stable environment to another more or less stable environment. The problem is that one house isn’t laid out the same as another house —but they’re both houses, and neither changes much over time. Similarly, moving from one culture/city to another requires adjusting from one status quo to another, but there is a status quo in each place, which doesn’t change much over time. But this is not what we find in 2020.
Rather, this year we have political and medical facts which seem to change on a regular basis. Then the recommendations, orders/laws, and rulings, which change in response to those facts (or not), then the implementation of those recommendations, orders/laws, and rulings on various levels, which must respond to all of the above. So the question “should I wear a mask right now?”, for instance, has been a non-trivial question for months, for many people. Are the CDC and WHO recommending masks right now, or not? What kind of masks, in what situations? What are the relevant recommendations, orders/laws, and rulings of our federal/national government? And of our state? Of our County? Of our City? And perhaps most frustrating of all, how do we respond when the neighboring nation/state/county/city says something different than ours? Or when the state says something that contradicts what the county says? Most of us are simply not accustomed to thinking through all these issues on any kind of regular basis, much less each time it might be appropriate to put on or take off a mask. And masks or not is not the only question (e.g., distancing, quarantine/isolation, and contact reporting), nor are on and off the only answers to that one question (e.g., public/online shaming, rebellion, political advocacy, and non-/violent public protests)
Now, if there were one set of rules imposed (for better or worse), this might just be a matter of adjusting to them, however much time, energy, and libery that takes. But when the info we’re basing a decision on changes every couple days (on some level), we have to re-evaluate, and the decision never has a chance to become trivial –so we continue to spend energy we shouldn’t on menial, daily tasks.
There is, of course one condition where this problem doesn’t apply. Namely, if your allegiance to a particular body medical/political/whatever is significantly strong to trump all others, then you make your decision once, and only change it when that one body changes advice —and hopefully that’s not often. But I have a hard time distinguishing that from bigotry, especially in the current political climate in the US. That is, if your response to the mask question is really just a badge of political affiliation (as I’ve heard from MANY people), then can you still say you’re wearing a mask (or not) because it is the right response to the pandemic?
I read twitter enough to know that for many people, there is only one correct answer to the mask question. But there seems to be a strong correlation between those people and the many who feel there is only one correct answer to the “which party should be in power” question, on both sides. And I, for one, have never felt fully comfortable voting for either party, as neither seems to represent me particularly well. So for me, my conscience dictates that I continue to reevaluate both questions, as new data comes in.
And I know there are many people out there that feel (at least a bit) the same. I’ve heard from many the difficulty of adjusting to constantly changing goal posts. And I think that this idea of having a culture shock (or lack of triviality) that has no real end in sight, is a large part of it. Even in this context, I feel obliged to continue to insist on my right and responsibility, as a human and as a Christian, to think, to use and develop my conscience, and to pray for the Holy Spirit to give guidance, and to follow that guidance even in the face of direction to do otherwise from lesser authorities:
But Peter and John answered [their rulers and elders and scribes, in council], “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
Acts 4:19-20 (ESV)
So where do we go from there? I think the bigotry answer, as flawed as it is, has something to it. That is, in the midst of a storm, hold one to one thing that doesn’t move. But I think we want to be careful to not make our one thing a human or human institution, which will all fail us, sooner or later. Rather, Jesus tells us
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
Matthew 7:24-25 (ESV)
So let us continue to read what Jesus had to say, and try to put it into practice, and let the storm flow around us as it will. Not that I think this will be easy, but I think it’s the only answer that doesn’t result in our eventual destruction.
Starbucks is closed; does this still count as an airport?
Our trip to Paris was fairly uneventful, apart from being told we had to take off our beautifully created cloth facemasks, and put on “surgical” masks, which get wet and dirty easily….
Then we saw that our trip to Atlanta was late, currently by three hours. Air France (from whom we bought the ticket) has no idea why it’s late. They can’t improve our seating in the flight (we are currently all five sitting apart)
And they can’t rebook the flight we will miss because of this very late flight… Until we find a Delta person… Not sure what their partnerships are for, when they deny responsability for each other’s flights, even when they sold the tickets… I guess it’s fair to say everyone is stressed, so we should be glad to make it this far, and to have expectation to make it the rest of the way is a lot better than the alternative!
Several of our dear Texas friends helped us catalog our shipment to move here to Cameroon, carefully tucking and packing things knowing the great journey they would travel. That was in late May and early June. Several asked, “When will this arrive in Africa?” I would reply, “Hopefully by Christmas.” Their shock was evident. We don’t have a culture that breeds patience. It is foreign.
When we arrived in Yaoundé July 8, our boxes had already been trucked across Texas up to North Carolina, where the JAARS office was packing them into wooden crates to be loaded into a sea freight container. When we sat in Orientation classes July 24, we were excited to hear the shipment had left NC and was due into port on this side of the Atlantic as early as September 12! That sounded too good to be true, so I mentally added a month. If it could arrive before our birthdays at the end of October, THAT would be a great birthday! They added a comment that it’s important to get shipping containers through customs well before the holiday rush.
In September, we began to really start longing in earnest for our belongings. Joel needs his own scientific calculator for math class. It’s coming on the shipment. Anna needs a longer skirt for Chapel day. We have one on the shipment. We need a board game other than a deck of cards to play when the power goes out! I need my cooking pots & pans, the sewing machine, the piano, the mixer, etc… Multiple times per day I think of something I have – but don’t have here – and don’t want to buy again for 1 month’s use (IF I could find it in a store!) I always thought of myself as a friend to the simple life, fond of minimalism, but feeding and caring for 3 teenagers for months on end is not so simple out of a few suitcases.
In October, we learned that the shipment had been delayed 3-4 weeks, but was almost to Cameroon. And in November, we learned of it’s safe arrival in port! But it can take 2 weeks to process customs paperwork. Then last week we learned that initial paperwork was rejected. No idea when it will actually make it here…
Why is it so hard not to have a sewing machine? A Halloween costume? Wrapping paper? These are American things that our African brothers and sisters live without. I find myself longing. I have been longing now for a very long time. Even when it may be broken or ruined when it all arrives! I have been pitiful enough to read those packing lists for fun…
The longing in my heart grows so strong for these physical things. And I know the Scriptures say, “Do not store up for yourselves earthly treasure, where moths and rust destroy or thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven… for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21
Have I put hope & joy and comfort on earthly things that perish, spoil and fade?
This morning in my study of the apostle Peter I read the phrase: “…when God waited patiently for Noah to build the ark.” I ever thought about God waiting patiently. How long was that? No one knows exactly, but Biblical scholars all estimate somewhere between 40-100 years. Years! God’s patience is beyond my imagination. I’m having a hard time waiting for even 6 months…
As I marveled at his patience, and my lack of it, He spoke,
“Do you long for Me, like you long for this shipment?”
Wow!
Do I long for Jesus’ arrival like I long for my ship’s arrival?
Do I long for heaven as my true Home like I long for these cement walls to feel like home?
Transition is hard.
It is rootless wandering.
Challenging me to build on the Rock of Ages.
The joy of every longing heart. ?
– – – – – – – – – –
What are you longing for? Is it eternal? Or can it perish, spoil or fade?
Let us set our “minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Colossians 3:2
One thing that hasn’t changed much since we first visited Cameroon (in 2004) is the taxi system. They are fairly inexpensive, though they have a few drawbacks. First of all, they pack in people (normally into a Toyota Corolla), as you can see above and below (driver not pictured, but on the other side of Kim.…)
Kim and I in the front passenger seat
But it isn’t just people who get overloaded; it is also not uncommon to see stuff sticking out the back of a taxi:
Stuff gets overloaded, too
One comment we heard that has helped us process traffic here is to not think of “my lane” and “your/oncoming lane.” Or, as we were otherwise told in understanding Cameroon, “Everything is negotiable.” How many “lanes” do you see in this photo?
Five lanes of traffic on the road to downtown
On the far right (upper right in photo), you can see a yellow taxi on the side of the road, probably picking up or dropping off a fare. Behind him is a silver car edging in between us and the taxi in front of us. Passing the taxi in front of us is another silver car, straddling the center line. On the other side of him is an oncoming taxi, who is passing cars stopped on the other side of the road. Think of it as water, flowing around whatever other is there, including cars, people, motorcycles, and potholes. Then our driver passes:
Passing with oncoming traffic
I don’t remember who we were passing, but you can see we’re across the center line with oncoming traffic (don’t do this, James!), which we managed not to hit. And yes, that truck in the oncoming lane really is labelled “flammable liquid” (probably natural gas tanks for cooking).
One benefit of all this congestion is that things really don’t go very fast. On a trip downtown, I only get up to fourth gear once or twice, and over 60kmph (38mph) maybe once. So most of my driving has been in first or second gear, negotiating near gridlock, so any accident wouldn’t be very serious. In fact, I had a motorcycle hit me the other day, and he just kept on going.…
But the trip in the taxi is only half the fun; there are so many places you can go. One of my agenda items in these last three months has been to research church options. There turn out to be lots of different churches around, each with their own particular issues (as is true everywhere, I think). After spending a good chunk of time looking for signs on our main road, I realized that might not be the best option; this sign points to something that I never could find.…
Sign for a church (not? no longer?) there
But we did find lots of other churches, smaller and larger, more baptist and more presbyterian, more village-esque and more televangel-esque. Most seem to have teaching at least bordering on prosperity as gospel. It has been easier getting around on Sunday mornings once we were able to use group cars, though not without issues. The car we checked out last Sunday stalled on the way to the church we planned to go to. We got it push-started, but we returned to our neighborhood, rather than park it in a neighborhood where push-starting it would have been much more problematic.
Whatever trouble we have getting around, we are glad to have on hand our missionary aviation colleagues. We visited the hangar one day, and got a few photo ops:
Joel and Anna in a Caravan
This program also has something we haven’t had before, a missionary helicopter:
All three in a helicopter
There was even some art on the wall with the aviation mission statement:
The Mission of SIL Aviation
With some of the security issues in Cameroon right now, we aren’t able to go some of the places this aviation program has flown in the past —so they aren’t getting as much flight time as they’d like. But it is good to know they are there, and I look forward to flying with them some day!
Please pray for our safety and smooth travel as go out and about in Yaoundé and elsewhere in Cameroon. Please also pray for the larger security issues to be resolved, and for peace, development, and the growth in breadth and depth of the church of Jesus Christ in Cameroon!
