We chose today to visit all our neighbors. It's our annual tradition here at Shiloh.  Doris carried the bag of individually wrapped homemade banana bread.  Princes Angle, age three, carried the bag of gospel tracts.  And Mama Alice carried herself.  

We started this tradition around ten years ago as a way of getting into the homes of our neighbors with the gospel.  And it works.  People who would never darken the door of any church welcome us when we show up.  They know we are the white neighbors that live in the "flower house", so named because of colorful bougainvillea that spill over our wall.  Some neighbors are stable.  They've been living in the neighborhood longer than we have.  Some are transient.  They rent the small studio apartments and little duplexes that are sprinkled everywhere in-between the large houses.  The old timers tell the new-bees who we are.  

We coached Princes Angle on the fine art of being polite prior to leaving Shiloh.  She practiced saying "Good morning!  Happy New Year!" and shaking our hands.  She took her job very seriously.  We found a gaggle of teenage girls (whom we have watched grow up over the years) sitting outside the first house, laughing, talking, giggling, and being very teenage-ish. Prince Angle broke away from us, strode up to the first teen, put out her hand and said "Good morning!  Happy New Year!" as big as you please.  After shaking the first hand, she quickly moved around the group, repeating her lines.  Everyone loved her!  She opened doors and hearts to our message of hope for the New Year.  Hope, peace, love, joy that is only found in a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Happy New Year from Shiloh to you and yours.  May your new year be filled with an ever deepening relationship with the Altogether Lovely One.

The call came in shortly before 4 p.m. today.

"Good afternoon," I said in French.

"Good afternoon Mama Alice, she replied in French.  "How are you?"

While I recognized her voice, I could not put a name or a face on it.  But OK, she knows my name, so we must be friends.   "I am fine, thank you," I said in the polite Cameroon way.  "And how are you?"

"I am fine.  How is Papa Jim?"

The plot thickens.  She knows both of us.  But who is she?  The voice is very familiar.  We certainly must know her. But I am at a loss as to who she is.  "He's fine, thank you," I reply.  Polite conversation is liberally sprinkled with "thank yous".  

"Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year to you, too."   Who could you possibly be, I wondered.

And then the dreaded question came: 

"Do you know who this is?"

"Yes.  I know your voice very well.  But I'm forgetting your name,"  I replied, hoping against hope that this would appease her. 

"When you hear my voice  you know who I am.  So tell me, what do you think my name is?"

Now I'm trapped.  Everyone wants to be your best friend.  Everyone wants you to always remember them, down to the last detail.  Everyone is deeply offended if you cannot at least conjure up their name.   

"Oh but my friend, I do know your voice.  It's just your name that has escaped my mind.  If I could remember it, I would have already told you.  My mind is a blank."  Thankfully this pacifies her.

"Yes!  You do know me!"  She's very excited now.  "I'm your mother you know!"

Sorry, this isn't helping at all.  Not even a tiny bit.  Who among all the many, many Cameroonians that we know do I refer to as my mother????  Ladies of a certain age are called Mama this or Mama that, but to be MY MOTHER?  I don't think so.  

"Yes, you are my mother."

And then finally it comes out.  "I'm Monique!"

"How are you, Monique?  It's good to hear your voice."  Monique?  Monique who???  The only Monique I know is young enough to be my daughter.  And besides, this is not that Monique's voice.

"Oh, I'm not doing very well.  It's my legs.  They are giving me pains.  You know I'm getting old.  It is getting hard to move about."

"Yes, I understand the problems of the aged.  I'm getting old now, too."  

Her "Good-bye" was dripping with smiles.  She was so happy to have gotten to talk with Mama Alice and wish her Happy New Year.  And she was especially delighted that Mama Alice remembered her.

But Mama Alice hasn't a clue who she really is.  Welcome to Cameroon.  This is a fairly regular occurrence out here on the Dark Side of the Moon.

 

Monday, 25 December 2017, 10:30 a.m.

Papa Jim invited us to come to the table for a Christmas morning brunch that he had prepared for us.  Lots of yummy food.   Everything was special and festive.  But we were only three at the table.  Papa Jim.  Mama Alice.  Theirry, the 17 year old young man who lives at Shiloh while attending university here in Yaounde.

While marveling over the delicious surprises Papa Jim had fixed, we asked Theirry what his family would be doing today.  And the answer we got was unexpected.  He said it was just an ordinary day at his house.  They never celebrated Christmas.  His church does not do anything special for Christmas.  So we asked about New Years.  Do they do anything special then?  Well, sometimes his mom takes the kids out and buys them something special.  But not every year.

Wow!  We didn't know that our annual Christmas party, held on 23 December this year,  was the first time in his life that Theirry had celebrated Christmas.  We didn't know that the gift we gave him was the first Christmas gift he had ever received in his whole life.  We didn't know that when he played the piano and sang during our Christmas program, that was the first time he had ever witnessed such a program, let alone take part in it.   

Come to think of it, we should have known.  You see, back in 1991 when we arrived in Cameroon for the first time, we met a country that didn't know anything about Christmas.  It was not part of their culture.  They had zero Christmas  traditions.   Then not so many years after we arrived out here, the Chinese signed an agreement with the Cameroonian government.  Ever since that time, more and more "made in China" goodies are being imported into the country.  Eventually China got around to introducing Christmas to Cameroonians.  And year by year the big cities like Yaounde become increasingly commercialized during the Holidays.  With the advent of Christmas, many churches have started taking notice.  Maybe they will have a special program.  Maybe the children will put on some kind of a program.  Maybe the pastor will read the account of the birth of Christ on the Sunday closest to Christmas.  This year one church held a special Christmas baptismal service.  And another church put on a Christmas concert.

 

"Have you ever cracked a safe?" she asked.  

"Not yet," he replied.

"Well here's your chance!"

Typical husband and wife conversation, right?

An email went out to the mission community. Did anyone know of a good locksmith?  Preferably one who speaks English?  And Mama Alice quickly responded.  Her favorite locksmith speaks English and would be most happy to help out.  What exactly needed breaking into?  Was it a door?  A cabinet?  What?

She allowed as how it was something unusual.  

How unusual?  

With a red face she whispered [is it possible to whisper in an email???] that it was her office safe.  A large sum of money and her passport were inside the safe.  She needed help getting it out. 

When Papa Jim arrived, he met a damsel in distress sitting in her office next to her wall safe, hoping against hope that her troubles would soon be over.  He had spent a considerable amount of time searching the web for hints on cracking safes.  Did you know you can learn such things on line?!  But her safe turned out to be key operated.  Piece of cake.  He can open nearly any kind of key operated lock known to man.  And he has.  Many times.  For many people.  In many places around the world.  It's a shame Papa Jim is a missionary.  He would have made a terrific thief!

Turns out this particular safe is key operated.  Takes a special kind of key.  Cannot be picked by your standard lock picking tools.  Which he has of course.  You can't call yourself a locksmith and not have the official tools, after-all.   But he was not intimidated by the problem presenting itself.  He has actually fabricated a special tool for picking special locks before.  Several times.  In several places around the world.  This is not a challenge for him.  

Somehow this older missionary lady (even older than us), working for another mission agency, managed to misplace the one and only key for her mission's office safe.  Having recently sold a truck for her mission, a large sum of money is locked inside the safe.  And now she has to remove said large (really large) sum of money, but cannot get inside the safe without the key.  

It's sure a good thing that Papa Jim can break into most anything.  The damsel in distress is wearing a smile now.   And thus ends another one of those typical days that we regularly have here at Shiloh.

Rain!  Wonderful, pounding, torrential rain.  Coming down in unending sheets.  (No raining cats and dogs here.)  Loudly beating on roof tops.  Blotting out all other sounds.  Only rumbling thunder penetrates the noise of a tropical rain storm.  Thunder rolling and crashing. First nearer and nearer, and then farther and farther away.  Streaks of lighting piercing the darkness of our bedroom.  But it was the thunder that pulled me from dreamland.  And what a delightful way to have sleep interrupted.  This, the first rainstorm of the long dry season, is a most welcomed relief.  It will be an infrequent occurrence.  And rains every appearance will be applauded. 

Breakfast in the dining room with two German doctors.  The table was set with our Christmas dishes.  Very festive.  It was a relaxing, enjoyable meal.  Catching up on all that is going on in the hospital up north where they volunteer. Listened to fascinating stories of their work among the poor.

Had a late morning meeting with Francis.  Read list of non-perishable food items  as he packed market bags one by one with those items. Bags were placed in back of the Christmas tree.  Frozen chicken will be added at the last minute.  Each family will go home from our annual Christmas party with enough food to put on a Christmas dinner at their place for their friends and family.  Finalized  shopping list for last minute purchases for the meal.  Perishable things  that could not be bought ahead of time.  

Francis and Doris carried side-board out to front hallway.  Guests will file past and serve themselves.  Brought library table down to dining room and experimented with various seating arrangements.  How to fit 25 people around three tables, taking into consideration the needs of families with small children?  Fourteen adults.  Five teens.  Five little children six and under.  One baby.   Eventually figured it out.  Think it's going to work.  Tables are in a "U" shape, giving that feeling of all being together.

Doris ironed  all our best tablecloths.  It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you look.  Our party will be held on Saturday, 23 December, at 1 p.m.  Preparations have been going on for several weeks.  Now we are executing those plans.  All work is done in and around the edges of our guests.  Shiloh does not come to a grinding halt when we have large parties.

Papa Jim and Mama Alice spent time with a pastor who is spending this week at Shiloh.  He had lots of questions and concerns regarding how to minister to singles in his church community.  We shared from many years of experience.  We reminded him that at the end of the day, their unique needs and issues are spiritual.  Is our God big enough to meet my every need?  And what if God does not give me everything that I know I need?  Can I still trust Him.  Will I still trust Him?  Will I resolved every day and in every way to follow Him, no matter what life dishes out?   The basic issues are the same, no matter what category a person fits into:  singles, marrieds without children, families, widows and widowers. 

Rounded the day off with a weekly Bible study with our relief night guard. I always marvel at his intellect.  Had he been born in the Land of Plenty, he would have gone far.  Having been born into extreme poverty, and never having gotten any "brakes", he struggles for his daily existence.  But it's not all bad.  In the midst of his difficulties he has found the Lord.  And it is my joy to watch him grow in grace week by week.  Our Bible survey brought us to the book of I Samuel.  As always his questions are deep and probing.  I am totally inadequate for the task at hand.  But I put my confidence in the Great I Am and move forward in His strength.  Ever humbled that He would choose to use me in this man's life.

And thus ends another "typical day" at Shiloh.

Shiloh is full to the max.  

Every room.  

Every bed.  

Taken.  

Couldn't fit another guest in sideways.

Even if we wanted to.  

That's when it happened.  

Quarter to nine.  

At night.

Phone rang.

Calling to make a reservation.

Needed a room.

For tonight.

Wanted to stay until Friday.

Could he come right over?

Tried to let him down gently.

We're full up.

Won't have an available room 'till after Christmas.

Felt kind of like the inn keeper.

Talking to Joseph.

No room.

No room at the inn.

But we have room in our hearts.

For Jesus.

 

 

We were carrying on an email conversation with friends and fellow missionaries from our Mexico days.  Talking about the holidays and remembering back to the early years.  Our conversation went something like this:

We gathered up our parents grand-kids and packed them off to Mexico without a backward glance.  It didn't cross our minds that we were robbing two (not one but two) sets of grandparents of their precious grand-kids.  After all, we had God's call on our lives.  Surely that was all that mattered.

Many long years would pass before we began to realize what we had done to them.  And it was way to late to make amends.  This time around it was US taking off for far away Darkest Africa and leaving our children behind.  And suddenly we got to experience what it felt like to be deprived of their presence during all the holidays.  We looked at each other and said "OH MY GOODNESS!  THIS IS WHAT WE DID TO OUR PARENTS!"  

What's the saying?  Too soon old; too late smart.  Sure applied to us.

Being away from our family is the only sacrifice we ever make that's worth talking about.  The Holiday Season is always a fresh reminder of that.  But God has blessed us beyond measure with lots of family here in Cameroon.  And that helps.  We host an annual Christmas party for our Cameroonian family.  We will be 26 at the table this year, ranging in age from us in our early 70s down to an 8 month old "granddaughter". 

Someday, someday soon, we will have all our family together for all eternity.  It won't be long now.  Soon we will be together, never to part again.  We won't have to apply for visas, or make sure our shot record is up-to-date. We won't have to spend obscene amounts of money on transportation.  And best of all, we won't have to pack a thing!   Or recover from jet lag once we arrive in Glory.  Even so come quickly Lord Jesus.

They've spent the last three and a half years dreaming of starting a family of their own.  But it hasn't happened.  Then God did something that they could never have dreamed up, left to their own devices. 

It happened in a remote village to an incredibly poor family.  Extreme poverty precluded prenatal care.  And the same level of poverty caused the birth to take place at home with no medical assistance whatsoever.  The mother delivered a little boy and his twin sister, and then died of complications related to the delivery.  Neither the newly widowed father nor anyone in the extended family could take care of motherless twins.  The father heard about an orphanage across the river in Nigeria that accepted newborns.  He was in the process of taking the babies there when the canoe he was riding in capsized.  Sadly, the father drowned.  Somehow the twins survived and somehow they were brought back to the village.  The newborn baby boy got sick and died very quickly.  An older sister named the surviving girl Miracle because she truly is a miracle.  But the family was even less equipped to raise this child than before.  So the Grandmother, cousins, and uncles got involved.  They searched everywhere in their part of Cameroon for an orphanage that would take a newborn.  Nobody wanted to even think of making a second attempt to get the baby into Nigeria.  

News of this families plight traveled quite some distance to another village where our friends live.  They immediately volunteered to take little Miracle and raise her for the glory of God.  This family, so torn apart with grief and loss, gratefully placed their precious little bundle into the loving arms of our missionary friends.   And she was given a second name.  Miracle Grace.  She spent last night at Shiloh with her brand new parents.   She's adorable.  We briefly considered stealing her, but then remembered that raising children is for the young.  We're only young at heart!

 

Twenty-two New Testaments.  Thirty Gospels of John.  Two hundred sixty eight tracts.  All in French.  All distributed by one or another of us at Shiloh in one months time.  We're submitting our first monthly report to the organization that provides these items for free.  Regular reporting is the only hitch.

One beautician that has a link to Shiloh has been giving out gospel tracts to each of her customers.  Our favorite taxi driver sets a couple of different tracts on his dash board and lets his customers pick them up and ask questions.  One member of our team passed them out to many relatives at his father's funeral.  

But the best story this month comes from one of another our team members.  She asked for a day off work in order to visit a cousin who is dying of AIDS.  She wanted to share the gospel with her one last time.  When she arrived in her cousin's town, she discovered that the cousin had disappeared.  Disappeared?!  How could that be??  

 The man who fathered the cousin's four children abandoned her somewhere along the way.  And at some point the cousin was diagnosed with AIDS.  Eventually she decided she didn't want to live anymore so stopped taking the medication.  Over time her health has deteriorated.  When she slipped into a coma, the family carried her to a local hospital where she was put on IV medication.  Nobody was in the room with her when she came out of the coma.  And nobody noticed when she slipped out of the hospital and disappeared.  

While our girl was not able to share the gospel with her cousin (who is still lost) something rather amazing happened.  The cousin's mother is understandably very shook up with the disappearance of her daughter.  So much so that for the first time ever she is realizing that she needs to know more about God.  Is He real?  Does He really exist?  Can He help in a crisis like this?  What a joy it was for our team member to be able to point this older woman to the Most High God.  She left her with a Gospel of John and a couple of different tracts.   Maybe, just maybe, the disappearance of the cousin will result in the salvation of the mother.

It's official.  We are now the grandparents of four teenagers.  Kind of scary to think about, isn't it?  Why it was just day before yesterday when we were the PARENTS of three teenagers.  And it will only be day after tomorrow when the grands start emptying out their respective nests.  Time marches on.  The years fly by with every increasing rates of speed, the older we become.

The refrain that keeps going through our heads is "Only one life, 'twill soon be past.  Only what's done for Christ will last."   It helps us stay focused on what's really important for today.  After all, we have no promise of tomorrow.

Well it's official.  The long dry season is here.  It's been the better part of two weeks, maybe even three, since the last rain of the short rainy season.  The long dry season begins near the end of November and runs into February or even March. This is truly the worst time of the year out here on the Dark Side of the Moon.  If we didn't doctor it up with Christmas decorations, I'm not sure how we would ever survive.  It's suddenly hotter.  Hot and sticky.  Showers cool the body off for what?  Thirty minutes??  Then one wonders why we even bothered.  And "everybody" is suffering from change of season colds.  Harmattan dust is beginning to show up, uninvited and unwanted.  We're needing to sweep, mop, and dust much more often.  And we know that this is just the beginning.  As we move ever deeper into Harmattan, the famous accompanying haze will blot the sun from our sky.  And dusting will eventually become an exercise in futility.  But that's in our not-to-distant future.  During the second half of the long dry season.  We've dubbed it "Dirty Season".   Maybe you live where you shovel snow.  We live where we shovel dirt!

 

Papa Jim and Mama Alice are way too busy for a couple of OLD guys.  Trying to learn how to age gracefully.  It's not easy.  Especially for the Mama Alice part of the Team.  

I've been a card carrying, Type-A Personality, hyper-organized person all my life long.  Except now I have all the energy of a slug.  I keep trying to pretend that I can still leap from tall buildings, but alas, my cape keeps getting caught and I end up splatting on the ground.  It's not a pretty sight.  

One of these times I'm going to talk myself into being decorative instead of productive.  It's a hard lesson to learn.  As they say "Growing old is not for sissies".

Good friends and fellow missionaries we worked together with in Mexico are going through a season of death right now.  Here is part of a letter we wrote them:

Back to back death with your two brothers takes us back in our memories to when my precious Daddy was ushered into the presence of his Lord and Savior.  I had gone back home for a month just to visit him.  We agreed that as long as he had most of his marbles and would know that I was there, I should visit him every six months.  In God's wonderful plan, I arrived the night before we had to hospitalize him for what turned out to be his final illness.  It was not known before that time that he had liver cancer which had metastasized to his left lung sack.  The specialist told me in the hospital that my 92 year old Daddy would not last beyond the month I had with him.  And indeed, he was buried with full military honors (WW II U.S. Navy) the very day I was to have flown back to Cameroon.  When Jim learned that Daddy was terminal, he caught the first available flight out of Cameroon, hoping to be able to say "good-bye".  But he couldn't make it home fast enough.  While I had never done this either before or since, I phoned each of our sons and told them I really needed them to be at Grandpa's funeral.  They graciously dropped everything and came, leaving wives and children behind.  One of my many cousins gave us a house to live in.  It was the first time we had been just "us" in the better part of 20 years.  What a great blessing it was to be together and to share memories of Grandpa with each other.  Jim was the first to arrive in town.  We picked him up at the airport and were driven to the house my cousin was letting us use.  We hadn't seen each other in a month so had a lot of catching up to do that night.  Skyping and emails are certainly not the same as face to face contact.  Having slept in the next morning, we were eating a late breakfast when the phone call came.  Jim's 95 year old mother had died the night before, right around the time his final plane was touching down at Portland International Airport.  We asked the family to please give us time to bury my Daddy.  And I declared a moratorium on death.  Enough was enough!  (Of course I recognized that I have zero control over death, but made my declaration anyway to any and all who would listen to me.)  We had Daddy's lovely memorial service at his church that Monday.  Since I am one of 46 grandchildren on Daddy's side of the house, the place was packed with cousins and many, many friends.  Tuesday was the military burial with many of the same people in attendance.  Wednesday morning we caught the first flight out of Portland to San Francisco.  Jim's little sister picked us up and took us to her place where the family was gathering.  They were in the midst of a lovely project.  They were dividing up all of Mom's photographs.  What a great way to reminisce together.  On Thursday we put the finishing touches on all the plans for Mom's burial.  On Friday we drove out to a younger brother's place for the grave side service.  It was a quiet, family event.  We were so glad to be there.  Then on Saturday we gathered at Mom's church in Hayward for her memorial service.  David was the only one of our sons who could take more time off work for the second grandparent funeral in a row.  He had flown from Portland to Tucson, picked up his wife and children, and drove to Hayward to be with family.  His sacrifice meant everything to us.  The following day we flew back to Portland, spent the night, and were at the airport early the following morning to send Jim back to Cameroon.  When he arrived back home at Shiloh the following night, he had been gone less than two weeks.  It felt to him like his time in the U.S. was just a dream he had had.  Meanwhile I flew out of Portland a couple of hours after Jim, going on to Tucson where I spent a month.  I had numerous legal things to attend to regarding Daddy's final affairs.  Being surrounded by children and grandchildren made it a whole lot easier.  Everything I needed to do could by done by phone calls and faxes.  I arrived in Tucson in time to learn that [a mutual friend and missionary colleague] had just been ushered into the presence of our Lord.  I cannot tell you how deeply grateful  I was to be in Catalina and not in Cameroon at that moment.  And I quickly lifted my moratorium on death.  It was OK.  God is still in control.  His ways are always and forever the best.  He gives and He takes away.  Blessed be His Holy Name.

How our hearts ache for this man.  We want more than anything for him to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord.  To become all that God designed him to be.  We love him with all our hearts.  We have poured our lives into his life for a very long time.  Even back before he came to know Jesus as his Lord and Savior.  And there really is a "before" and an "after" in his life.  But we want more for him.  We want him to abandon every trapping of his old life and go all out for God.  We want the old ways to fade into the dim, distant past.  We want him to become a new creature in Christ in every corner of his life.

And that is precisely why we put him under discipline all during the month of November.  He's our relief guard.  Works one night a week so our regular guard can have a night off.   And each week when he comes to work, he and I do a study together.  I picked out the first topic, and then it was his turn.  We're doing an in depth Bible survey course.  It's deep, it's rich, it's full, it's amazing.  And he is eating it up.  Little by little by little he's growing.  He's changing.  He's becoming.  This dear, dear man who had "no fetching up" of any kind. Has no idea who his Dad is. Nobody really loved him.  He mostly raised himself.  His life is riddled with learning gaps and issues of every kind.  And because we love him, because we want only the best for him, we could no longer tolerate a certain bad behavior.  We had been all over this issue numerous times in the past.  The time had come in enact consequences if we truly love him.  

Tonight he came back to work after not being allowed to work for an entire month.  I had a long talk with him before we re-started our Bible survey.  Asked him if he knew why he had been put under discipline.  Held my breath as he answered.  He could have said "because you are mean" but he didn't.  By God's grace alone he articulated what he had done wrong.  Took full responsibility for his actions.  And took a giant plunge into humility.  Relief flooded my soul.  Cameroonians by nature are riddled with pride.  Humility comes from God and God alone.  It is not a cultural value or virtue.  

So when Papa Jim came into our bedroom for the night, I asked him if the Tooth Fairy comes to Shiloh?  "Who lost a tooth?" he quarried, followed immediately by "YOU lost a tooth???"  At which point I opened my hand and displayed a 43 year old gold crown which had just jumped out of my mouth!

This is gold crown number three of four which has "given up the ghost" as it were.  How well we remember back all those years ago when I needed four gold crowns.  We were a young missionary family getting ready to go to Mexico for the very first time.  We didn't have two dimes to rub together.   But the God Whom we serve is rich beyond comparison.  Nothing is impossible for Him.  There was a dentist in a near-by town who took care of missionaries teeth for free.  And yes, that included root canals and gold crowns.  Four of them!  All that gold in my mouth has been a continual reminder all down through these years that our Faithful Father is more than able to provide for our every need, and so much more. 

We are back on line again. There is no way we can catch you up on all that has been going on here at Shiloh.  We try to cram as much as possible into each and every day!  

But let's return to T-H-E wedding.  That was Saturday.  The stories flowing out of that one occasion would fill an entire chapter in our book.  You know, the book we're never going to get around to writing cuz we're waaaay too busy living it to have time to write it all down.

As you may already know, there are three aspects to every Cameroonian wedding.  It starts with paying the bride price, which is the traditional wedding.  Once the bride price is  paid, in the eyes of the tribe, the new couple is married and can begin living together.  Though everybody understands that many have already been living together, and may even have produced children.  The church in Cameroon teaches that one is not "really" married yet in the eyes of God, so a godly couple will not start living together at this point.  Next comes the civil ceremony.  It can take place the following day, the following weekend, a month later, or years later when the couple gets around to it.  But for Christian couples (or even quasi Christian couples) the church blessing is the final phase of getting married.  A godly couple will make every effort to have the civil ceremony just as close to the church blessing as possible.  Once they have been "blessed" in the church, they are officially married and can begin married life without fear of committing fornication.

Last Saturday's couple decided to combine the civil ceremony with the church blessing.  All was to take place at their church.  Guests were instructed to arrive on time as it is considered an affront to the government to arrive after the mayor arrives.  So 1 p.m. was the appointed hour, and 1 p.m. is when we arrived.  We met certain members of the groom's family and a couple of people from his church already there, but mostly we were way early.  (No surprise there.)  And then began the long wait.  Finally, at 2:30 p.m. the church leadership decided it would be OK to begin certain parts of the church blessing.  So the musical instruments started up and soon we were being led in congregational singing.  With many pauses in order to re-group and decide what to do now, we limped our way forward.  The small church choir sang several numbers.  There was a lengthy prayer.  It was decided we could take an offering before the mayor arrived.  Finally the powers that be felt that the bride and groom had been kept waiting out in their fancy rental car long enough.  They were each escorted in in typical Cameroonian fashion.  A semi-professional guest soloist was invited to perform.  Eventually the pastor decided to preach the wedding sermon.  It was long, rambling, and difficult to follow.  When he was mercifully coming to an end, the mayor and his assistant arrived.  It took them some time to set up, but finally, at 5:30 p.m. the 1 p.m. civil ceremony began!!!  Only in Cameroon. 

We gathered together today to celebrate the life and work of a missionary colleague and friend.  She and her partner have invested the last 35 years of their lives translating God's Word into one of the many languages of Cameroon.  That completed New Testament was dedicated last month.  And today the mission community came together to honor her, celebrate her life, and say our good-byes.  Our hearts were filled with memories.  The various times Jim and I spent in their village.  The many meals we have eaten together.  The game nights.  Singing together.  Laughter.  Fun.  It was a bitter sweet time.  Good-byes are always hard.  Will we meet again this side of Glory?  God alone knows.  

Once we are finally Home, we will never say "good-bye" again.  No more farewell events.  No lingering hugs.  No bitter sweet times.  The focus on that great day will not be on a life well lived, but on the Life Giver Himself.  Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.