Can you hear that?  That lovely deafening noise is RAIN!!!  That's right, the rains are coming back and we are thrilled!  This is the second big rain.  One more just like this one and we will officially declare the long dry season to be over!  And it's only February 27th!  Last year the long dry season drug on into mid-March. We thought we were going to die.  But now we may be fully into the long rainy season very, very soon.

Of course once we make our official declaration regarding which season we are in, we roll up our sleeves and tear the house apart, doing intense Spring housecleaning. You cannot imagine how much dust and dirt seeps into cupboards and drawers.  Everything is taken out and washed, and all cabinets are washed clean, before putting everything back again.  We even brush the dirt off all walls and everywhere else.  Spring housecleaning is a major job.  Especially since we do all this cleaning around the edges of ministry, when we have a quiet moment.  We can't unload the hutches in our dining room for example, setting everything all over the dining room tables, when we are feeding a meal to guests.  So it's a challenge.  But we are experts with many years experience under our belts.  Besides, we are so delighted to have the rains come back that we can't bring ourselves to grumble over all the work it brings us.  And we haven't even talked about all the mud that gets dragged into Shiloh!

 

Dear Friends wrote and told us about their latest snow storm and we replied:

 

"That is so amazing that you are having more snow.  We're trying not to be green with envy as we lay in our bed sweating away.  The fans are on 24-7 now days.  It's useless to take showers to cool off.  It feels good for a brief moment, but then we are sticky hot again and wonder why we bothered.  This is truly the only nasty time of the year.  As we near the end of the season we are longing for the rains to come back.  We are longing for the end of "dirty season" where we shovel dirt in contrast to Americans shoveling snow.  We are dreaming of those wonderful torrential rains that we are so famous for.  It does not rain cats and dogs out here.  The rain comes down in sheets.  We know that Harmattan will not go on forever.  We know that there is an end out there somewhere.  Maybe the end of this month.  Maybe this will go on into March.  But somewhere out there the rains WILL come back.  We try not to think about it too much.  We try to live one day at a time.  We try to remind ourselves that this too will pass.  It always has in the past.  This will not go on forever, no matter what it feels like!  It takes three big rain storms to wash all the dirt out of the sky, all of the dirt off our lush tropical vegetation.  And when that third big  rain comes, we shout GLORY HALLELUJAH! as we roll up our sleeves and and joyfully jump into our annual Spring Housecleaning.  Every cupboard, every closet, every nook and cranny is covered with dirt.  We tear the house apart one room at a time, and slowly but surely our lovely Spiritual Retreat Center re-emerges.  And we live happily ever after."

He's from Benin, but he lives in Cameroon.  In the Far North Region.  And he was on his way to Yaounde to teach at FATEB, the seminary that is walking distance from Shiloh.  The school administrator had made reservations for him to stay with us.  Had assured us that their professor would definitely arrive at Shiloh prior to 8 p.m. on Saturday night.  Which is why we were on standby alert last night, waiting for his arrival.  We wanted to give him that warm Shiloh welcome which we are so famous for.  We wanted to give him the grand tour of the house.  And we wanted to make sure that he was settled into his room before we went off to our room for the night.  8 p.m. came and went.  9 p.m. rolled around.  Soon it was 10 p.m. and this old couple could no longer stay up waiting for our new guest.  Joseph knew to call us whenever the professor should arrive.  At 1 a.m. I awoke and realized that our sleep had not been interrupted.  Quickly phoning Joseph I discovered that the man had not yet arrived.  Thankfully I was able to fall back to sleep without any difficulty.  Until 2:30 a.m.  That's right, our guest arrived at 2:30 a.m. on Sunday.  A mere six and a half hours late.  But we live in Cameroon.  So this is not an unheard of event.  At 2:30 a.m. we sat in the parlor with our guest and listened to his story.  It seems that he and his fellow passengers boarded their plane and prepared for take off.  The plane taxied out onto the runway.  And then the announcement came that the flight would be delayed due to weather.  So they patiently waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Finally the plane turned around and taxied back to the terminal.  The announcement came that all passengers were to board a bus which would drive them to the next airport.  The weather conditions were not clearing up.  There was nothing else to do.  So off the plane they came, and collecting their luggage, headed towards the bus.  After a long bus ride, they finally arrived at the next airport, boarded the waiting plane, and finally were airborne, heading towards Yaounde.  Where they safely arrived.  Six and a half hours late.  Not to worry.  This is Cameroon.  We are used to delays and things not happening when, how, and why they should be  happening.  And the weather issues?  No, it does not snow here in Cameroon.  They were having a serious Harmattan dust storm.  That's the winds that blow off the Sahara dessert and darken the sky until visibility is reduced to a dangerous level.  Thankfully our guest had all day Sunday to recover from his adventure filled trip.  Tomorrow he begins teaching his students.  And the older couple?  We also enjoyed getting to sleep in and recuperate from the abbreviated night.

Dorothy, who is the first to know everything here at Shiloh, tells us that we have an invasion of rats.  RATS??!!! How did this happen?  So we went to our long time expert on such things and asked Night Guard Joseph for his opinion.  He said that these are big mice. So big in fact, that many people think they have to be rats.  But they are really mice.  Big or small, rats or mice, they have NO PLACE AT SHILOH!  Period.  There is NO ROOM AT THIS INN for mice/rats.  And that's all there is to it.  No discussion.  No arguments.  Papa Jim jumped into the conversation and decided that we need more of the heavy duty rat/mice traps.  So we commissioned Eric, our favorite taxi driver, to pick some up for us while he is in town.  He knows right where they sell them.  And he knows the price.  These mice/rats critters invaded his house recently, so he's a new expert on the topic.  Good!  We need lots of expert help here at Shiloh.  It is our deepest hope that Eric will deliver six rat/mice traps sometime before nightfall tomorrow.  That's right...Papa Jim has ordered SIX of them!  He wants Joseph to place them all over the property and see how many he can trap out in the first night.  And how many more on night number two.  Hopefully before long, this will be a fading memory.  One more chapter in the exciting missionary novel we are too busy to write.  It would have to be a novel cuz nobody would believe that our stories are true!  But they are.  We've lived them all.  And now we are living the rat/mice story.  Which will have a happily ever after ending to it.  Please.

There are eight people at Shiloh tonight.  Two are down with a cold.  It's the unintended consequences of group living.  It started with a guest who came to Shiloh direct from the airport.  Those long international flights are a great place to pick up all sorts of colds and flues and what-not.  It hit our guest in the middle of the night, night before last.  Then it was my turn in the middle of the night last night.  You have to wonder who will succumb in the middle of the night tonight.  Thankfully I have a milder version of our guest's cold.  So far I'm not coughing, sneezing, or dealing with a runny nose.  But I am being very careful.  Doing everything I know to do to keep this cold corralled at the entry level. I'm gargling with salt water, taking Tylenol,  drinking lots of water, juice, and hot tea, and I took two naps today. I would be taking vitamin C but we have run out and are not sure where to buy more.  Now I'm heading for bed early.  The last thing I need, want, or can use is a full blown cold.  Thankfully my symptoms seem to be dissipating.  And maybe there will be no more sickies in the morning.  We can always hope.

We've begun planning an Eyene Church Girls Retreat to be held here at Shiloh sometime during the two weeks schools are closed for Easter.  It will be a four day retreat (or maybe we'll call it "camp" or ???) This idea came up as we were discussing an issue in the life of one of the teen girls.  It dawned on us that we could host a retreat here at Shiloh.  We are after all, a Spiritual Retreat Center.  So we are excitedly tossing around ideas, and slowly but surely, a well thought out program is starting to emerge.  

We cannot host the counter retreat for all the teen boys in the church.  We simply do not have enough time left before we return to the U.S. for our next furlough year.  But maybe when we return to Cameroon...we'll have to see how God leads us. 

It's February 10th.  Today we start into another round of grandchildren birthdays.  From now on, one and then another and another will have their birthdays, until we get to December.  And finally the eleventh birthday will be celebrated.  It's like this every year.  

But today a certain very special young lady turned seven years old.  We arranged with her Dad ahead of time to phone at 7 a.m. Sunday their time, which was 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon our time.  The ringing phone was quickly picked up and we heard a grandaughter's voice!  We had lots of fun talking with her.  Finally we asked her if she remembered us.  After all, she was only three years old when she last saw us.  "Yes, I remember you.  And we have a picture of you, too!" she sweetly informed us.  So we asked her if the grandma in the picture was real pretty.  "Yes."  And was the grandpa in the picture real handsome?  "Yes."  "Oh good!  That's us!!"  And we all laughed together.

In addition to talking with the birthday girl, we got to hear the voices of various and sundry other family members as everyone was rushing around getting ready for church.  And then we had a nice long talk with the birthday girl's Dad, who doubles as our Favorite Oldest Son.  Fifty-five minutes after we sang "Happy Birthday" to Sarah, we were saying "Good-bye" to Dan.  And it cost a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents!!!  The marvels of life in these modern times never cease to take our breath away.  How well we remember the early yeas when we had to send smoke signals across the Big Pond.  We've come a long ways. Long live modern technology!

 

After decades of investment in the Manguisa of Cameroon, after trying every which way to get God's Word into their language in audio format so that the old grandmothers who never went to school could learn of God's overwhelming love for them (and failing miserably we might add), we are sitting out here in Darkest Africa tonight in utter amazement!  We have just been informed that forty short Bible stories exist in Manguisa, audio format.  They come with forty artist renditions of these stories.  We've listened to several of them.  The stories begin with creation and end with the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord.  We cannot adequately describe to you how super excited we are!  We are eager to find both the means and the way to get copies of these stories and take them out to the old grandmothers.  We are thrilled beyond description.  All praise and honor and glory be to the Most High God, maker of Heaven and earth. 

She shared the story of her younger brother.  He's the next one down the line from her.  All during their growing up years in the village he was the family rebel.  As a young boy he attached himself to the Juju Man.  He was part of that group of young fellows who ran barefoot before the Juju Man, carrying his tools of the trade.  Dorothy's brother did many other things.  He was well known in the family as the "wild one".  

Finally their father sent him down to the Southwest Region to live with an Uncle and work on his farm.  Though a rebel, he was a hard worker.  Eventually the Uncle helped him get a job working in a pharmacy, and he began his slow climb up the ladder.  Soon his good buddy from his father's village showed up in town.  The two boys shared a small studio apartment and spent their free time plotting and planning how they would make it to the top.  After awhile they had saved up enough money to move to the big city of Yaounde.  Their goals were coming into focus. 

Being from the Northwest Region where virtually everyone is a "Baptist Christian", these two young men decided to attend church one Sunday morning.  And it was there, at the largest Baptist Church in all of Yaounde, sitting under the teaching of Pastor Philemon who is a godly man and a frequent guest at Shiloh, that these two rebels came under the sound of the Gospel.  Together they gave their hearts and minds to the Lord.  Shortly thereafter they were both baptized.  And day by day Almighty God continued the process of making them just like Jesus.  

The younger brother began going to night school to complete his high school education.  Eventually he phoned his older brother and announced that he wanted to attend seminary.  His brother told him that he was not in a position to help him out financially at that time.  "Oh no," he said "I'm not calling to ask for financial help.  I've saved up my own money.  I just wanted to let you know what my plans are."  

The two young men, who were by that time on fire for the Lord, went back up to the Northwest Region and attended seminary together.  But first Dorothy's younger brother had a visit to make.  He went to visit his mother.  He sat her down and began telling her all the bad things he used to do.  It was even worse than she knew.  Then he told her how his Heavenly Father had forgiven him of all his sins, and how he was going to attend seminary and prepare to become a preacher.  His precious mother had tears streaming down her face as she listened to her son's story.  And the details of that visit to his mother quickly spread throughout the entire extended family.  "Can this really be our relative?" they asked themselves.  When he completed his seminary training he became a Baptist pastor in the Northwest Region.  Now, years later, he has risen to the level of a district pastor, supervising a large number of other pastors, in addition to pastoring his own church.  Dorothy reports that whenever he illustrates one of his sermons with a story from his past life, the tears run down his cheeks.  He can never get over the wonder of it all.  That the God of the Universe would reach down and pull him out of the mess he was making of his own life, and set his feet on the narrow path that leads to life everlasting is so much more than he deserves.  Dorothy says that of all her brothers and sisters, he is the most on fire for the Lord.  And this from a lady who is herself deeply in love with her Lord!

This true story explains why it was that Dorothy sat in Shiloh's library this afternoon, across the table from her son and her nephew who had come to visit her, and prayed up a storm for his salvation.  Her well loved son had no idea that the entire time of his visit his mother was crying out to God on behalf of his soul.  "Oh God," she cried "make my son just like my brother.  Don't let him die in his sins."  Her son, though taught the Bible from an early age, has thus far rejected God's free gift of salvation.  And now he is the same age as Dorothy's younger brother was when he turned his life over to the Life Giver.  

Sometime before Dorothy came to live at Shiloh, her son said to her "Ma, why do you always say I'm not a Christian?  I AM a Christian."  Dorothy told him that he has never given his heart and life to the Lord.  He has never confessed that he is a sinner and cried out to Almighty God for His salvation from sin.  And he has never followed God into the waters of baptism, which is an outward sign to the world of what has happened in his heart.  He told her that she was right.  He had never done that.  But he will.  He promised her that he will.  When asked when that will be, he quickly replied that he would become a true Christian when he was ready to get married.  Before he gets married he will get saved and be baptized.  What a foolish young man!  God says that TODAY is the day of salvation.  We have no promise of tomorrow.  

The first missionaries to return to Cameroon following the October 30, 2018 slaying of Charles Wesco are staying at Shiloh.  

Last month a large group of missionaries to Cameroon, their families, and future missionaries to Cameroon met together at a church camp in the U.S. for a week.  Stephanie Wesco and her eight children were there, too.  Pastors came and ministered to them.  It was a time of further healing and recovery from the great shock and loss of this new missionary, who was in Cameroon just twelve days.  God's presence was very real.

We are honored to be chosen to provide housing for our friends as they re-enter the land they love so much.  They are here for two and a half months, exploring ministry opportunities in the French sector, and doing some preliminary  language learning.  After over 30 years of ministry in the English sector, they are having to start all over again.  There are many challenges before them, but they rest firmly in Almighty God.

Their first two nights back in Cameroon, Shiloh was brim full of guests.  Seven people were at the airport to greet them, and six of them stayed with us.   We find time each day to sit with our friends and talk.  We have no profound words of wisdom to give the, but we can give them ourselves.  Shiloh exists for people like them.

It all began on Christmas Eve.  Papa Jim was invited to show a Christian movie at Romeo's church.  Mama Alice was not with him.  Actually my health broke from exhaustion and stupidity the end of November.  (I think that's the correct medical term for a 72 year old Grandmother who was trying to act like a 21 year old young lady, though I might have that wrong...at my age I get things confused!)  Here we are in early February and Mama Alice is still not back to 100%, but day by day I'm visibly stronger than the day before.  And trying to be  wiser, too, which is the hard part.  Some of us don't age with grace and ease.

But I've gone waaaay off the rails on this story, so let's get back to it.  Can't remember which of our collection of excellent Christian movies that Papa Jim showed, but it was well received.  Romeo has told us several times how bless his church was with what Papa Jim did for them.   

Then two and a half weeks ago Romeo asked if his choir could come and sing to us as their way of saying "Thank You".  They selected today, Sunday, February 3rd, after church as the time they would come.  We were surprised and delighted that they would want to bless us like this.  We all pitched in to make this a special time for them.  Doris (with the "help" of five years old Prince Angle) baked cookies on Saturday.  Dorothy swept and mopped the library.  When he got back from his church, Theirry carried a tray full of glasses, cold water, peanuts, napkins, and a large platter full of cookies up to the library.   And Papa Jim and Mama Alice looked decorative.  (Age has it's privileges.)

At one p.m. Romeo phoned to tell us that his choir would be arriving at 2 p.m.  Silly us, even after all these years we assumed that was "white man's time" but of course, the choir was running on "Cameroonian time".  So it was nearly three when they arrived.  The lugged in all their sound equipment, keyboard, microphones, etc. along with a large sports bag which contained their lovely choir robes.  Papa Jim, Mama Alice, Dorothy, and Theirry waited patiently while they got everything set up and put on their robes.   

Eventually the concert began.  And we were blown away by their amazing thank you gift!  We had assumed that they would sing three or four numbers and then enjoy the cookies and go home.  But they had prepared a full blown concern for us.  The hours of preparation that went into this performance!  It was breathtaking!  They not only blessed us to pieces, but all of our near neighbors as well!  

Six children came along with the choir, so we became the "church nursery".  We held fussy babies, and rocked them to sleep.  We gave water to thirsty little tykes, and then handed them back to their mothers to be nursed. We let the two older ones snuggle up next to us and whisper things to us that we couldn't hear over the concert music.  But we could smile at them and hug them and they were happy.   

And afterwards we all filed downstairs and back outside for a lengthy picture taking session.  Everyone had to have their picture taken with the Americans.  We kept hearing them talk about posting their pictures on Facebook, so I suppose we are famous by now!  (Cameroon has changed so much over the twenty eight years we have lived out here.)  

Eventually Romeo pulled Mama Alice back into the house for a private conversation. It turns out that the choir had planned every part of this lovely concert except the "how are we going to get back home" part.  They had hired two taxis to bring them to Shiloh, and Romeo had made numerous trips on his motorcycle, too.  But nobody had thought about how they were going to pay for taxis for the return trip.  Mama Alice was being appealed to for help.  So of course we provided the 6.000 F that they needed (that's about $12) and soon there was the round of "good-byes" as they all filed out the gate with their heavy equipment, leaving us with our wonderful memories of an incredible concert.