Letters from Lois - Installment #2


Dear Partners in Prayer,

Please rejoice and give thanks to the Lord with me for the safe arrival to Piran and Rachel of a baby daughter on 28th Sept. God is so good. Deryn Millicent Sunshine weighed in at 8lbs 5ozs, and is my fourth grand-daughter. I pray she will truly bring God's sunshine into the lives of many.

Other items for prayer and praise:

1. A, the wife in the married couple converted earlier in the year, has joined the group of women MMBs, and her husband is about to join the first men’s group. Please pray that they will both make steady progress in their Christian faith.
2. B, the leading light of men’s group two has backslidden, and we entreat your prayers for his return, also that those he brought to the Lord will remain firm in their faith.
3. Give thanks for the safe arrival of Regina, a young German doctor, who plans to be here until the end of the year.
4. Pray for a safe journey for Kerry (physical therapy) and the Baigents, as they prepare to return to Meskine on 2nd Nov from the UK; also for the arrival later this month of a German pharmacist with his wife and sixteen year old daughter.
5. Continue to pray for Silas. He is no worse and regularly attends outpatients.
6. Pray for the work of African evangelists who are taking the word of God out into the bush on bicycles, equipped with walkman radios with headphones, cassette tapes, Bibles and Christian literature. Give praise for some initial positive feedback.
7. Uphold the remainder of the current mission staff in your prayers: the Pyles, Dr Jacqueline, Sarah(American nurse) and me: also that Dr Tim, who has been standing in for Dr Baigent, and his wife will have clear guidance from the Lord as to their future. They are missionary refugees from CAR.

This week is half-term, so I have a break in my routine with time to reflect on my first seven weeks back in Cameroon. It has been 35degrees C in the shade for the past few days, and the humidity is high. A golden tinge to the feathery grass on the plain is a sign of the approaching dry season, as is the very definite change in the atmosphere. A faint haze softens the hills and the sky looks uneasy. We have had no rain for two weeks, but three weeks ago we had the worst storm the Africans can remember. It happened at 2.30pm and the trees were tossed as if in a hurricane. Branches were torn off and whole trees uprooted. The compound was completely under water.

Thankfully only minimal damage was done to the red millet crop, but the telephone lines were down for twelve days and it took the maintenance crew three days to saw up the wood and clear the compound. At least the villagers had a good supply of firewood for a short time.

I witnessed an eerie phenomenon one mid-morning. I was going from the school to the guest house when suddenly I became conscious of a strange sound. As I looked behind me, I realized I could both see and hear a belt of rain coming before it actually arrived. It passed over, raining heavily for maybe a minute before being drawn back like a curtain pulled across the sky. I have never experienced anything quite like it.

I wasn't so thrilled by a difference experience. At 2am one of the night nurses had woken me up thinking I was Sarah, and when I went to show him her house I forgot my torch. On the way back I stumbled into an extremely gooey mud-hole and had to sit in the shower to wash my legs, feet and sandals before I could return to bed.

I have resumed my daily walks and am now able to get back on to my beloved savannah. The first attempt saw my feet, sandals and skirt coated with black mud. Then when I walked the other paths I thought I knew so well, I kept getting lost. The corn and millet had grown so tall that I could not see my landmarks.

Trying to ride Hannah's bicycle has proved exhausting, and I haven't ventured outside the compound. It doesn't help that the saddle keeps moving up and down. Talking of saddles, I had a go at horse-riding (one of the Pyles's animals), only the second time I have ever been on horseback. It was fun.

We enjoyed a special children's Sunday at our African church last month. For the morning service, 200 adults and children were somehow squashed into a building with a capacity for 100. The singing was led by a diminutive six year old girl, with an amazing voice.

In the afternoon we returned to watch 106 children under the age of twelve, all dressed in white, perform a lengthy program of dancing, singing and drama. As this took place on either side of what equates to a village street, from time to time there were interruptions such as the passage of bicycles, a herd of goats, stray hens, wood-carrying villagers and a sadly mentally deficient youngster, not to mention toddlers weaving in and out of the participants and the odd dog or two.

My admiration goes out to the eight Sunday School staff who, the previous week, had spent 3-4 hours each afternoon rehearsing the children for this event.

On Wednesday afternoons we go to an establishment known as the French Club where we swim and play tennis; correction, we try and hit some tennis balls over a net. For the past few weeks, I have been practicing on an electric keyboard as there has been no-one else to play any kind of instrument for worship. I have dealt with a plague of ants in the school bathroom, sieved weevils out of flour, eaten a fruit called a custard apple and watched a mother tending twin goats only seconds after they were born. Today I learnt two new things: how to make 'gari', a dish using flour (any kind, millet, maize, wheat) water, ground peanuts, cooked rice, sugar and lemon juice, and how to say that I made it in Fulfulde - Mi wadi gari.

As I am sure you have heard enough about my e-mail frustrations, I will only say that the Lord is really teaching me the meaning and the value of patience. I keep this verse continually before me: 'Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret.' (Psalm 37:7).

I appreciate having some time to read, and have enjoyed and benefited spiritually from two of Elisabeth Elliot's books. Currently I am reading Max Lucado's 'Just like Jesus', and finding his straightforward practical hints on how to have a heart like Jesus refreshing and very challenging.

Perhaps I can close my letter with two verses copied from my quiet time journal: ' The Sovereign Lord ... wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught ... It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.' (Isaiah 50:4,9).

I know I have said this before but will say it again. Without the support of your prayers, thoughts, letters and e-mails, life here would be much poorer. I miss my family and friends but am conscious of a web of love, thought and prayers cocooning me. I daily thank the Lord for you all. When I went away to college, a family friend gave me a verse: 'Do good, and to communicate forget not'. (Hebrews 13:16). I have never forgotten it. Please don't stop communicating - even if the e-mail does!

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Letters from Lois - Installment #1

As I write this I am sitting in the schoolroom on the hospital compound in north Cameroon. It is so hot that the sweat is running down the back of my neck and my clothes are sticking to me. I can hear the rolling call of the blue kingfisher, the whirring of the fan and the rumbling of thunder. It is very peaceful as there is no sound of traffic at all.

It is the beginning of the wet season which started last week. The compound has been transformed from a brown dusty expanse to a lush green area criss-crossed by brown tracks. I can recognise bouganvillea, jacaranda and hibiscus, but trees with yellow flower spikes and a shrub with beautiful orange blooms are unfamiliar to me. As the grass begins to grow, black workers cut it with sickles almost on a daily basis.

I share a house with Kathryn, a midwifery student from Bournemouth, here for one month and with whom I travelled from Paris. The housing is very basic but adequate. It has concrete floors and ceilings made of flat, wooden panels. The beds have a wooden frame from which hang the mosquito nets, reminiscent of a four-poster. There are internal screen doors and all the windows are covered with fine mesh. These precautions are an attempt to keep out our number one enemy, the malarial carrying mosquito.

There is no hot running water so it will be necessary to get used to having cold showers. Washing one's hair in cold water is not much fun. A filter unit has been fitted so it is safe to drink the water, and we drink a lot, all the time, more than in Portugal.

Black-skinned natives are busy around the compound, the women resplendent in brightly patterned dresses and headwear, some with babies slung on their backs. Mondays and Thursdays are washdays and they wash the clothes in large plastic pans and string them on lines between the trees. They are all unbelievably friendly.

Near our house is a workshop where everything necessary for the compound is made, maintained or repaired. Behind us are buildings and enclosures for the animals - long-horned cows and Jacob's ring-straked and spotted sheep and goats. Several horses are tethered beneath the trees, sometimes ridden by the missionaries' children. Last evening I saw fifteen year old Charlie fetch a bundle of fodder from the store, balancing it on his head just as the native women do.

A few large drops have just splattered on to the tin roof and now the rain is torrential, drowning out any other sound. I am cocooned in a watertight box, unlike my home in Porto do Lagos which sprung numerous leaks every time there was a downpour. I really need to get some plastic jelly sandals as the paths are waterlogged.

Outside each building is an area of gritty sand. To avoid tracking it inside, we remove our footwear and wander barefoot around the house, which necessitates having to wash one's feet before going to bed.

Every day begins with devotions at 6:40 a.m. in the conference centre, a small room containing some wooden benches, a table and a blackboard. There are two hospital chaplains who attend the local church, but all the men take it in turns to lead the devotions. This morning the word was from I Tim 2 - a workman approved by God. Following breakfast at 7:15 a.m., the work of the day begins.

There have been some small adventures. I killed a cockroach in the kitchen last night. Kathryn was woken up by the sight and sound of a cricket on top of her mosquito net. I was awake early enough to hear both the 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. call to prayer away in the distance. Later on I was amused to see a stream of cows and goats being chased from our "garden" back into the enclosure by a fleet-footed young man. I have already written this e-mail once and just as I was finishing there was a momentary electricity cut and I lost it all. As the 'save' function does not appear to be working, I am praying that it will not happen this time.

It gets dark at 7 p.m., and as we were making our way back to our house, one of the horses came charging through the trees whinneying loudly and splashing mud everywhere, like something out of a haunted house film. All the mission staff have been so welcoming and at pains to help us settle in.

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