An experience of a lifetime!!!

 

On Saturday November 16, 2013 we were invited to attend the wedding of the niece of Dr. Samuel and Sister Caro.  We had taught and baptized Sister Caro and had spent a lot of time in their home.  Their niece, Sidoni was living with them and going to school and had sat in on a few discussions.  We have grown very close to their family and felt honored that they would want us to come to the wedding.  Weddings here, are an all day affair.  We had a zone training with the missionaries in the morning and got there just as they were coming out of the mayor’s office where he married them.  Branch presidents in Cameroon don’t have authority from the government to marry.

This is the bride, Sidoni and her two nieces who were flower children outside of the court house.  When someone else takes the picture, it is hard to know when they will snap it, so most of us weren’t ready.

I’m not sure if they are hired or just show up, but these men were playing music when  the wedding party came out.  They play flutes and small drums and parade around.

Transportation here is a huge problem.  Taxis are plentiful, but money to pay for them is not.  People actually skip meals to save the 40 cents to come to church.  These ladies asked if they could ride with us.  Six of them climbed into the back of our small Toyota truck.  We also had 7 people, including 2 younger children in our back seat.  Jan and I were quite comfortable in the front seats.

We drove about 20 minutes to a little park in between two lanes of busy traffic to take pictures.  Pretty places like this are rare in Cameroon.  It is near our apartment and we often see wedding parties taking pictures here.  This is Sidoni, her husband and the wedding party.

After wedding pictures, we drove, with all the same people in our truck,  out to the village to the home of the groom for the wedding reception and the church wedding.  It was about 45 minutes away but took us 11/2 hours because of the traffic.   An evangelist pastor then married them in behalf of the church.  Dr. Samuel and his family are Anglephones which means English speakers, so everything was in English.  It was really nice to be able to understand most of what was being said.  We drove along this road until it looked to steep for the small cars to make it back up, and then we parked and walked about 1/2 mile to the home of the groom.

On the way, we pulled over to let a large truck pass and one of our cars got stuck.  This is a Toyota Corolla and it had at least 8 people in it.    Everyone piled out and we soon had it back on the road.

As we started walking we looked up and noticed these very dark clouds coming our way.  They were very black and we knew it would soon start pouring rain.  Jan had hurt her knee and we were walking very slowly down a large hill when we felt the first rain drops start to fall.

We paused just long enough to take a picture of this beautiful rainbow that was just ahead of the rain hitting us.  We would have loved to video the storm, but were afraid to ruin the camera.  Lightening and thunder were all around us and we were seriously worried about being struck with the lightening.

Just as we came to this little bridge over a stream, the rain started to fall in buckets.  By the time we crossed the bridge we were very wet.  We looked for shelter and could only see the small building on the left.  It had about a 1 foot overhang and we huddled next to it.  I had my back pressed against the wall and Jan had her face buried in the corner trying to keep her mascara from running in her eyes.  The wind started blowing and the overhang did no good at all.  We were both soaked to the skin and water was dripping off our noses.  We both just started laughing out loud.  After about 20 minutes a little girl came from the house looking for us.  She had one little umbrella and told us to come with her.  We started walking up the hill in front of us and it was a river.  The water was 4 inches deep coming down the road.  I was holding onto Jan and we were trying to stay under  the umbrella when Jan went down, face down in the mud, and I fell on top of her.  She had on her huge African dress and the front was all muddy.  I was better off because I was on top.

We finally arrived at the home and they had this tent set up out in front.  Most of the other guests had gotten there before the rain and were sitting under it.  When we arrived, they made a path right down the middle and we marched through.  It was so embarrassing.  I’m sure they were thinking, “you stupid white people”, but they were so nice to us.

They led us into the house, right in the middle of the ceremony, two people jumped up, right behind the bride and groom. and insisted that we have their seats.  We sat down looking good.  We laughed, everytime they took pictures of the couple, knowing that two soaking white people would be in the background.  We sat there for 3 hours and they insisted on feeding us first.  We had chicken, rice and some stew looking stuff.  It was all very good.

 

This is the wedding cake.

This is the happy couple.  I hope they are happier than they look.  They were all very nice to us and we felt like honored guests.  As we drove through the village all the children would look at us.  We finally rolled down our windows and said Hi to them.  A little girl in our truck said, “you are probably the only white people they have ever seen.”  It was probably true.

This is Dr. Samuel and Sister Caro’s smallest child Jimmy.  He sat on our laps for a long time and was very content.  We finally decided that we had better get going about 8:00 that night.  It was dark and we knew we would never find our way home.  They arranged for 5 people, complete strangers to ride with us and show us the way.  We walked back down the same path by the light of the moon, the fire flies and our lights on our phones.  They were very nice and spoke enough English to get us back.  We dropped them off one at a time along the way.  We got back to where we knew the way and it was just the two of us driving home.  We got home at 9:00 and it felt so good to get into the shower and get some dry clothes on.  My shoes were wet for two days.

Children of Cameroon Africa

We have fallen in love with the children of Africa.  They are so cute and innocent.  They seem a lot less inhibited and less afraid than children in America.  Total strangers will come up to us and sit on our laps.  We consider it a tender mercy that helps compensate for being away from our own grandchildren.

Jan holding a new baby in her blessing outfit.



We were at a catholic church for a wedding of one of our member’s brothers, and this little girl was sitting with her parents across the  isle from us.  She came right over and climbed up on my lap and stayed there for about 15 minutes taking things out of my shirt pocket.



This is our branch president’s new little baby.  His name is Moroni.



This is DiaBell Dim, our good friend and one of her nieces at a wedding.



The children love touching our hair.  They say we have kitty hair because it is softer than theirs.  I love to pat them on the heads and feel theirs too.


Jan in her African Caba dress and a darling baby.



Three of the children who are members in our BonaBeri branch.  They had the primary program and little 6 year old kids were taking turns leading the songs without a piano.  They would sing the first line and then say 1,2,3 sing and the others would join in.  It was so cute.



Children getting water for their mothers out of the community well.



I’m not sure she wanted her picture taken.  This is on the steps to her home.



It wasn’t this little boy, but one of the member's little sons came up to us and told us he had asked him mother if he could go to America with us and she said yes.



This little girl, a child herself, carries her little brother on her back.  All the women carry their children on their backs so they can do their work.  There are a lot of bow legged adults here, probably from being carried this way when their bones were still soft.



There aren’t any nice parks or yards for the children to play in, so they mostly play in the streets.



There are some sad things in Africa.  This is an intersection close to our apartment.  Every time we stop at the light these children come up to our windows and beg for food or money.  Their faces are so sad.  Their moms, some of who are crippled, sit on the island between the lanes of traffic and send their children out into the streets to beg.



At another intersection we always see these children begging.  We sometimes give them a little money or cookies or bread.  As soon as we roll our window down there will be 10 other children come out of nowhere.



I’m afraid, for some, begging becomes a way of life.  This girl is probably 12 and still on the streets begging.

Our Missionaries

We are in Douala, Cameroon, which is about 21/2 hours by plane away from our mission home in Kinshasa DR Congo.  It is a separate country with a different Visa.   North American missionaries who are called to this mission come directly here to our city, or Yaounde or Pointe Noire, which are the other two outlying cities.  We are there to pick them up when they arrive and we put them on the plane when they go home.  They use our computers to Skype with the mission president for their first interview.  We have always said that the best part of our mission is our association with these young Elders.  Sister Gailey calls there moms when they arrive to let them know they have arrived safely.  She lets them know that they have a nice apartment and that we are here to watch over them.  They seem to get a lot of comfort from the calls.

Every 6 weeks we have Zone Conference at our apartment.  They come for a couple of hours of training and then we feed them.  The mission president comes to it about every other time.  It is amazing how much these growing young men can eat.

One of the hardest parts of our calling is when they transfer or go home.  Some of them are with us for up to 10 months before they leave our two districts.  We get very attached to them.  Elder Andrimamonjy is from Madascar and went home a few weeks ago.  They don’t get to go to the mission home for a farewell dinner, so we have one for them here at our apartment.  We have a testimony meeting and their favorite meal.  The testimony meeting is always very tender.  They have their exit interview with the mission president on his last visit before they go home.

We love picking up our new missionaries at the airport.  We picked up our first 18 year old a couple weeks ago.  On the left is Elder Wright from St George.  He is 19.  Next to him is Elder Beutler from Mapleton, by Provo, and is 18 years old.  We try to be waiting for them when they come out of the airport so they see some white faces.  We remember how scary it was for us when we saw the sea of black faces.

This is the missionaries saying goodby to Elder Andrimamonjy.  We will all miss him.  He was such a cute fun Elder and a great missionary.  His girlfriend from Madagascar is serving in Salt Lake City.

Elder Andrimamonjy and Elder Colindres, from West Valley, walking to a teaching appointment on a typical road in the neighborhoods.

Of course, the main reason all of us are here is to bring people to Christ.  Here are our Elders with the Branch Mission Leader at a baptism next to the font.  The sister was baptized by Hermann, who is now on a mission himself in the Ivory Coast.

It is really hard for the Elders to keep their shoes shined when  they walk in these conditions every day.  They never complain, even when they show up to church soaking wet from a sudden rain storm.
Pres. and Sister Jameson are from Phoenix AZ.  They served for 18 months in the Congo as a couple missionary and then went home for 4 months to get ready to come back as the president of the DR Congo Mission.  They were here for the first 9 months for our mission.  We really loved them from their first visit to our home.  They took us all out to eat for pizza the last day they were in Cameroon.  We were very sad to see them go, but were so happy that they could spend time with their family after 31/2 years in Africa.

Pres. and Sister Cook are our new mission president and his wife.  They are from Providence, by Logan.  We are enjoying getting to know them. 

Our missionaries love to play soccer with the Africans here.  They make a lot of new friends that way and invite them to church.  Many times they come.  It seems like it rains every time they play.  They fields are dirt and turn into mud which makes it even more fun.  They are too intense for us to play with them, so we just watch.

Transfer days are always crazy for us with trips to the bus station, the airport and to the apartments to get them situated.  When we are short an Elder, a local young man is called as a branch missionary and serves full time for 6 weeks.  Bartholemew on the left is a branch missionary.  Elder Gelinas is from Canada.  On the right of me is Elder Leavitt.  He was suppose to go to Yaounde, but got off the plane in Douala before it continued on  to Younde.   He  spent a couple of days with us before we put him on the bus with Elder Graham who is next to him.  He will hear about that for the rest of his mission.  He was a real good sport about it, but had us pretty confused when he called at 10:30 and asked why we weren’t at the airport to pick him up.


Elder Thibault, from Provo, finally caught an unwelcome house guest that would run across the floor while they studied.  He was released to the outside world.  I think.

On Pres. Jameson’s last visit to Cameroon, he was on a really tight schedule, so we had the 10 Elders from Yaounde, along with the senior couple, the Whitesides, ride  the bus to Douala and stay with us and the Elders here.  We had a combined Zone Conference with all of us in our apartment.  There were 24 of us in our living room and Sister Gailey fed them all sloppy joes and chips.

We are so excited that missionaries are now going out from our mission to serve in other countries in Africa.  This is Hermann and Yannick.  We had the privilege of teaching the temple prep classes to help prepare them for their missions.  Hermann is in the Ivory Coast and Yannick is in the Congo.  They will be such strong leaders when they return from their missions.

Our missionaries are always looking for opportunities to serve.  We were on our way back from helping a family move and Elder Zurcher and Elder Garland saw this man with a cart of lumber he was struggling to pull up this road, so they jumped out and helped him up the hill.

Elder Zurcher, from Providence Ut.,carries a load of bananas on his head like the Africans would carry them.


There is not a lot of fun things to do here, so every 6 months we do an excursion with the missionaries to the ocean in Kribi or in Limbe on their p-day.   They need a break from the craziness once in a while too.  They can’t swim, but love to play frisby and football on the beach.


Elders Garland, Graham, Lafleur, and Mupungu coming to the church for teaching appointments.

Every 6 months the Elders have to go to the capital, Yaounde, to renew their visas.  We took Elders Ramgelosoam and Porter on this trip to renew theirs.  We drove up to Mount Febe which over looks the city of Yaounde.  Elder Holland was here just before we came, last year and dedicated  Cameroon for the preaching of the gospel from this rock where we are standing.
Our Elders are still young men and they are a lot of fun.  The people here just love them and feel as bad as we do when they leave the area.

For the missionaries, the best part of us being here is the meals that Sister Gailey prepares for them.   We normally only feed them at Zone Conference, but when ever they come over Sister Gailey pulls out cookies or banana bread to give to them.   They are so cute.  They tell us they love us, and are always telling us how much they appreciate all that we do for them.  It doesn’t seem like we do that much, but they appreciate every thing that we do.  We do repairs on their apartments also and buy supplies for them so they don’t have to do it all in a taxi or on foot.

We sometimes go out teaching with the Elders.  Elder Porter and Elder Prince took us to the Elle family, because they wanted us to teach them how to have a good marriage since we have been married for 37 years.  They act so honored that we would come to their humble home in the background on the left.  Sister Gailey taught Gabrielle how to make chocolate cake in a dutch oven over some coals and they thought it was wonderful.

Elders Hoiland, Rambelosoam, Porter, Addington, Lafleur, and Prince were our very first missionaries.  Elder Schmid and Lavering are not in the picture, but these 8 missionaries helped us adjust to life in Africa. We would not have survived with out them.  We have had 22 different Elders that we have served with in Douala.  We are constantly amazed at what noble young men they are and how dedicated they are to serving the Lord.  Their white shirts become much less white as time goes on.  They are often wringing wet with sweat and have mud on their pants and shoes.  They eat things that we won’t and brag about it.  They never complain and are so obedient that we never worry about what they are doing.  They are doing a great work here and bringing many of our brothers and sisters into the gospel and saving their souls.  We are so proud to serve with them.