For those of you not on our e-mail list, I thought I would post our most
recent newsletter that went out over e-mail. Drop us alline if you wanted
to be added to our list. We only send out an emailonce every 5 or 6 weeks.
Greetings from Central Africa!
We realize it has been a very long time since we e-mailed an update to
everyone, but we hope you received our latest newsletter by mail and have
been able to check or blog once in a while. We have been on the move since
July 1 which accounts for some of why we haven't e-mailed in so long. Let
me give you a month by month look at what we have been up to.
July: We spent the month in Bayanga, the extreme southwest of CAR, working
amongst the Aka Pygmies. We did a lot of village visits, planting trees,
working with individuals in their cassava gardens, helping people access
peanut seed, as well as helping the missionaries there with a school
nutrition project for the Aka children. In a village near Bayanga there are
30 Aka children currently attending school but they lag behind for a number
of reasons including inadequate access to food in the morning. We did a
clinic on sweet potatoes and helped with planting techniques as well as
giving out planting material. It turned out to be a very significant
project for that village. We had hoped to remain in Bayanga for the rest of
our term but it will not work out for us there in terms of housing and such
so we will return in the spring for an extended stay if the Lord wills it.
August: I returned home to Canada for the month, courtesy of my family, to
take part in my sister's wedding. She is now Sarah Thorp, and it was
wonderful to be part of her day. I also had the opportunity to speak at a
couple of churches as well as a local Victoria radio station. It was good
to be home but truthfully, Gamboula feels like home more than any place
else. Darren returned to Bayanga for nearly 3 weeks along with BJ, the
veterinarian next door, and Matt, a student from the US who came out for a
month. Darren did some more work with the ag projects we started in July,
following up with villages, as well as building relationships with some Aka
men. They were able to take part in a traditional hunt with nets in the
forest, as well as fishing with large nets in the Sangha river.
September: Darren turned into a computer technician in September when he
was given 7 laptops and one desktop to put into working order. Our living
room looked like a computer warehouse for a while. The neighbours received
these computers from the US to give to national leaders in our area (the
pastor, bible school director, hospital staff, etc.). They all had work to
be done on them and Darren knows the most about computers so he volunteered
for the job, with a little prodding from me! He finished right at the end
of the month. I went to Bilolo, about 4-5 hours south of here with 2 of our
ag workers to give an agro-forestry seminar. There are 2 SIL/Wycliffe
families living there and we were invited by them. We had 75 participants
including 8 Baka Pygmies from the area. Now that we have made contact with
them we plan on going back to the Baka villages during the dry season. They
look like the Pygmies we worked with in Bayanga but they speak a different
language. Fortunately Sango is fairly universal. It was a very interesting
trip for me and I encourage you to read about it on our blog. It is
entitled 'A lesson in respect.'
October: On the first of the month we were off again, this time to Kenya,
for our mission's triennial retreat. We gathered with 136 other
missionaries from around the globe for a week of conference and a week of
retreat, plus an extra 5 days of vacation, just the two of us. We had a
fabulous time and feel more than ever a part of our mission and the work God
is doing in the world. We attended some good workshops on AIDS and on our
own spiritual formation. We heard about the direction our mission is
taking, we were encouraged to continue on in our work with excellence, and
we were able to visit and hear about the work being done all over the globe.
It was a good time of fellowship, prayer and fun. Yes, we had a lot of fun.
With a group this big NMSI was able to negotiate good prices for
accommodation and such in Kenya, so we were treated to all sorts of good
things, all in the name of fellowship of course. We climbed Mt. Longonot, a
nearly extinct volcano in the Rift Valley, visited lake Naivasha as well as
the Masai Mara, Kenya's famous game park. We saw four of the big five and
we even pet a somewhat tame zebra that was wondering around our
accommodations in the Mara, the Mara Buffalo Camp. I was less afraid to be
face to face with a zebra than I am with a horse! We finished the retreat
on the beach in Mombassa where Darren got to know some guys in NMSI well as
they played 4 hours of volleyball a day. I took the time to visit with a
few newly marrieds to give them encouragement and listen to their concerns.
We spent our extra vacation days in Mombassa, soaking in some equatorial sun
(bad, I know) and finding time to read. We returned to Gamboula yesterday
to find things pretty much as we left them.
Coming up: The next two months we will be finishing out some bean variety
trials as well as getting the gardens in order for a visit from one of Roy
and our's major donors, the Food Resource Bank and Covenant World Relief.
Lots to do. Darren will be getting things ready to start his tissue culture
project and we are all three of us writing an agro-forestry manual for
distribution to the villages we work with. The deadline for the book is
January. Yikes!
Prayer: Please continue to pray for peace in CAR. The number of reports
about bandits on the roads is increasing and we have decided to not leave
our town until we hear more favourable reports. We do feel safe where we
are but we do covet your prayers. Darren will be travelling to north
western Cameroon at the end of November to attend a one week course on the
tissue culture of bananas using methods developed by a Cameroonian research
centre. Darren never imagined that his education and gifts in biotechnology
would come in use on the field, but to the glory of God, they are just what
is needed here to speed up the production of many important plants including
bananas, plantains and spineless peach palm.
We are now able to receive mail through Cameroon. Please e-mail us for the
address. Our e-mail is bossbugs@yahoo.ca and we continue to be able to
receive text only, a couple of pages maximum. We appreciate hearing form
all of you and look forward to it! We are finding tremendous joy in our
ministry and are seeing many good fruits of our labours, both in the edible
sense and in relationships formed with those whom we serve. We are becoming
more and more sure of a long-term call to Central Africa and would ask for
your prayer regarding vision for the long term.
Each one of you is special to us and are prayed for. May God's favour rest
on each of you.
Angela, for the Boss duo.
