Krista’s second word

Krista has been on the verge of talking for a while now. Over the last few months we can tell that she’s really trying to express herself because she’ll look at us so intently, point and gesture excitedly, and try to say something, but it’s just a bunch of babble. In the last couple days, however she came out with her second word.  The first one was Mama.  The second one… nope, not Dada; I still fall under the “Mama” category, which is what she calls both Karis and I.  No, her new word, as you’ll hear many times in the video below, is “Dowa” – as in Dora the Explorer. (In the words of the old Verizon commercial, “Dad got hosed!”  Oh well…)

more about “Krista’s second word“, posted with vodpod

Bad experience with Mondays in March

I’m deciding that I’m not so fond of Mondays in March. Today, the second Monday in March, marks the second time we’ve had to go to the French (health) clinic on a Monday this month. Last week it was the peanut…

We were giving the girls lunch before their naps when Kayla stops and tells us that she can’t eat any more. She had already eaten all her sandwich, so I had given her some peanuts to finish off the meal.  When Karis asked her why she couldn’t eat any more, she said it was because her nose hurt.  I don’t know why, but I got this funny feeling and asked if she had stuck something up her nose.  At first she was scared to tell us, but soon admitted that she had stuck a peanut up her nose.  I looked up her nose with a flashlight and, sure enough, there it was.  It looked close enough that I could just grab it with a pair of tweezers, but Kayla didn’t like the feel of something going up her nose, so she wouldn’t sit still long enough to let me get it out.  After trying for a little while, we decided we would have to go to the French clinic for them to get it out, so we left for the French clinic at 1:00PM.

We got there and had to wait for an hour or so because they were still on their break.  In the French system lunch break is usually like two or three hours.  Once we finally got in to see the doctor, it was the same story.  The doctor tried, but Kayla was so scared that she wouldn’t sit still.  She was fighting and squirming so much that I had to help the nurse hold her down, for the doctor to be able to extract the peanut.  However the peanut kept getting pushed up higher into her nose.  Finally, the doctor called a specialist who gave us an appointment at another clinic about an hour later.

Doctor at the French clinic tried to get the peanut out

When we got to that clinic – same story.  This doctor had better tools, but still was unable to get the peanut out because Kayla was squirming and fighting.  Finally he told us that he recommended giving her general anesthesia to put her under so they could get the peanut out.  He didn’t want to just leave it in the nose, because he was afraid that she might inhale it into her lungs if it somehow slid into her throat while she was sleeping.  He also didn’t want to try to keep getting it out because he was afraid that he might cause an injury inside the nose with as much as Kayla was moving.  So he called an anesthesiologist – which took her about an hour to get to the clinic – and gave her a shot of valium to put her to sleep.  They actually gave her a little too much because it took her over 1.5 hours to wake up from it instead of the .5 – 1 hour that they said.  We ended up getting home about 8:30PM, but we were just happy that our little “peanut” no longer had a peanut up her nose.

The specialist finally had to put Kayla under to get the peanut out

This week it was me and not Kayla.  Yesterday afternoon I started feeling really sore with body aches.  I took some ibuprofen, which seemed to take care of most of the pain and went about the rest of the evening – I wasn’t feeling the best but figured I was just tired.  However, I woke up about 1:15AM with uncontrollable shaking, like a bad case of the chills.  To my surprise I didn’t my temperature only said 97.2F/36.2C, but still could not stop shaking for 15 minutes or so.  I went back to sleep once the shaking stopped – under covers this time, but woke up at 4:30 with more body aches and a fever of 100.9F/38.3C.  I figured that, although we have been taking medicine to prevent it, I must have come down with malaria because the symptoms were similar.

So we went to the French clinic again this Monday, leaving the house about 8:45.  When we arrived, they started taking vitals and the nurse asked if I had low blood pressure.  I told him that it has always been normal, but he said this time it was coming in at 90/60.  I also noticed that I was feeling a little weird, almost like my heart was racing at times, so I started checking my pulse while I was waiting for him to finish filling out paperwork.  In the 15 or 30 seconds that I was taking my pulse, it seemed like my heart was skipping a beat periodically – I think it happened 2 or 3 times in 30 seconds.  I told them how I was feeling and asked them do a finger prick test to check for malaria – which ended coming back negative.  The doctor said, however, that they sometimes the tests are not always right, and gave me instructions to drive to a lab where they would run another panel of blood tests.

We were standing at the secretary’s desk checking out and getting directions to the lab when I started to feel really light headed, so I sat down in a chair right next to the desk.  All of the sudden I felt like I had better go to the bathroom (my stomach has been messed up over the last week), so I got up and headed for the bathroom.  When I got there though, my head was really swimming, my vision was going black, and I realized that I was about to pass out, so I sat down on the toilet as quickly as I could.  I stayed there for a few minutes till my head stopped swimming and then tried to get up again.  As soon as I did this, though, I got the same sensation, so I put my back against the wall and started sliding down to the floor.  My vision was going all black again and just as I was almost to the floor I felt my body go completely limp.

I called Karis on her cell phone and told her that I needed her to come and help me get up.  She came in and then called the doctor and told her what was going on.  The doctor helped me to a bed where she lifted up my legs to help the blood flow back to my head and had the nurse start taking my vitals again.  After a minute or two, I heard the doctor say that my heart was irregular, so they put me on another bed where they could prop up my feet and then started drawing the bloodwork right there.  They wanted Karis to drive the blood over to the lab so they could run the tests, but Karis hasn’t gotten her license here yet and she didn’t know how to get to the lab.  I called Steve, even though he is leaving tonight for two weeks, and asked if he could help us out.  He called a taxi driver who goes to our church, who came to the clinic and drove Karis over to the lab and then brought her back to the French clinic.

We had to wait for almost two hours for the lab results which showed that I did not have malaria, but a bacterial infection.  They gave me an antibiotic injection there at the clinic and also a prescription for oral antibiotics.  I’m not sure exactly what type of bacteria it is because we haven’t seen the actual lab results, but it’s really having a heyday with my body.  I feel like I got run over by a truck or something; my body aches from head to toe and my fever is back up over 101.5F/38.6C.  Tomorrow we’ll be going to the lab to pick up the results and then back to the clinic for a follow up appointment, so hopefully I’ll know more about what’s going on.  I’m just glad that we figured this out before it got any worse.

And I’m not looking forward to next Monday…  We haven’t exactly been having the best record with Mondays in March.

Book Review: A Hunger for God by John Piper

This year I have set a goal for myself of reading one spiritually enriching book per month. For the month of January, my choice was A Hunger for God by John Piper. I chose this book because the topic of fasting is a big deal among the religious people here in Cameroon, both in evangelical and denominational churches, so I wanted to get a good perspective on it. I was also interested in what the Bible says about it because fasting is difficult for me, and not just because I love food too much (although, sadly, that is the case many times). If I don’t eat regularly my blood sugar level drops and my body responds by hitting me with a migraine, which for me is accompanied by loss of/blurry vision, sensitivity to light and sound, and an extreme headache which, if not treated, brings on nausea. Because of this I have never really thought much about fasting because I thought that I couldn’t really do it – physically that is.

Also, a big part of my “problem” with fasting was that I really only ever heard about people fasting when they really wanted something to happen. Not that they would say it this way, but it almost had the feeling of, “If I show God how serious I really am by fasting then He will surely act on my behalf to bring about what I want to happen.” And I know that we can’t twist God’s arm like that just to get what we want. After all, God is sovereign and does what He pleases, that is, what is best. So then what is the purpose of fasting?

I knew that Piper would provide a good, Christ centered teaching on this topic, and I was not disappointed. He challenged my thinking specifically on the purpose of fasting, not because we want something, but because we treasure Christ – even above food. Consider the following paragraph from his introduction:

Which means that bread magnifies Christ in two ways: by being eaten with gratitude for his goodness, and by being forfeited out of hunger for God himself. When we eat, we taste the emblem of our heavenly food—the Bread of Life. And when we fast we say, “I love the Reality above the emblem.” In the heart of the saint both eating and fasting are worship. Both magnify Christ. Both send the heart—grateful and yearning—to the Giver. Each has its appointed place, and each has its danger. The danger of eating is that we fall in love with the gift; the danger of fasting is that we belittle the gift and glory in our willpower.

Or, as he says in the first chapter…

Fasting is not a “no” to the goodness of food or the generosity of God in providing it. Rather, it is a way of saying, from time to time, that having more of the Giver surpasses having the gift… Food is good. But God is better. Normally we meet God in his good gifts and turn every enjoyment into worship with thanksgiving. But from time to time we need to test ourselves to see if we have begun to love his gifts in place of God.

The overall thrust of A Hunger For God was to help us see that fasting, while not necessarily prescribed as a requirement for Christians in this age, helps to reveal what is truly important in our lives and where our love and loyalty lies.  And while there can be many different types of fasting (not simply abstaining from food for a time), participating in any type of fasting forces us to ask ourselves the question, “Where do we find our deepest satisfaction – in God or in His gifts?” (p. 58).

Piper also touches on the motivation for fasting, noting that it should neither be to receive the praise of men nor gifts from God.  In contrast to these motivations, he says, “No, the reward we are to seek from the Father in fasting is not first or mainly the gifts of God, but God himself.”  When we fast in the biblical manner and with the biblical attitudes, it will be so that we can draw closer to God, experience more of Him, and fall deeper in love with Him – not so that we can in some way manipulate Him or “butter Him up” in order to get something out of Him (p. 78).  Instead fasting should indicate our longing for the Savior and our desire to be with Him – to experience His presence.

The thing that I appreciated most about the book, which I fully anticipated when I picked it up, was the interaction with and treatment of the Biblical text.  This was not simply a treatise on what John Piper thinks about fasting, but an honest and faithful interaction with the Scriptures on the subject of fasting.  In all, it was a very enjoyable and enlightening read – a book I would definitely recommend for your perusal.

If you’re interested in reading this book for yourself, you can find a free .pdf download of this and other books from Desiring God by clicking here. (Oops – I guess I just gave away one half of my answer to one of my earlier posts!)

God Never Promised An Easy Path

This is a phrase that I remember seeing all the time while we were students at Northland on all their promotional posters.  Recently the Lord brought this back to my mind through an exercise that we had to do in French class – a commentary on the quotation from Jim Elliot, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”  As I was thinking of this quotation, some of the difficulties that we face here on the mission field, and the difficulties that others around us are facing, this saying once again really ministered to my heart because, truly, God never did promise an easy path.  Instead he promised that He would be with us and that it would all be worth it in the end.

Is it just about money?

I’ve been struck recently by the contrast between two Christian companies that employ completely different strategies for getting good resources into the hands of people. I will attempt to allow these companies to remain nameless, but if you are familiar with either or both of these companies, you’ll probably know exactly who I’m talking about. And I’m sure there are many other Christian companies that fall at various points along the spectrum.

On the one hand there is one company that makes many of it’s resources available for free through their website. On that site you can find the audio and even video of sermons and entire conferences that you can download for free. They also make many of their printed resources available by putting their books into .pdf format for free download. And I’m not talking just sections of books, but entire books of 200, 300, 400+ pages for free! I have personally benefited from these resources as I am working through some of the books and have many of the sermons and conferences on my iPod. This is not to say that they don’t charge for anything because they do, and they do have a link for people to donate to the ministry on their website as well. What really impresses me, though, is their “whatever you can afford policy.” If you actually decide to purchase a hard copy of a book, CD, or DVD but you really can not afford the price, they will allow you to say what you can afford and send you the resource(s) for that price (within certain limits, of course). They don’t really talk much about needing help or their commitment to get good resources out to people, but they demonstrate it with their actions.

On the other side, there is a company that to me is just the reverse. They talk much of their desire to help struggling people with their resources, whether it be books, CDs, or conferences, but they are always asking for people to make donations and don’t make much available for free other than a few short articles (specifically in contrast to the amount and quality of things made available by the other company). They even employ one of my least favorite strategies of “Make a donation of such and such amount and we’ll send you this resource.” Again this is not to say that they are evil, greedy, or stingy, but their tactics stood out in such a stark contrast to me against those of the other company.

So my question is this… Where do you draw the line between the two? Do Christian companies have the right to charge whatever they want or can get for their resources, or do they have a responsibility as a Christian company to make their resources available to everyone by either making their resources modestly priced or making certain resources available for free? I would love to hear your “two-cents worth” on this one, even if you’re not a normal blog commenter and even if I don’t know you.

Membership course

This Saturday we had our second membership course at the Eglise Baptiste d’Odza here in Yaounde. We are planning to have another baptism and membership service on the 1st of March, and so we held a course to explain who we are as a church and what we believe. This time we actually offered the course in English and French and had a pretty strong turn out – about 8 in the French section and 4 in the English section.

I’m not sure how most membership courses go, but here because we have had many people visiting the church, we started from square one with salvation and assurance. Steve actually took about half of the class time talking about salvation because we wanted to be sure that people understood the true meaning and weren’t just joining “the white-man’s church” or joining just because they liked the services. When he had finished explaining salvation, Steve asked if there was anyone who had never truly accepted Christ but wanted to right then, and three people raised their hands! Steve took a few more minutes to ask and answer some questions with each person and then had them pray to confess their sin and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior. It was so exciting, especially as you could see the joy on their faces. I was sitting next to one of the guys and could hear the excitement in his voice as we talked about assurance of salvation and went through the rest of the class talking about what it means to be a part of the body.

It was such a blessing to have the opportunity to be part of this membership course and to see people come to trust Christ. We are looking forward to the next baptism service and trust that it will be another day of joy as people publicly demonstrate their desire to follow Christ. I will attempt to get some more video from that day and put it up on our website.

My wonderful wife

Karis is wonderful.  Those of you who know her already know this, but let me elaborate…  Last week was a difficult week for all of us – probably the most difficult in the six months that we’ve been here.  We were just wiped physically, emotionally, mentally… just drained, and I was actually handling it worse that Karis was.  You can read her post about it here.  I pretty much second everything she said there except for the fact that I’ve lost 30 pounds and would gladly take it all back to have a McDonalds here in Yaounde.  =D

At any rate, here’s what makes her so wonderful in the midst of all that.  On Saturday we had to do all sorts of stuff like homework, studying, … you know, all the things you really relish when you’re in a bad mood.  The girls, as always, got up early but I was so tired that I fell back asleep in the middle of their noises.  Next thing I know I’m waking up at 9:00 and Kayla is opening my door to say, “Dad are you ready for breakfast?  Mom made waffles!”  Karis, even though she was “down” and not feeling well had let me sleep very late and made a special breakfast for us.  But that’s not all…

My back has been getting a more and more sore for a while, but Sunday it just “went out.”  I’m not sure exactly what happened, but something made it grab and it still hasn’t really let go.  I was walking around like a 90 year old grandpa on Sunday.  Although it has increased her load because I can hardly even lift Krista,  Karis has been so understanding and, in addition to all her other roles, has now taken on the role of personal trainer working on my back a couple times a day, and helping me stretch it out.  I honestly couldn’t have made it through the last couple days without her help.

What a blessing it is not only to have a wife who loves and serves when it’s easy, but who does it even when it’s difficult.  Like Proverbs 31:29 says, I know that there are many good wives out there, but mine excels above all of them.  Thanks, hon, for your care and service for our family.

CLAPP – How you can pray for us

Many of you have sent us emails or messages letting us know that you are praying for us.  I have jotted down five specific areas in which you could be in prayer for us this coming year, and, although I didn’t plan it this way, it forms a nice, memorable acrostic – CLAPP

Cultural learning and adjustment – The longer we are here in Cameroon we are finding that there are many cultural things that we need to learn and adjust to (things like whether to speak to people directly or indirectly and when to employ each type of speech), how and when to help people who are in need around us (we neither want to become calloused to the needs around us nor to just give indiscriminately or in a way that will create more problems than it solves), how to interpret culturally acceptable practices in light of biblical principles (such as lying, especially to “save face,” which is so culturally acceptable that many people do it without even thinking about it).

Language learning –  we definitely need the Lord’s help as we continue to work on learning French, not only in our book studies but also in our everyday practice.  Specifics here include increased learning and usage of proper vocabulary, working on our accents, and our ability to understand and be understood.

Adjustment to different and increased ministry when the Gaults return to the States for furlough in June.  This will definitely be a stretching time as we will be taken out of our comfort zones (whatever is left of them) and put into a whole new phase of life and ministry.  Much of what we are praying for in terms of cultural learning/adjustment and language learning are directly impacted by this time.  Pray that even as we prepare for this time that our trust will be completely in the Lord.

Personal spiritual growth – Our desire in 2009 is that we will experience significant spiritual growth.  Being in a new culture even just for four months has showed me many of the sins, weaknesses and spiritual flaws in my life that I desire to see changed for God’s glory.  We also desire that as we seek to grow closer to the Lord individually we will grow closer to God (and each other) as a couple.  We are trying to institute and maintain a consistent time of prayer and spiritual growth together.  Pray that this time will continue throughout the year.

Parenting – This area is especially challenging for us as we are extremely busy with language school, but also in the midst of very formative years in our girls lives.  Specifically pray that we will model proper speech and actions before the girls, that we will discipline biblically and consistently, and that we will make time to nurture our girls emotionally and spiritually.

We truly appreciate your prayers.  May God bless you with a meaningful and unwasted 2009.

Good news for Africa?

A Los Angeles Times story from today reports that a vaccine for malaria, which “kills nearly 1 million people each year and sickens about 2 million others according to estimates from the World Health Organization,” could be available by 2012.

This would, of course, be a great thing for all of Africa and something from which we would benefit too.  It’s still at least 3-4 years away, but maybe we’ll be able to get a vaccine to help prevent us from getting malaria when we’re home on our first furlough.  For now we’ll keep on taking the malaria medicine and, as always, trust that the Lord will watch over us.

Pray that the Lord would allow these scientists to develop this vaccine and that it would be a means of spreading the gospel to those who might never otherwise get to hear it.

The water situation in Cameroon

Yesterday I found a very interesting article about the water situation in Cameroon.  The majority of this article is actually an interview done with a man who lives here in Yaoundé.   Of course, I don’t always agree with everything that is said or all the proposed solutions, but it still provides an interesting perspective of life here.  I’ll paste pieces of the article below, but you can read the whole article by clicking here…

In the western African nation of Cameroon, two-thirds of the people live in cities. But less than one in five city dwellers has access to potable water.

Q: “How do most people in your city get water?”
A: “The majority of the people in my city [Yaoundé] go down to the quarter to get their water from streams and wells. Imagine the time and effort it takes to carry heavy tubs of water to your home everyday. But what’s worse, the water isn’t even clean. The wells and streams are very close to the community pit toilets and bathrooms. Of course people without running water have no indoor toilets or bathtubs. Wells and streams are exposed to the air, so dirt, chemicals and waste materials often corrupt these water sources, especially during floods. In swampy areas of the city where the majority of people live, the squalor and stench are extreme.”

Q: “What would it take to get running water in people’s homes?”
A: “It’s not that there is no system of water running through cities – there is. One must pay a fee and submit documentation to the National Water Corporation in order to get water to run through the pipes of a home. Once a resident has followed these steps, the water authority has everything legally required get water running at the home.  Yet even after completing the legal process, a family might wait forever without getting running water, except that they take the additional illegal step of bribing the chain of water connection officials. So not only is the water itself corrupted, but the water authority is rife with corruption. Corruption causes massive delays in the acquisition of water and makes it doubly expensive, so only those with big money can afford it.”

Q: “Who does have running water in Cameroon?”
A: “A very small group of wealthy people, members of some tribal lineages and political cronies have access to running water. With access to free water, government officials waste more, which means that water becomes scarcer to the larger population. And the wasting of water places a heavy burden on tax payers, who themselves have no access to potable water.”

Q: “It sounds like the corruption of water is taking a severe toll on the people of Cameroon.”
A: “Yes. As a result of the corruption of water, diseases like cholera, dysentery and typhoid are rampant in our country and throughout most of Africa. A recent outbreak of cholera sent hundreds to the hospital and killed several in Douala [the largest city and economic capital of Cameroon]. When a family member becomes ill from one of these diseases, families are forced to spend their meagre financial reserves in the ill-equipped and corrupt hospitals. If you don’t die from these diseases, they wreak havoc on your body so that you are never as strong as you were before. Either way, the health impacts quickly become economic impacts when families become so financially stretched that they are unable to afford the expenses of sending their children to school.”

Q: “How do you see water corruption affecting your country’s progress?”
A: “Remember that these people constitute the work force of our country. It is therefore clear that this country and many African countries are forced to remain behind because those who ought to be the working force are weakened physically, financially and emotionally. The majority are in such ill-health that they cannot work effectively to build the nation.”

Q: “The leaders seem to be very myopic by only focusing on their own standard of living instead of improving the overall standard of living. What is the solution, in your view?”
A: “There are many, many efforts to ensure access to clean water and none have yet succeeded because they try to operate within the current corrupt systems. While most Cameroonians are so disgusted about this pervasive corruption that they have no interest in politics, I believe the solution is a political one. I believe that this kind of entrenched corruption can only be eliminated by turning the system upside down and giving ordinary, working people the power to control the country’s decision-making.”