Easter

Easter is quite the celebration here.  We woke up before 5am on Easter morning to the sound of African drumming coming from the church just a couple buildings down from our house.  We then got our clothes on, woke up Isaac, put him in the hiking pack, and joined the expanding group of Cameroonians walking up Mbingo Hill.  The goal is to be up the hill before sunrise, which we easily accomplished. 

This shows the group that did the Easter sunrise service on the hill as we all walked back down toward the church for the official Easter service.  The only downside was the dense fog all morning that actually obscured the sunrise.  However, this did not take away from the celebration of the resurrection of our Savior.  It was a great morning and a memorable Easter.

After the church service, all of the missionaries got together for a potluck brunch.  The food was great and we used the opportunity to take a group photo that includes almost all of the missionaries currently working at Mbingo.  We are truly blessed with a great community of friends here in Cameroon.

After breakfast, Isaac and Cathen joined the other kids for an easter egg hunt.  Someone had a few plastic eggs and then Angela hard-boiled some eggs that were then decorated with stickers.  Isaac collected quite a few and you can see Cathen "eyeing" his basket full of eggs.

In other news, Chuck and JR took part in a teaching course for the nurse screeners that work in the CBC system all over the country a couple weeks ago.  They traveled down to Bamenda and gave lectures and facilitated discussion on pneumonia, asthma, diarrhea, malaria, and sepsis.  Nurse screeners are a step above nurses and function as the frontline in the outpatient clinics that scatter the country.  They hold a lot of responsibility and this course was hopefully a chance for many of them to improve and refine their patient care.

Chuck took this picture from a helicopter over Yaounde (the capital of Cameroon).  He recently helped transport a sick missionary to Yaounde by plane and then got to travel back to Mbingo by helicopter.  It was a unique experience to take a 2 hour flight over the country of Cameroon, starting in the flat big cities and ending in the mountainous NW region where Mbingo sits.  The plane and the helicopter belong to SIL/Wycliffe (Bible translators) and they are mostly used for accessing difficult to reach people groups.

This is Chuck and JR on the top of Mbingo Hill with the hospital in the background.  It is a steep climb, but worth it for the views.

Like this view of the entire valley with the hospital below and the road in and out of town visible.  The mountain ranges here belong in a national park.

This is Angela, Isaac, and Isaac's future sibling posing during a recent maternity shoot we did.  Surprisingly, Isaac did cooperate for a few pictures, but mostly because we bribed him with a cookie.  He does like to talk about how he is going to help with the baby, but we will see if he remains this excited when the baby actually comes!