Thoughts After Three Months

Leah and I are now past 3 months in Cameroon. It is interesting to think about where I imagined us after 3 months in Cameroon, the expectations that I had of how much French we would know or how we may be involved in the community outside our full time jobs. Also, looking ahead to the summer here, we will be working less at the school in the summer so we look forward to helping Wycliffe with tasks in the villages or at one of the three branch offices.

But before I speak about that, the most striking and wonderful feeling in the past 3 months has been the complete peace in my soul that we are where God wants us. I will say that for most my life at varied degrees I have expressed some desire to speed life up and skip to something that I am looking forward to: getting my driver’s license, graduating high school, a trip to Europe and Africa, my wedding day, etc. But the last few months have been very different; I am not asking questions about what I may be doing when our 2 years are done here. I am savoring, exploring, learning, growing, and living each day. I feel Alive with joy and peace. I do not hope that I am content with just being here, but hope to continue to grow my relationships with Cameroonians, become more involved in my community in a tangible way, learn more conversational French, etc. I am, though, enjoying that God has brought Leah and me here to Cameroon in his timing and not my own.

In my discussions with Leah before coming to Cameroon, we hoped to speak basic, understandable French and to have a conversation with a francophone Cameroonian or comprehend French conversations, after 3 months. What we did not expect was that all the staff at the school would speak English, both missionaries and Cameroonians that work there. Now, I must say I am very proud of Leah as she is now able to greet, get a taxi, buy items in the market, etc. We both have our work cut out to become conversational French speakers, but we feel comfortable to go where we need to. Another expectation was to become involved in Yaounde outside of our work with Wycliffe. About a month ago we meet a young man by the name of Hugue that goes to one of the local churches that we visited a few times. Anyways, we invited him over to dinner, and he shared with us his non-profit that he and two others began to help serve the elderly, orphans, and people in prison. We hope that, as we have settled in and both of us now can speak and understand some French, we will begin to help them serve the elderly and the orphans. Also, now after three months here we have found a church that is near to us to call home. This has been a long awaited answer to prayer as we have been searching since we first arrived here in February. We look forward to building relationships with Cameroonians there and hope to explore some ways to join the church community.

Since we work at the school here, our summers are a mix of some projects I will be working on with the Admin team at the school, but also time to work on other things. Not to look forward, but as we plan our summer Leah has expressed an interest for us to explore some of the villages here in Cameroon. I also have an interest in helping Wycliffe’s IT department that may need someone to travel to the villages to help translation teams with their IT needs. Also, after we arrived we spoke to some people that work out of the US from Wycliffe that need some help as they work on a project to bring satellite internet to some of the Cameroonian nationals doing translation work. I hope to hear more about this opportunity as we draw closer to the summer. In conjunction, both of us hope to continue French study throughout the summer.

We have been surprised by some things we have seen here. Cameroonians' main struggle here in Yaounde is housing, jobs, and having access to clean water. High unemployment is not exactly a surprise to us, but so many Cameroonians are entrepreneurial! Many people we know that are struggling for work will be househelp for a handful of people, set up a vegetable stand in a neighborhood, make great fruit juices and deliver to missionaries, or bake great bread products (bread, rolls, bagels, tortillas, and cinnamon rolls) and come around the compound to sell. Cameroonians for the most part are very determined to carve out a living for themselves and their families. Our friend Silas owns a small store down the road (he sells basic items like soap, chocolate, and powdered milk) and had an opportunity to travel to the States years ago. Now he makes some great Mexican food locals can order from him in advance and to be dropped off at our house! One major area that I did not list above was food. Many Cameroonians, if they have even a little money or because they have a garden, are able to have great access to a large variety of produce for very little. Cameroon is abounding with fertile land and consistent rain to grow excellent produce including rice that makes it much cheaper to buy nutritious food than really anything else. One difficulty here in Yaounde is that, since it is such a large city, when the city water goes out people have few areas to go for water, so cholera quickly can spread if the water is off for more than a day (which has only happened a few times).

Leah and I are grateful for the warm people of Cameroon, friends, good climate, and great food here in Cameroon. We are blessed that the first 3 months here have gone extraordinarily well and look forward to the rest of the time we have here in Cameroon. We may not have the same comforts we did in the States, but we are truly blessed to have more than enough.

Joy and Peace in Christ
Mark and Leah Janowiak

Branch Spiritual Retreat

Last week we had a 3 day branch spiritual retreat and I wanted to take a moment to share some impressions of the retreat. The topic of the retreat was pain and change. Currently the branch is about to embark on a season of redesigning some of the structure and makeup of the organization here in Cameroon. Over the last few years as everywhere money has been tight and this was no exception here. So, fittingly before we started our annual branch business meetings we first discussed the topic of pain and change!

One of the areas that I was reflecting on these few days was the irony that we cannot avoid pain and change. The more we try to avoid both pain and change the more we are trying to control things that which are not ours to control. Now, I am not saying that certain things that we do to ourselves cannot spare us some pain in life, but generally speaking we cannot stop change from happening. The beauty is that as we let go of trying to avoid and control these things the more we give them to God and the more he is able to work through these times in our life and allow us to fully experience the highs and lows in life. I call this choosing joy, as happiness comes and goes, but joy is a way to live life when you give your life over to Christ.

Another area that I don’t think I considered enough is if I don’t change I am no longer relevant to unbelievers. This for me has been and will be a fine line to walk in my life. As change happens to a culture or to a country that you live in, you must realize what the changes are and adapt in ways that allow us to be in the world, but not of the world. When I lived in the States I liked to call myself counter-cultural as I am against many of the ways that are “popular” or “normal” in our mainstream culture, but I must never disconnect myself from my culture. Let me explain this more. I must learn how the people in my culture are searching for the something to try to make them whole. If I can see what and how they are searching I am better able to: build a real relationship with that person, understand their pain and brokenness, and share with them a different way of life that can bring healing and wholeness to their life. I cannot connect and engage the person in a real relationship if I am completely disconnected from how they have changed and adapted to life in their culture over time.

These were just a couple of insights I had while at our 3 day branch spiritual retreat. I feel refreshed and renewed as we came through this past week as the retreat finished on Good Friday and then celebrated Resurrection Sunday. Such perspective and appreciation to prepare for Easter and to more fully appreciate the sacrifice of Christ as he willingly chose to die for my sins even before I knew him.

Joy and Peace in Christ
Mark and Leah Janowiak