We arrived home after 28 hours of travel. We were blessed because our plane arrived before the weather got bad. Janet and I have known what it is like to circle the airport for 2 hours waiting for weather to clear enough for the plane to land.
We finally got on the road and the weather was getting worse. The traffic stopped on the 401. We were just at a median so we turned around and took another highway. There ended up being a 75 car pile up at Woodstock about 20 miles away from where we had to stop. We were blessed not to be one of those 75 cars.
We made it home to a warm welcome to our children who cooked us a nice Asian meal to give us a break from African.
Final thoughts
Here are some final thoughts about our journey. The Cameroon people are wonderful people. We saw no crime there. Quinton from South Africa was totally blown away by this as he said he as never seen it quite like this in Africa. No one is ripping your watch off your hand, no violence, no drugs, etc. We didn’t even see people smoking. I only remember seeing 2 people smoking and one was at the airport. The people are very friendly loving and hospitable.
There are no white people in Douala. We saw maybe 5 whites at the most.
The Vineyard Church here has a good start and is working on a good foundation.
I asked Clever which of my teachings impacted him the most and he said “Sozo”. That is a teaching where I show that healing, salvation and restoration are all integrated and you can’t separate them. Jesus didn’t come to just heal us (make us physically better), or to just save us (for most that means just get into heaven), etc. he came to “Sozo” us (Greek work which means healing, salvation and restoration, etc.) and totally restore us and let us begin to live and experience the Kingdom of God.
I felt like a major breakthrough came when I talked about poverty. They had a mindset that Clever was receiving money from Vineyard Europe or Vineyard west and that their little bit of money would make no difference. I spoke about the mentality of poverty, how we are rich in God and if they want us to assist them then they have a poverty mentality. I went over a story call “the rich people in our church” and showed them that poverty was a mindset. I really felt a break through in the spirit. We all feel poor because we spend more than we make, we look at what we don’t have, and compare ourselves to those who have more than us.
We didn’t have much ministry time. It seemed like more foundational teaching on the Kingdom of God and other groundwork and less teaching on other important subjects like worship and healing. Also, they start late and the meetings go for 3-4 hours, and it is hot and humid and ministry time does not seem very conducive.
Cameroon is 80% French and 20% English. They have 10 provinces and 2 provinces are English and the other 8 are French. You would think that it would be easy to communicate with the people who speak English. Well it can be quite difficult for 2 reasons; one accent and two, choice of words. For example instead of saying “go quickly” they say “go fast” but is sounds like “go fawstt” so you go “pardon” (they may say for pardon “please”)
Another example is “the fly of Quinton reach” which means “the airplane Quinton is on has arrived”.
Speaking French was interesting. A lot of my high school French came back to me (last class was Grade 9) but if their French is like their English then I was learning Cameroun French. I do want to learn more French so I can eventually preach in French. To learn it, I will need to maybe do some CDs or schooling and then get immersed in it. One of the main problems is I also want to learn Spanish, Dutch, and Russian so we will see. Life is so exciting and so much to look forward as we partner with the Kingdom of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment