Journal entry on December 29, 2008

Ruth's house

Ruth awakened me this morning at nearly 8:30. I haven't felt any jet lag. For breakfast we had papaya and bread and eggs. It's been a slow morning so I was able to unpack my clothes and clean off the desk for my computer.

Some more about church yesterday: There were three different choirs, plus a marvelous group of Sunday School kids. The kids each recited a portion of the Gospel of John and performed a skit. Most of the service was in French, but Ruth said that sometimes the choirs sang in a Congolese language. The service lasted three hours. The pastor's baby was baptized. I enjoyed that literally all the people were doing the work of worship. I felt like I was dreaming. The music fulfilled all my expectations of joyful African singing. Sometimes I was nearly in tears. At the end they introduced us and asked me if I wanted to say something. I used a lot of French in what I said. The pastor did some translating. Later I was told that he was not doing a good job. Raphael stood up and clarified my story. I started out by saying I had wanted to come to Africa since I was a child. I tried to describe how a missionary in Congo brought Ruth and me together. And how we were roommates in college. I thanked them for being the church, so joyful and lively, and that we were blessed to the bottom of our heart and soul. And with Ruth's go-ahead, I said that the Stones and I want to give them a baptismal font. The young people had given a lectern which had been locally made. So I took a picture of it and we 'll figure out how to have the font made. They were very pleased and very grateful. I took some pictures of the exterior of the church.

After a short time receiving refreshments--including beer!--in the yard outside the church building, we left. We came home and had a wonderful lunch again. Then we left to go to Raphael's village. It took several hours to get there. It takes great skill to drive in town or in the rural areas. Traffic is crazy and there are vendors by the side of the road, especially before we left the city. Eventually we got to dirt roads, and went through several wide spots in the road, each of which was a village. When we finally got to Mangamba they took us to the house they have built over the last ten years. It is a lovely home and I took pictures of it. We had a beer and they showed us the church next door that they had built in the village. There had been a church there since German days before the first world war, but it had fallen into disrepair or collapsed or something. So a number of years ago they had this church built. We met the pastor there and had a delightful time.

We returned to Douala. As we travel and I see the people carrying produce on their heads, and cars overloaded with people and produce, and the bananas and pineapples and lots of children, and vendors by the sides of the road, I think, “Wow, that looks like all the pictures I've seen of Africa.” The same with the open air churches and the schools, also open air.

We had a hilarious time over dinner. We had a wonderful spicy soup. (It seems that they serve wine at lunch, not at dinner.) We got on the subject of Raphael's retirement and how, as the General Manager of Alucam (a large aluminum processing operation), he really is an important person. He's a very modest man, but he did concede, during the conversation, that he will be missed. Ruth joked with him about how he was tooting his own horn. He said something like, “It's OK for me to say these things to friends.” Joe quickly responded, “With your horn.” We all burst out laughing. I guess you had to be there. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Later when someone else tooted his/her own horn, Joe pantomimed playing a trumpet. It's become a great joke re-shared many times.