Water Ministry Update < Click Here

Dear friends and family,

We have several requests for prayer in the following letter, we appreciate your support in that area!!

Time flies! Since I last wrote a lot has happened and some things stopped for a while. The Mejang Palace project has been on a temporary hold as I hurt my back loading pipes onto my truck, that set me back 3 weeks on that project and my truck needing some repairs delayed things even further but…. I am happy to report that my back is well, and as of this morning the truck is too.

We have started staging supplies on another project that will take off soon as well. In addition to several building projects here in the hospital and the building of a water filtration system with which I hope we will be able to filter stream water to supplement our springs as they slow down during the latter half of dry season. This year the dry season was particularly harsh, even to the point of banana plants actually falling over due to drying out, we’ve never seen that here in Mbingo before.

The rains started just under two weeks ago and came on with a mind blowing start. In under two weeks we’ve had over 8 inches of rain! It will take several weeks however before the springs respond as the water needs to filter down through the ground. We’ve been able to set up several 55 gallon drums to catch rainwater that people have been able to use for various things which has helped us out in the meantime.

Ellen has been busy with school, teaching her reading classes here in Mbingo and down at Memorial Comprehensive College Mejang the private Christian secondary school down the road from us. The owner of the school informed her several weeks ago that she was now the official English teacher for the school. She had to scramble to study the government syllabus and get to work putting together her lesson plans. She has really been enjoying the teaching at both schools…..and the tutoring in between.

We had an unpleasant and unexpected situation come up a couple of weekends ago. Our house helper Gladys learned that her children were being abused by a neighbor. One of the unfortunate things here is that people feel helpless in many situations and tend to just let things go out of fear that they may not be protected by the authorities should the perpetrator pay a bribe and be set free.

Because of this and the fact that we are close to Gladys family Ellen and I decided to stand up for these children. It was interesting as it was difficult at first for her kids to tell their stories as it is typical for abusers to place a burden of guilt and shame on their victims, but once they did they visibly felt better. It also brought many other children out who also testified to their own involvement. Altogether there are close to 30 kids, both boys and girls, between the ages of 7 and 14 who were taken advantage of by this man.

A good part in all of this is that most of the kids know Ellen well from school, she has taught the majority of them and they trust her, in fact she was the one they wanted to give their statements to and several of them insisted that she accompany them to court. As it stands now there are a lot of parents who are grateful for people who were willing to stand in the gap and push a reluctant system to deal with the situation.

We are grateful that God has placed us in a position to love these kids who will hopefully come through this ok. They have had physicals and we thank God that none of them tested positive for HIV and they had some preventative treatment for other possibilities. Next week our hospital social worker and head chaplain will begin scheduling counseling for all the children beginning with a few who are visibly showing signs of serious emotional trauma.

Pray that the legal system here will protect the kids and justice will be done. It looks good at this point and the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Social Affairs have also taken great interest in the case and has been very helpful.

Several years ago a study was done by the World Bank to find out how the poor of the world describe what it means to be poor. One quote from a Cameroonian responded that (The poor have) a feeling of powerlessness and an inability to make themselves heard.  Often times in places like this, those who have the power and position to protect society refuse to act or just plain show a lack of interest in order to gain financially before being willing to do their jobs, and even then many times the guilty will pay bribes and be set free. Because of this, great amounts of suffering happen in the lives of people who feel there is nothing they can do about it. This was actually the case here in this situation; we believe that God expects His church to stand up for such people out of love for them just as Jesus did.

Pray with us that this important opportunity to show a very practical love to these families will open doors of opportunity for evangelism to the families who are not believers and be an encouragement  Christians to stand up for righteousness no matter what. In all we do we pray that God will truly be the one glorified and His kingdom advanced because of it.

   Please pray also for our support as we are still in need.

Love from Mbingo, Thom & Ellen