Tuesday, July 14, 2009

How many people does it take to take baby passport photos?

A minimum of three: One to hold the back and front of baby's head so it doesn't bobble (the hands go under the clothes which open in the back), one to hold the baby's hands down and pat him on his back so he looks up to the camera with eyes wide open, and one to take the picture while trilling and making all manner of crazy sounds to get the baby's attention. With the able help of the photographer at the Walmart portrait studio in St. Albert, AB, we have passport photos of our little Joe at just over 5 weeks old! We have been sending out this prayer request for a couple of weeks now, and the Lord has delivered once again. We just walked right up to the place, no appointment necessary, went through our routine and 15 minutes later walked away with 6 passport photos. Praise God! Now the rest of Joey's documents can be processed which gets us closer to getting back to Cameroon. Now just to get to his Canadian passport application going, the US Consulate in Vancouver to process his Consular Report of Birth Abroad, US passport application, and Social Security Number, and get visas in all of our passports... no wonder we needed 6 passport photos!

Monday, July 6, 2009

The best kind of news

Of all the kinds of news you can get, this ranks fairly high up on the list: withdrawal of the Health Insurance case. We received a formal letter from the insurance company stating that they had reviewed our submission of evidence and found that we were indeed residents of BC and that they have reinstated our insurance and benefits. We do not owe anything. There is no need for a hearing. Everything has returned to normal. The waiting is over. We are thrilled by their decision and know that God had His hand in this. More details are in an email we sent out recently. If you didn't get this, just let us know and we'll send it to you.

This means that we can proceed with plans to return to Cameroon. At this point we are imagining a late August/early September arrival in Cameroon. Rejoice with us for this great news!

About Us

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Cam and Valerie are part of a five-family team, assigned to a cluster of 10 related languages, called the Ndop Cluster. The team’s goal is to train local Christians to complete the task of Bible translation in all 10 languages in the cluster. Currently all members of the team are involved in language and culture learning as well as other language development initiatives such as linguistic research, literacy, and translation. As of 2008, all 10 languages have alphabets and started literacy, while 2 languages have some portions of Scripture translated. Our present goal is to continue learning the Bafanji language (Chufie'), and study the grammar and tone of the language. As we have a better understanding of these aspects of the language, the translators can be more aware of the unique capabilities of their languages to express the meaning of the Bible as it is translated. Later we will begin to train people in neighboring villages to follow similar steps for their own language. We work with Wycliffe Bible Translators to help give access to the Bible in minority languages of the world.