Short Term Teams
Short Term Teams
This is one of our life lessons on how God uses different things to direct our paths into His will. When we knew that we were going to leave Teen Missions and move into town, we started looking for a home. Mostly, it was Tim as he was in town a lot more often than Sara. Tim had narrowed it down to several places which were fine, but just didn't seem quite right. So he said that there is this one place, but it's just too big for us. We looked at it together and as we were looking at it, the possibilities started to come together....wow....this would be a perfect place for housing teams! Granted...it was huge compared to where we were. Our whole TMI living quarters fit into the parlor. When we first moved into the house, the 3 of us stayed in the master bedroom area (which is really big) for a couple of weeks because the whole house was just overwhelming. We had a refrigerator, freezer, washing machine, a couple of beds and a desk but little else. It was a long time before we filled it enough to significantly cut down on the echo. But, here was our perfect place for teams.
In June of 2008 we hosted/ran our first team, it was a team of teenagers from a missionary boarding school (called RFIS) in Yaoundé (the capital about 6 hours away). We don't even remember if they all had hot water, but most slept on the floor. It was a baptism in fire for the team. But, what troopers! Most were seasoned missionary kids who had experienced village life so they just rolled with the circumstances and we had a great time! Since then we have hosted/run on average 1-2 teams per year. We have housed smaller groups also (one family who was visiting from Ghana looking to relocate to Cameroon to open a school and do other ministry...they are now here in country in Buea!) and volunteers. We have also served as the recovery home...haha. We are few in number and quieter than our former colleagues (who have 4 children) so....it was the perfect home for Willie (the underweight infant), Meranda (after her surgery) (both from HHCH), and Daniel an infant we took care of for 5 weeks before he went to GTS. God has blessed us to be able to minister to those who come along side of us here (through housing, food etc...). We consider it part of our ministry here in Cameroon to be a blessing to those who came to serve at our former ministry or other ministries and those who have and will come to serve with Hope Filled Futures (GTS, CBS). That blessing includes making their living quarters comfortable, making sure that the food is properly prepared (2 American type meals and 1 Cameroonian for exposure to the food here), safe drinking water and hopefully good fellowship and advice. Teams do help with the cost of food and extra electricity/water, transportation to/from the airport and to/from their projects etc... If you are ever interested in bringing a team from your church or just want to come and volunteer contact us and we can help make arrangements.
