Action Packed Weekend

We had a wonderful action packed weekend.  The adventure started with me driving for the first time on a long adventure (about an hour).  We met up with the other three LMH/MDA mission families on Friday morning at a pottery studio-PresPot.  We feel so blessed to have the other families in country to periodically meet up with for support and good times plus lots of kids. 

PresPot is an amazing place.  All the clay is dug by hand close to the studio.  We were able to see the many processes the pottery must go through to complete a piece.  The process is labor intensive but well worth the end result.  Surprisingly with all the kids we managed to not break any pottery.  The visit made all of us appreciate pottery much more.  From there we headed to the retreat center where we were to stay for the rest of the weekend.

The retreat center was very nice and we had the whole place to ourselves, so no need to worry about the kids being quiet.  The second we arrived the kids played nonstop.  We are still in awe that 15 children can get along so well.

On Saturday our adventure was to a tea estate about 40 minutes up into the mountains.  We arrived and realized the staff at the tea plant were a bit nervous with so many white people with kids.  After talking with them for a little while they agreed to take us on a tour. 

The plant was huge and produced all parts of what it takes to make tea.  The tea is handpicked, dried, chopped by machines and then packaged.  The tour took about 2 hours and the kids (and adults) were very interested.  It is a miracle that a factory so large could be operating in the mountains of Cameroon.  At the end of the factory tour we were given a case of tea. 

Then we went to see an animal sanctuary on the property.  The grounds were beautiful with cows, horses, peacocks, ostriches, bunnies, four enormous python snakes, monkeys and chimpanzees.  Everything but the cows and horses were behind bars.  Thankfully the pythons were well secured.  One of the pythons was aggressive because they had just caught it in the jungle so it was moving around quite a bit. 

The highlight was the chimps.  The handler brought out two of the chimps for us to meet.  One of them was not friendly so we didn’t get too close to her but the other one, Billy, loved the attention so we were able to hold him.  Patrick was not happy being too close to Billy.  The handler tried to pick Patrick and Billy up together but Patrick just cried.  We all took some great pictures with Billy and he was very friendly.  It was an adventure we will always remember.

We ended the weekend by going to Palm Sunday Mass together.  The interesting part of Palm Sunday was that we were to bring our own palms.  Palm trees are everywhere so it is not a big deal but everyone had fresh cut palms.  Someone cut ours for us so we didn’t have to collect them ourselves. 

Between all of the adventures the kids played nonstop and were very sad to go home.  We said our goodbyes and headed home.  The drive was pleasant and we were able to pick up some mangoes on the way.  The season is just starting so we were super excited plus we got 15 mangoes for $1.  Life in Cameroon can be pretty good.

-Ryan