Mark and Jessica Spangler

We take puzzles for granted. We teach our children how to do them starting from the earliest possible age. We don’t even think anything of it. Many of us got wooden puzzles as shower gifts for our unborn babies to enjoy when they were old enough. This little boy is actually around ten years old and he sat for a very very long time and couldn’t do a simple puzzle that my four year old could do. I was surprised that as many times as I showed him, he still couldn’t do it or even sort of do it. It would be an interesting sociological study. Why couldn’t he do it? Culture? Hmm.

We don’t have to go far to get away. From time to time when the weather is good we like to go up to the airstrip and build a fire. We have a fire ring tucked up on the property. We feel like we are camping and really enjoying ourselves. We usually have marshmallows saved up to take too!

Here is our land behind/above our house. The clumps of trees are bananas. We also have lemon, guava, macadamia nut, coffee and more! We keep chickens and have a huge garden to grow fresh produce in.

This is where we enter and leave the house. It is the side but the face of our home.

Last but not least our dogs. Beni (top)and Shadow

The view from our house!

For those of you that are wondering what our house looks like, here it is from the front yard. We are blessed to be renting a house built by a Swiss family several years back. They are no longer here and the house became available just as we were moving to Cameroon. We are so blessed!

The kids like to build forts using bamboo and whatever else they find. It entertains them for hours and then they can keep out of the rain.

Cooking?

The green grass that grows freely during the rainy season is a big delight and change for us. I’m sure we have never had such a green yard before.

Mark flew a man who is a music specialist out to this village Ako. He helped them to write their own worship and praise songs and record it.

This is the normal crowd when the helicopter flies anywhere.

I love this picture! These are kids peering under the tail boom of the helicopter. Mark asked them to sing him a song. They were happy to oblige. We have a video of a few songs they sang. It sure made him feel welcome!

So, here is an update on how our church building is coming along. We have been digging for over six months to level the section of our land and now we have pillars and soon a tin roof! Every week reminds me of the short term trips I would go on as a teen to Mexico. We dig and dig and dig!

Here are som hand dug hole and the start o four pillars

This is an overview of the plot but the next picture will be a before picture

This is a picture of the slope we had to dig out to make a flat plot

It amazes me at the work and effort his church is putting in just so we can have a dry place where we can all worship together.

As part of the educational coop here in April we do a car race similar to the pinewood derby races. It was so much fun! I will share a few photos so you can enjoy right along with us.

We don’t have proper weight here so we melt metals or glue coins to the cars. You can see Caleb has some coins glued to his car. He designed and worked hard on this sporty ride.

Here is Ali’s car in which she painted all the coins.

Here is Micah’s

The car on the left was the one Zoe was racing. Someone gave her a car that raced a few years ago so she didn’t have to build it.

Zoe got the enjoy a birthday party in Yaounde with lots of other MKs. They were playing sardines and ended up in the shower.

Decorating cupcakes

Making candy necklaces

Blowing out the candle

Zoe is a big 4 and she had so much fun with all her friends. If we can’t celebrate in The States it is at least nice to have so many friends to celebrate with.

There was the dunk tank too. My kids were relentless and the boys have pretty good aim so they dunked people over and over and over.

Just before going down

Face paint

Dora 🙂

Shark bite!

Spider?! Whos kids is this anyways?

We had such a blast at the carnival. We even ate hamburgers! What a treat!

There was even a zip line! It was too fun but the lines were so long each person could only go once.

Ali riding the zip line

Caleb getting a running start

Micah is ready to go

Sooo fun! My turn