Thom & Ellen Schotanus Update from Cameroon February 2018 Greetings once again from Mbingo. Life here for the past few months has been stressful as the civil Unrest has dragged on for about 15 months now. It is quite interesting (not is a good way) as there are pockets of random violence which flare up then cool back down. There have been individuals who have tried to profit from the situation by way of robberies and attempted extortion through phone calls. From our observation there are lots of innocent people suffering on both sides at the hands of a few. Pray that God s people would be vocal on the side of righteousness and law abiding. One of our Cameroonian doctors was telling me a couple of days ago of the horrors he has seen due to violence done by people on people. One person told him he hoped this current situation will continue for a long time. He said he told that person that if he had seen the things he has seen he would not wish for that...he said he just broke down and cried. Violence and hatred only foster more violence and hatred. Pray for Cameroon and all nations where people just seem to find it impossible to love their neighbors as themselves. We personally are careful as we move around and are careful what we say but have no imminent concern for our safety. Last weekend I was just up the road in Belo getting fuel for the hospital generator and people were out and very social, local business people, government officials, and security forces behaving as if all were well, against a backdrop of 2 burned out vehicles from 2 weeks before, very strange! In early January we had a team of 3 people who came out from Valley Community Baptist Church in Avon, CT, to be with the MK s during our annual missionary retreat with all the CBC missionaries. After that they stayed with us for a week and conducted a 3 day program at our local government high school on Integrity, it was great and really enjoyed by the kids. Singing, dancing, object lessons... Page 1 of 5
With a special appearance of Captain Integrity himself, more object lessons and a captivated audience, We got lots of positive feedback from the kids and many parents as well. Ellen continues to teach kids in the house, one on one she currently has 23 kids coming. Our pastor wants Ellen to start teaching a group of adults in the church who want to learn to read so they can be more involved in serving in the church. Pray that this will get off to a good start and they can work out a schedule for that. The kids she works with in the house get their own Study Bible after achieving reading proficiency and passing a 500 word vocabulary and spelling test, Grace and Prospect (below) are the latest two to reach that goal. Page 2 of 5
The Mbingo Baptist Hospital Hydroelectric Project is starting. After almost 8 years of planning, gathering data, taking measurements, and doing surveys, construction will actually be starting this year. The turbine has been ordered and we started casting concrete rings to create stream crossings that will accommodate heavy equipment and rainy season access to the back diversion dam site and the turbine building site. A couple weeks ago shooting levels to assist Worldwide Engineering in siting the turbine The bridge over this stream will be replaced with side by side concrete culverts. Filling the mold for the first ring. And then there were 6. We need 24 rings for this crossing. We ll create 2 tubes to allow for the massive downpours we get in rainy season. We are able to cast 1 ring per day as we only have the single mold. Page 3 of 5
Doing it right. Gilbert was aspiring to being a civil engineer when we first arrived in Cameroon almost 17 years ago. We used to work together before he left to work for the government and then finally his own civil and structural engineering firm. He now has a masters degree in structural engineering and has a real attention to detail, We have hired him to assist us with the hydroelectric project that will have lots of critical structural elements. The past two days we did analysis of our sand and gravel we have available so he could formulate concrete mixes to give us the various desired strengths. He was very gracious in spending time explaining some technical points in regards to concrete to some of our apprentices. I love to see the capacity building of people and helping them to become the people God created them to be. We mixed a few different formulations and cast several test sample molds that will be compression tested in his lab in Bamenda. All the results will be sent to the engineering firm in the US to help them finish the design of our project Precise measurements to quantify samples as well as give them some confidence that we ll be doing it right! Apprentices getting explanations of the test procedures and the importance of the information to actual Construction. A stack of sieves with gradually smaller openings is filled and shaken. Each tray is then weighed to determine the volume by weight of each grade of gravel. Page 4 of 5
The river sand we buy was also sieved, graded, then tested for silt content. Gilbert entered all the data into spread sheets which he then used to produce a batch formula to give us the precise strengths we are looking for. Test sample molds being filled and compacted. These will be tested at 7, 14, and 28 days to see if the target compressive strength is correct. Several batches to do. Precise quantities of sand, cement, and gravel were mixed with precise amounts of water (tested with a slump cone) for each batch. With love from Mbingo, Thom & Ellen Page 5 of 5