Faith and Depression

Everyone loves to hear about missions. They love hearing the stories of spiritual warfare. They love to hear about difficulties and how God brings people through the troubles. These stories bring the body of Christ together, even though we are spread out across many lands and over the seas.

But what about when darkness overcomes and the missionary cannot continue on? No one likes to hear the story of how depression came into someone's life, and they just could not continue, so they had to come home. People like even less to hear the story of a life ending because of depression. But that is the story I am writing today.

Now, if you are someone who does not believe depression can affect Christians, I am glad you are reading this. Imagine you were suffering from something which no one else understood and all your Christian friends kept saying, "Just trust God more." "Your faith isn't strong enough." Have we all become Job's friends? God gives us problems so we can grow from them. And He does not always bring us out of them.

I can think of one amazing Christian who has had a huge impact on me who struggles with depression daily. Her faith is strong and she trusts God with her whole heart. So when my mom starts to despair does that mean she has lost her faith (putting aside all arguments about 'losing your faith')? Has she turned from God in order to focus on herself? No. God is leading her through a rough time, when her body has decided not to make the correct amount of chemicals, but God is right there with her. And the episode will not end with an epiphany, "Oh, I need to work harder, trust more, pray more." It will end with her waking up one day and being able to do something.

God writes our lives so they can be a story for everyone else. He wants us to glorify Him in all we do, but that does not mean He will keep us from suffering. My mom deals with depression everyday. Has she asked God to heal her? Has my dad not prayed for healing? Our church and pastors? Me? Countless times I have prayed and cried, asking God why He would make someone suffer with depression, why He would do this to my family. My journal is stained with the tears and angry pen-strokes of a young woman who just wants an answer and a reason. But the answer I receive is always the same: "Watch what I can do through her life."

And look. My mom has a heart and a passion so deep for the broken. She gives of herself to help those in need. She has raised three wonderful children (if I do say so myself) who are mindful of depression and who know the pain of it firsthand. Because of my mom, we are all able to deal with it when we have encountered it in either ourselves or our friends. My mom has dealt with everything in her life - there is so much more to her than the depression - and she can talk to anyone. She understands. When I think of what she has come through, I just want to praise God and tell the whole world of how He has worked in her life.

But I know of another Christian, a man who had a very strong faith, who was overcome by depression. I met him a few months ago on my trip to Cameroon and he really showed me what a missionary should be to the people he is working with. He had lived in Cameroon for forty years, spoke their language, was married to a woman there. To me, someone who has grown up constantly around missionaries, he was the epitome what a missionary could be. Yet, even after all that, he still committed suicide.

Depression hit him when he was 70 years old. I only knew him for a short time and definitely do not know everything he was struggling with, but I know what his son has told me. Mr. Grebe was dealing with the pain of separation from family, being a stranger in the land he had made his home, and translating something which he felt spiritual strife translating. I do not know which one hit him first or the hardest, but I cannot begin to imagine the pain he went through.

Can you imagine living somewhere where the language spoken every day was not your native language? Where you stood out so much because of where you had come from, but all you wanted was to fit in and give to the community? Can you imagine not being able to talk to your family for months? Knowing you may never see them again in your life? Can you imagine being asked to do something you did not believe in? Put yourself in his shoes. He was surrounded by God all day. Everyday he saw the beauty of His creation and was able to study His word - translating the Bible was his job, after all. When I was with Mr. Grebe, he started everything with prayer and spoke of God often. Everyone who knew him knew he was a Christian. But he still felt depression and, sadly, gave his life to it.

But do we suppress this story because it ended tragically? How do we reconcile depression with our faith? How can we say our story is one of love when so many of our people suffer? We must tell stories like this to everyone. We must understand God brings everyone through sufferings. We must know that our God is an amazing, loving, comforting God. Is there any better way to reach a broken world than to show them how broken we are ourselves?

If you are struggling with depression and read this, I encourage you to go to your pastor or someone in your church you know has struggled with depression. Please also go to a counselor or doctor to receive medical help. You do not need to be ashamed. This says nothing of your faith, or the kind of person you are. It just means you are struggling with something, and as a body of believers, we all need to pray for each other.

News

There are some new happenings I wanted to fill everyone in on.

I'll start with the sad news. I found out just tonight that Karl Grebe, the man I stayed with in Bamenda and who was the translator in Kumbo, died recently. He was truly an amazing man. He had been in Cameroon for over 40 years and they were almost finished translating the Old Testament when I was there. I don't know if they finished before he died or not. They are also not sure how he died, so please pray that it was natural causes and not something else. The translators in Cameroon have been dealing with a lot lately, so if his death wasn't natural... I'm not sure what would happen, but I know it would dishearten the translators.

Kumbo was the first city I stayed in, where I worked at the VBS and drove around to all the different literacy class. Kumbo holds the fondest memories for me, besides Yaounde, and Karl was a part of that. He was very strong in his faith and committed to his work...

In other news, I turned down a chance to go back to Africa, this time Nigeria, in order to go on a team with Tyndale to Alaska working with Native American high schoolers. It should be exciting, but with the recent news, my heart really longs for Africa right now.

Please keep CABTAL, Kumbo (the place where Karl worked), and everyone there who knew him in your prayers. I am sure they are struggling right now.

Karima's Notes on Making Recording in Villages

I realized I hadn't written anything about Tunen, and I had these notes already typed up. I typed them out right after Tunen, when I was in Younde, so I wrote a lot of them with the Tunen team in mind. So here are my findings. I wrote this like I was teaching someone what to do, because they wanted me to write something for others who came. I ended up not giving it to them, by the way, if you're freaking out about my informality.

   1.       Try not to go during the harvest season. No one will be on time and they will always want to be on their farms rather than working with you. Unless you have a really forceful leader among them who makes the others come in and work with you.

   2.       If there is a weird noise in the background of the recordings but there wasn’t a car driving by, try unplugging your computer. That happened to me and I had to do all the recordings on battery power.

   3.       Make sure you reiterate that the readers should be practicing their chapters. And if they read for you and you feel like they haven’t practiced, it is easier to tell them to keep practicing and come back than to fix the same mistake on the recording five times.

   4.       Edit the recordings with a native speaker on hand. Even if you can read their language, you can’t speak it. Some of the Bantu languages have tones, and tones are hard to hear/read when you aren’t native.

a.       If the language has tones, prepare yourself to re-record a single word several times. If the readers are picky, you could basically record the whole chapter over again with all the words they want to redo. It may sound the same to you, but it is not to them. If you get stressed out with having to record something every five seconds, I suggest you could go take a walk. Or get something to eat. Just try not to snap at them, because these really are important things they are correcting and you’ll feel really bad later, when you’ve come to your senses.

   5.       At the very start, ask if anyone knows how to use Audacity and if it is on any of the computers there. If someone does then they will be the greatest boon on the whole team. I don’t care if they have ten farms to work at; they are staying by your side. Give them some files to edit while you edit others. Once you get a feel for how fast each of you works, you can split the files up more evenly. Make sure to retrieve the files from their computer once you finish.

   6.       If you are more attentive than me and do not want to goof off while they are recording, I suggest you keep some paper close at hand along with a copy of the words. This is what I did at first, but then I started editing with the team and found it to be superfluous. But, if you want to, I would right down the time on the recording when a mistake was made. That way, I could go through and take out most of the mistakes before listening to the whole thing. Keep in mind, though, that if you do this you’ll have to work from the end to the beginning or else all the times will be off after you fix the first mistake.

a.       That being said, I worked out a system which I consider much better than this. First I went through and took out all the spaces (the pauses) and extra noise (like the birds) I could easily notice. Then I went through with the words in front of me (and preferably with a native speaker beside me) and took out the mistakes (when people stumbled or reread a sentence). My last step was to listen through again. If I could follow along easily and there weren’t any mistakes, then I exported it as a wav file and considered it finished. Yay!

   7.       Birds, children, and cars are your enemy. Your mortal enemies. If you feel like it is too loud, don’t be afraid to stop the reader. It’s so much easier to wait for the car to drive by, or go scare away the birds/children than to take out all their noises. I mean, no one minds a few birds in their recording and children far off aren’t a problem, but a bird in the bush or someone yelling right outside the window? Those are problems. And cars are always a problem. If you can hear them then the microphone is picking them up. You’ll have to experiment and see how sensitive your mic is, but know that you will get other noises in there so it is best to try and minimize what you can.

   8.   Try not to have an audience. In one village all the readers sat behind me while the person who was recording was reading. And they corrected the mistakes. All of them. I have so much audio of people speaking who are not the readers. I’m not going to lie, it was hilarious, but besides being a hassle to take out later, I think it made the readers more nervous than they already were. This was a group where no one would sit in front of the mic unless they were recording, even if it wasn’t on. And it was really odd because when they were practicing they sounded good, but when they came to record they suddenly stumbled over every other word. I really think they were nervous.

   9.   So try to make them relax. It is actually not a big deal.

   10.   Make a schedule. Line out a schedule the very first morning. I didn’t always do this, and that sometimes created problems. It is best if everyone has a time to come in and record and everyone has a time to come and help you edit. And you don’t have to do all the recordings before you edit. You could spend five hours with one person one day and never see him again the rest of the time, but his two chapters will be completely finished.

   11.   Get to know your team. If all you do is work, work, work, you’ll get finished, but what have you really done? Have you made any friends? Do you have any fun stories to tell? Can you name the reader just by listening to his voice because you listened to the recording so often or because you hung out and talked with him? I did not do enough of this and I regret it.

   12.   Do not let them sit back from the mic. Pick it up and hold it to their mouth if you have to. You may have a fluent reader, but they are sitting five feet from the mic. That’s ridiculous. The reader should sit right in front of the mic. The closer they are to the mic, the clearer and the stronger they speak, the better the recording will be. If they don’t do those things… I hope you know how to use the effects on audacity because you’re going to need them. That being said, you should know how to use amplify at least.

a.       Also, with amplify, sometimes just one section needs to be amplified. Totally possible, but I hope you knew that. If not, you may want to consider a little more training in audacity before you start your work.

   13.   If you have a cold, show the reader how to press the ‘record’ and ‘stop’ button and go sit in another room. You are going to cough, you are going to sneeze, you are going to sniff, and the reader will just keep talking. No one wants to listen to your sniffles when they are listening to the recording and, my word!, it is hard to take them out.

   14.   With each new reader, tell them the basic points. Sometimes I only told the first few people and figured that the others had told the others – I was wrong.

a.       Read slowly. It is easier to take out pauses than someone stumbling over a word fifty times. (“bo, bo , bo, bo, bo’o” is a hassle. "……………………………….. Bo’o” is simple.)

b.      If you do make a mistake, go back and read the last few words. (It is easier to fix “Yesobega’awen…..Yesobega’avewene” than “Yesobega’awen….vewenela.” I don’t know if this makes sense… If not, you’ll figure out soon what I mean.)

c.       If you hear a car or motorbike drive by, please stop and wait for it to leave before continuing.

   15.  It doesn’t matter in what order you record chapters. Each chapter is a new track on the CD, so they all have to be recorded separately, anyway. You could go backwards for all it matters. Make sure the readers know that the order doesn’t matter or else you may have people trying to work out complicated schedules so you can record in order.

   16.   If you are working with a mother of a baby, make sure the baby is out of the room and she has practiced. Babies are temperamental and she is only going to be able to be away from it for so long if it is a tiny baby. Don’t get me wrong. Babies are adorable and so much fun to have around, but they make noise and they give the mother limited time to do recordings. So she’s one person who is going to have to work fast. Don’t tell her to work fast, in case she becomes flustered, but do tell her it is better if she has read through the chapter multiple times and knows it almost by heart. In my opinion this applies to everyone, but to mothers it is especially crucial.

  And those are my notes. The ones about re-recording the same one syllable word fifty times... That, specifically, is about Tunen. I worked with a bunch of old men - very fluent readers and Godly men - but so nit-picky. I almost walked out on them. But I also hadn't eaten in probably 8 hours.

I I finished my chapters, by the way! All my work for my internship is finished and I mailed it off yesterday! Yay! I have one more post planned because I do want to talk a little bit more about Tunen and then I will share what I think God has worked in me while I was there. And that's it. I've been home for 22 days now. I should really wrap up my blog.

Pictures!

I tried to mostly include things I talked about. I thought about going through my old posts and putting pictures up where I talked about things, but decided this was easier for me and for you, dear reader, because it means you don't have to look through all my old posts and I don't have to, either. The pictures go in order. I start in Bamenda, then Kumbo, then Bamenda, then Pinyin, then Awing, then Bamenda again, the Babanki, then Tunen, and finally Yaounde.

This was my very first view of Cameroon. I could look out my window and see all of Bamenda. If this is just a view from a guesthouse/convent/hospital, can you start to imagine how beautiful Cameroon really is?

This is the dormitory room I was moved to when I was kicked out of Little House, in Kumbo. Okay, it was nicer than that. They moved me out because someone else was coming in for longer than me.

This is me cooking by lamplight. I don't remember if I wrote about it, but it happened enough that I should have, if I didn't.

This is me cooking... with a big knife.

My poor feet after my hike to the market.

This is the mysterious attic. I never made it up there. But that just makes this another reason why I have to go back.

A flower outside Little House. It was beautiful.

See? Absolutely beautiful.

The man in the tan coat is Alfred and I really hoped I talked about him. He was basically forced to take me around to the literacy classes. He didn't really know what to do with me because I wasn't allowed to ride motorbikes, but we went to a few classes, when we could take a taxi. He's been with the Lamnso' translators since the beginning and worked with them to develop an alphabet.

This is one of the little boys at the VBS. Fuomo. He called me Mama.

Here's the whole group of the VBS kids.

this is Andy, the boy who held my hand and tried to scrap my freckles off.

You cannot really see him, but there is a lizard in this picture. This was my first of many lizards. This was my first night back in Bamenda after spending 10 days in Kumbo.

This is outside the guesthouse in Bamenda (I took this after I moved from the Grebes' and into the SIL guesthouse).

Here's the front of it.

Can you get a feel of how often the power goes out? And these are only about half of the candles that were there.

IT'S THE DOORBELL!

This is Courage, from the Pinyin village. He's the youngest.

This is Divine Favour. He's before Courage.

And Awa, with some neighbor kids. He's the middle child, but I didn't really meet the older two siblings.

This is Mama Vivian. She was fun.

And her pig.

Here's the whole team!

This is the sack of potatoes. Yep. It was huge. I left it with Papa Daniel in Tunen and I'm pretty sure there were still at least a quarter of them left.

This is Helen and one of her nieces.

I don't think I talked about this. This was my bed in Awing. I shared it with Helen, but it wasn't so bad.

Helen's family's chickens.

Me with my hair braided.

My Babanki team! They may have understood me the least, but they were such a blessing to me.

And not just because they gave me this basket. With a pineapple.

Pastor Gabe, the Babanki liaison. He kept asking me when I was coming back to record with his other villages. I told him I'd come back when God brought me back.

This is me with my hair half down.

And all the way down. Oh yeah. I'm styling.

This is the main room of the guesthouse. I stayed here a lot. I honestly came back to the guesthouse sometimes and felt like I was coming home.

It's a bag of water. That was fun.

My Tunen team! They were all old men... Papa Daniel is on the far left, next to me. I stayed with him. He's 63 and says he worked at the bank for 50 years.

I call it Tunen, but in reality that is just the language I was working with. The village itself is called Endikimiki. That's what the sign says, in Tunen.

This was my room at the Wycliffe Associates Annex. I called it "the Wycliffe place over there." until I realized when people said the Annex, this was what they were talking about. 

They have a laundry machine. And running hot water. And I had my own bathroom connected to my room. I almost threw a party and I was pretty sure I was in heaven.

This is me at the Pentecostal church, The Lighthouse Chapel. They danced. I clapped.

Nice try, Cameroon. I wish I had gotten a picture of their other soda, American Cola, but I never had it.

Me, Julie, and Mirjam! Those girls were so great. They ran all over creation with me on my last day to help me get some jewelry for souvenirs. And they took me out a lot while I was in Yaounde, especially Mirjam. They are great .

I took over the Annex commons room. I had a wonderful internet connection and it was comfy when I decided I should probably get back to work. Also, the kettle was right there. I probably drank 20 cups of tea in the 7 days I was there.

Me and Sandrine, right before I left for the airport! Sandrine was great, too. She's the one who worked everything out on the Cameroonian side so I could come to Cameroon in the first place!

Me at the airport. I wasn't nearly as scared as I look. The Yaounde airport has three gates and I think two planes fly in everyday. The Brussels plane and the Air France plane.

They tagged my backpack. I don't know why.

This was me when I got home. I was about five seconds away from falling on my bed and straight to sleep. This was thirty hours later, which is why I look.. not great.

And that is my Cameroon trip in a nutshell. A very small, condensed nutshell. I have a few more good pictures I might put up (none of elephants... another reason I have to go back to Cameroon) but that'll be later. I still have three weeks before school starts, so keep checking back weekly (or so) for updates on how I'm doing and maybe (hopefully) more pictures.

Home again, home again

After spending so much time just living out of one bag I feel like my room is so cluttered. There's so little space... It's odd coming from rooms with barely anything in them to coming back to my room of 19 years, where there is memorabilia of my life everywhere. This room is so close to my heart. This house is so dear to me. And yet... it feels almost wrong to be here now. I'm not working anymore. I can't walk to the office. I'm in America now.

It is nice to be home, yes, but I'm going to be a little cliched and say, if home is where the heart is, I think my real home is in Africa now. I know it is early in my life to say where I think I'll be in ten years, but it feels so right doing that. Of course, it also felt so right working at the Bowery a couple years ago and working at the Hispanic Day Camps over the years. Working for God, whatever I do, always feels like the right thing to do. I never have the same feeling when I'm doing other types of work. It's the feeling you get when everything in your world lines up and you KNOW you're doing something that God wants you to do. I do believe that everything you do is what God has planned for you and everything should be done for His glory, but doing something like this versus studying... It's not the same.

I don't want anyone to think now that I've come home I've forgotten the challenges I faced and that I did feel like the work I was doing wasn't good enough. I remember it. I wrote it all here, after all, so others could read it. I'm not romanticizing the time I had there. And it's not really that I loved the work so much I just have to go back and do some more. It's that I loved the people and the life and doing work for God that has a much greater impact than something I could do here. What is getting a college degree when you could be out in the world, helping people? It is the smart thing to do, is what, and it allows you to help more people in a better way in the end. At least, that is what I have to keep telling myself so I do not drop out and run off to India. Or Africa. Or Guatemala. Or anywhere that is not America or Canada. It just makes me so mad, so FRUSTRATED! that in the 6 weeks I was in Cameroon I did more for the furthering of God's kingdom than in the eight months I was at Tyndale. Or the 18 years I was in Georgia. And now you are thinking, "then get involved! Do things for the community. That is a mission field in and of itself." And it is. I do believe that. I also believe it is not my work.

Tyndale has lots of outreach opportunities. But nothing pulls on my heartstrings and makes me want to DO something like going to Africa did. Or the Bowery or Day Camps did. I sincerely applaud everyone who has a heart for their own community, I just feel like I am being pulled towards a different one. A people not my own, but who will be my own. If God has truly blessed me with a gift in languages then how could I possibly be meant to stay in America and Canada, the most uni-lingual countries on this whole planet?

I hope this explains a little how I am feeling right now. It is a little jumbled, but it is what is on my heart right now. I am specifically missing the Cameroonians and being in Africa, but I am also missing doing God's work! No matter what my parents may say, cleaning my room does not impact the future of God's kingdom. But that's about all I can do right now. I still have a few chapters to edit in Pinyin, and unlike when I was in Cameroon, I'm looking forward to doing that because it will feel like I am back in Cameroon.

Please keep praying for me. I'll probably put up a few more posts, but the time to write in my blog is winding down. I still have to post pictures, of course, and I still have a few more stories to tell about my time there, but by September, finished or not with my Cameroon remembrances, I'm going to have to stop because I'll be going back to school. School... and Canada.... I'm definitely going to need your prayers in the coming weeks.

I don't want to go home.

I really don't. I want to stay.

Everyone says, "you haven't been here long enough to really see Cameroon!" It's only been six weeks. But I still feel like I've been here forever. Okay, no I don't really. But I feel like I've been here a really long time. I was thinking back on Kumbo and I was like, "that was only a few weeks ago!" Even Tunen feels like an eternity away, but I was there this time last week!

It's completely crazy.

I had my debrief today with some of the workers at CABTAL. That was fun. They all laughed at my pick-pocket story. They think I'm really brave because I came on my own, went out into the villages without any orientation, and now I confronted a pick-pocket. They're going to think I'm crazy brave if I do anything else. Just wait. Next thing you know a spider will fall on me and I'll jump ten feet in the air. That'll fix it. I was told that a couple people called one of the ladies at CABTAL and told her that I really inspired them. They saw this young girl come and give up her holiday to work with the people and here they were retired and not doing anything. That man actually said he was going to start doing something and was going to talk to his kids, too. The lady said she talked to his daughter. I just wish they had come and talked to me....

I feel so torn up inside. On the one hand, I do want to go home. I want to see my family and friends. I want to be able to drive and I want to be able to go out without worrying about being harassed for being a white girl. I really want to go back to school. On the other hand, I want to be more of a help! I want to keep working. there are villages I haven't gone to yet and people who still need recordings. As much as I didn't always enjoy it, I feel like I just barely started the work. Four villages have recordings now. What about the others? I don't want to go home and sleep in a familiar bed if it means there is still more I can do here.

I don't know if this is a calling from God or just my OCD kicking in because I'm leaving something unfinished, but it feels so wrong to leave so soon. I've barely stayed in one place long enough to really make friends. I was only just now able to go shopping. There are so many reasons to stay and so many reasons to go... I'm going to call out my teachers right now. If y'all don't make classes interesting this fall, I may jump on a plane and come back.

Dear Lord, I just want to thank You for this time I've had here. I know I had challenges and struggles the whole time, but I've learned to keep perspective and to trust You. You are the one with the perfect plan to lead and guide me. You are the one who brings me through the challenges and helps me see the light at the end of the it all. you kept me safe during these last weeks. You keep me safe during my whole life. Thank You. Lord, you know my heart and know how I'm feeling right now. Please help me be at peace with going home, but please also bring me back one day. Let me continue helping with this work You've started here to spread Your word. Please let me be a part of helping to spread Your word to all the people. I know there is always work to be done in my own neighborhood, but this is so much more... me. Please Lord, bring me back one day. Amen.

I caught a pick-pocket.

That's right. I caught a pick-pocket trying to steal my phone out of my purse.

Today I went to this really big market with a couple of friends and we were squeezing through the crowds when all of a sudden I look down and see a hand in my purse and it comes out with my phone. So I grabbed the guys arm and said, "Give it back." He feigned innocence of course, so I said, "Give me back my phone." And he gave it back. Praise God.

Afterwards I was thinking, and I was like, oh my word. I just stopped a pick-pocket. I grabbed his arm. What if he'd been more prone to violence? Oh dear. And I thanked God that it was easy to get it back. My companions were shocked that I actually caught him, but I just happened to be looking down when he reached in.

He was pretty sneaky. I won't underestimate pick-pockets again. Not that I usually just walk around without keeping hold of my purse, but I wouldn't have known at all if I hadn't seen him do it. He had my phone squirreled away almost as soon as it was out of my purse.

What's fun is now we both have a pretty great story. I can tell people I caught a pick-pocket (!) and he can tell people that a white girl caught him stealing. Maybe he'll think twice next time. Maybe not, but we can hope and pray for him. I bet he didn't know when he tried to take my phone that he'd have a bunch of people praying for him because of it. But, you know, there's nothing greater I could do for him. Besides sharing the gospel, but then maybe he goes to church. Maybe he'll be in my church tomorrow. That would be crazy. But not likely. So I'll just write him down on my prayer list so I remember him and pray that he comes to know God soon and is able to find a better job.


I'm in Yaounde now. My time here is winding down and it's rather sad. I really hope I can come back. I finally got an African dress today, and I'm pretty excited about that. Of course now I regret not buying another one, but that's just another reason to come back. I haven't done nearly enough shopping.


Or work! I should really get back to that. I keep finding reasons to put it off, like finally getting online, or trying on my dress, or making dinner... Very important stuff considering I have 21 chapters lefts to edit. it doesn't sound as stressful as it really is. Next time I'm doing all the work in the village, no matter how long I have to extend my stay. But for now, back to work! If you see me online, yell at me (I fell like I'm back in school. Someone hold me accountable!)