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Shanksteps #72

Local cultural beliefs are very different from ours. Today I was able to get a glimpse of the beliefs of a tribe called Mineau. There was a child from near this area that was anemic and the mother was HIV positive. No other donors could be found, so I gave blood to the child. While giving I found out some interesting beliefs about this tribe.
They believe that two people CANNOT be buried in the same grave. While I was in the US a pregnant woman who was anemic came to the hospital for treatment but unfortunately died. One of the hospital workers gave blood but she didn’t make it. When they took this woman back to the village apparently they “couldn’t” bury this woman with the dead child inside. The people of this village believe that you have to be buried separately in order to meet god separately. So they opened the cadaver and removed
the fetus and buried them in separate graves. Upon questioning further about burial practices by this tribe I found out that in a few cases, when someone is really old and unable to care for himself any longer and demented, that they sometimes euthanize them. Apparently the way this is done is the family starts crying of their “death” once the decision has been made. Family and friends come to the home and they bury the person alive! How different from our culture! Oh how these people need to
know more of Gods love! I think of my own American culture and how much we need to know of Gods love too. We have a very cerebral knowledge of Him and His interest in our lives but do we really live like we KNOW Him and feel His love on a daily basis? Our culture in the US is “Christian”, but there is a wide variety of beliefs and thoughts of God and what His interest in our life is.
I believe that God is interested in every aspect of our lives. He created us and sacrificed His Son for us so we could be with Him someday. We often think of what we have sacrificed by coming here to Cameroon. But our “sacrifice” pales in comparison to the real sacrifice of Jesus in our behalf. Our Bible says that even if I were the only one here, that Christ would have come for me, or you! It is hard to comprehend this never-ending and all encompassing love of God! I want to know Him better
and understand better His love for you and me. I believe you need to know His love better too. And of course the people here need to know and understand His love also. Please continue to pray for us as we serve HIM in a very different culture and with His help withstand the barrage of attacks by the devil! In His Service, Greg, Audrey and Sarah Shank

Shanksteps

Neonatal Tetanus

Watching him in full tetanic spasm was probably the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. Kaldoussa came to us at 8 days of age. He had been born at home with the help of a family member. Mom had not had any prenatal visits or counseling, and therefore also not received her tetanus vaccine. At 7 days old the spasms started. The family brought him to a nearby clinic that immediately referred him to our hospital. Tetanus is a horrible disease. The sooner after the “injury” the spasms start,
the higher the mortality. I suspect his “injury” was cutting the umbilical cord with something dirty. Anyhow, when he arrived, we had some of the necessary medications, but not all. So we did the best we could, and prayed, and prayed, and prayed. After three days in the hospital, his mother was extremely discouraged and decided to take him home. She said that he wasn’t getting any better, and she had no money to pay for his treatment. When someone comes in with tetanus, we immediately explain
to the family that their disease will take a long time to recover (sometimes up to several months) and the medications will be very expensive. We explained all this to the mother, but after three days she decided to give up. I sat down with her and explained that stopping now would probably be a death sentence, and that she would have wasted the first three days for nothing. I explained that since he would most likely be in the hospital for at least a month that she would have some time to come
up with the money. This dear woman responded that she wanted more than anything to be able to continue treatment for her son, but that she didn’t want to promise that she would come up with the money for the bill when she wasn’t sure she would be able to. She explained that she had nothing to sell (goats, chickens, millet, onions etc), and hardly any food until the next harvest season. My heart went out to her.
While we were home on furlough, we spoke at several churches and camp meetings. At one church in WV, a woman gave us a donation specifically to be used to help children whose parents couldn’t afford treatment (Thanks Susan A!). Usually if we consider helping someone financially, they have to come up with a good portion themselves, however I truly believed that this woman had nothing. So, I told her that I love children, and God loves children. Neither of us (myself or God) wanted to let Kaldoussa
return home without doing everything we could for his survival. I told her that we would take care of the rest of the bill and for her not to worry about finances. She broke down. She said that that was her responsibility as a mother, and yet here we were helping a family we didn’t even know. She truly had no words to express her gratitude.
So, we continued to treat this little fella. Every morning in my personal worship I prayed for him. In our prayer group every morning we prayed. Eliza (peds nurse) and I prayed for him before making rounds, and then we prayed with him and his mother every day when we checked on him. From a medical standpoint I was very worried that he wasn’t going to survive, but I had an impression that God was going to make something out of this experience. As of today he has survived 10 days and is almost
spasm free. He had a high fever for several days, but after the right cocktail of antibiotics he has now been 24 hours fever free. I believe that he just might survive this ordeal. Perhaps more importantly thought, his mother has experienced love from a stranger and the love of Christ working through this experience. Kaldoussa will probably be with us for at least several more weeks during which time we can also minister to his mom. Please continue to pray for this itty bitty guy and his mom.
Thanks to everyone who has given donations, love and prayers. We need all three.
In His Hands, Aud
PS: Unfortunately for this small child, he was not able to support the spasms. We expect to someday see him in Heaven when Jesus comes to raise the dead who fell asleep in Him. Greg

shanksteps of faith #70

A young man is looking for a good woman as a life mate. He wants a wife. Throughout high-school he “dates” various girls. Then in college he decides that one of his high-school sweethearts was the one for him. They get married. A few years later they are unhappy and get a divorce. This scenario of falling “in love” then falling away from “love” seems much to common in the US. It shows how vastly different our way of “love” is from Gods way, and how meaningless marriage has become. It seems
like a church and government sanctioned live in arrangement as long as it benefits both parties. This type of relationship is quite different from the Bible’s view of lifelong marriage, as well as Jesus’ relation to the “church”.
Here in our part of Cameroon you can obtain a wife by various different means.
1- Your parents may talk to someone else’s parents and decide that you would be good for each other. Often it’s the son’s parents who look for a daughter for him. They might inform him of this and ask his opinion of different girls or they might just arrange with her parents without his knowledge. They might arrange this and then just bring her home one-day and they’re married! Marriage here is mostly in the direct biblical sense. Once you’ve slept with each other your married! There are almost
no wedding services or other party with respect to marriage. Our cook was a late teenager when his older brother decided he was old enough and wasn’t finding a wife for himself. So the older brother went out and found what he considered a good wife and brought her home and gave her to the younger brother, and the rest is history.
2- Another way you may get a wife is by spending time with various girls and choosing the one who you like the most. Then you can contact the girl’s parents and arrange a dowry and take her home. You may pay the dowry in advance or have it as a debt to pay off over time.
3- I recently heard of another unique way of getting a wife. One of our near retirement nurses found his wife this way. He was getting “older” and had not found a wife for himself yet. One day he went to the market and found a girl he knew was single and was interested in and just “grabbed her, and took her home!” He had not shown previous interest with her. The next day when her father found out what had happened, he chewed out this guy. The guy listened, and then when the father had run out
of words to say they talked over the dowry. Incidentally, he has been happily married for over 30 years.
4- Some get theirs in a similar way by going to the “bili bili” (millet wine) market and just grabbing a drunken woman and taking her home. So she might have just changed husbands. If so the new husband may have to pay off the old husband.

I guess there are many different ways to get a wife in my culture also. But it does seem that some other cultures have more success staying married than the American culture does. Are you married? If so I hope you are working on your marriage and not letting work or children or church responsibilities draw your family apart. God designed our families to be a learning area for eternity. Learning to love, learning to adapt, learning to put others first, learning what God’s love for us, His children,
is like. Hopefully these are attributes that are being cultivated in your family. Pray for us that our family will better represent God’s ideal for a family.
In His Service, Shanks