First we spent several months in Germany to collect the aid and find sponsorship for this big project. Thank you so much for all your help and support, big and small - every little bit goes a long way here! Thank you all, who brought your goods to our local storages, and especially to our faithful helpers in Herrenberg and Rosenheim who loaded and transported it all to Erfurt. There Daniela and Lisa were an indispensable help with sorting and packing it into literally tons of banana boxes. When we finally had our packing list ready, I returned to Cameroon with Lisa who wanted to come along to experience Africa for the first time in her life. She continues her school with a correspondence course from Germany.
Next, Lenka and I were trying to get in contact with the new Minister of Social Affaires in the Capital, Yaounde, who replaced the former one while we were in Germany. A change like this can happen quickly here and it can take a long time to get such an appointment. When we finally were able to meet the new minister, we were very thankful for her help, because without some local organization or contact like her you can't import anything tax-free into Africa. At the moment we are applying for the desperately needed tax exemption at the Finance Ministry before we can even send the container.
Whoever is not well prepared in this might end up with the same fate as the 11 containers of humanitarian aid which just got sold by customs here. If the papers are not in order while dealing with customs, there come up high storage fees every day at the harbor, which often cannot be paid in the end. That's why a lot of aid ends up where it shouldn't go.
The two most important criteria for us in all this surely are prayer and patience! If you follow the wrong advice and are not properly prepared, everything can go wrong, cost a lot of (bribe-) money or drag on for a long time. That's why you need a lot of patience, time and God's guidance, without which nothing works here. You can't compare understanding of time here with that in Europe. It's like the joke: "When God created to world He gave the Europeans the clock and the Africans the time."
Our next step is to find a proper and safe storage and identify who needs our aid the most, which is an art in itself and also takes time. For although the container is 12 meters long, the need is so much bigger. This means we can only help the most needy people, like the handicapped, old people, lepers, and orphans etc. We are very thankful for your continued support without which this all wouldn't be possible, and for your prayers for the transport, tax exemption and coming distribution.
Besides the humanitarian aid we also continue in our spiritual ministry to strengthen and inspire the many people here who are so open and thankful for this. One of our projects is preparing Christmas programs for the different orphanages and children centers here. The children and staff are very appreciative of any encouragement and love we can give to them. We already had one program for the students of the University in Douala. They really enjoyed the skits and fellowship and so did we.
At the end we'd like to let you know two inspiring announcements: 1. For more information about our work and the "Afrika Direkt Hilfe" team, our faithful bookkeeper, Rudolf in Datteln, set up our own website under www.afrikadirekthilfe.de or www.a-d-h.org 2. For whoever wants more reading material than we send out in our "Vitamins for the Heart" we would like to offer a beautiful monthly Magazine called "Activated" with inspiring, uplifting and informative articles on all kinds of important questions about life and faith. We also have little books and other very helpful reading and reference materials on subjects like prayer, overcoming obstacles, understanding God’s Word, Heaven, Childcare and many others.
   
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