Category: Africa

In my experience, being white in Cameroon is like walking around wearing a big neon sign that says “I have more money than I need.” And so, from day one, and nearly every day since, I have received many requests for financial help. In fact, for quite a while it seemed like that was the only type of conversation I would ever have with Cameroonians. Then the Lord blessed us by putting us in a house that was shared by a Cameroonian family. We drew close quickly with the husband who daily showed his love for us. But then one…

Stacey and I have chosen to live in a village here in Cameroon and work directly with a single people group: the Kwakum. The longer we are here, the more we are thankful we have chosen this method. Just the other day my neighbor Patrice told me that several people in the same village died at the same time. I asked what happened and he told me that there was mbɔsɔ cyɛti, which they would translate into French as mauvais médicament ‘bad medicine’. I asked some follow-up questions, because I wanted to better understand what happened. I asked if it was tromadol, a…

Since we have returned to our village in August 2018, we have met a young couple that has reminded us why we are doing what we are doing. The young man, named Ko has been an orphan since he was 8 years old. When his parents died, he went to live with his aunt who had him work for his stay in lieu of going to school. Ko has shown interest in learning more about the Lord but confided in Dave that there was one thing holding him back: he cannot read and thus not read the Bible. When Dave…

When we came to Cameroon on our vision trip in 2010, I asked our colleagues for their highs and lows of Cameroon living. Without exception, each person told me that one of the hardest parts of living here was dealing with money. Knowing about these challenges we read a ton about the subject before crossing into a new culture. We found that most books written for Westerners moving to Africa deal extensively with the question of finances. We have already written about some of what we have learned from books like African Friends and Money Matters (read HERE) and When Helping…

As many of you  know, our family has spent the last 17 months in the US. And now, we have been full time back in the village for a couple weeks. Our hearts have been delighted to see the smiles of our friends and to hear them welcoming us back (and even understand them!). We see new babies and new houses. Our church has worked hard and is now a mud-brick building with a tin roof.But nearly every encounter is also a reminder of loss. Our dear friends Simon and Carine died while we were away. Carine’s father actually died…

When we were in Cameroon our last term, we would often spend our Saturday mornings working on our “yard.” This means that we tried to tame the jungle with a couple of machetes and a handful of 1st graders. We have about an acre of land and planted grass more-or-less blade by blade. Other missionaries gave us cuttings of their trees and we planted them in our back yard. Through the years of our first term, we tried to convert the land around our house from the wild jungle into something manageable and something beautiful. We worked really hard but…

As we have been saying goodbye to friends and family, people have been asking us how we feel about going back to Cameroon. In the midst of trying to see how much we can shove into suitcases and eating as much ice-cream as we can, there are three main feelings that keep coming to the surface: Dread, Trust, and Resolve. Dread We know that we are soldiers going back into war. Our war is not one involving guns or tanks but instead we battle and against the spiritual forces of evil that have held the Bakoum people for generations. We…

When we were out in Southern California, we were able to do a Question and Answer time at The Master’s Seminary about life as Bible translators. Here is one of the questions and our answer: PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOURSELVES AND YOUR MINISTRY IN CAMEROON. Stacey Hare: I’m Stacey and this is Dave. We are Bible translators with World Team in West Africa, in a country called Cameroon. We’re in the eastern region of the country. Dave Hare: In 2004, we graduated from The Master’s University and went to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Both Stacey and I graduated from…

We are looking for a woman to come to Cameroon to homeschool our children for the 2019-2020 school year. They would all be in 4th grade during this year. Please help spread the word because we would like to speak with anyone interested before we head back to Cameroon on August 20th. We will be in Louisville July 13th – August 11th, and then in Colorado Springs August 11th-20th. We would love to sit down with anyone interested to talk about the possibility. The Mutually-Beneficial Opportunity: Coming to Cameroon to be a homeschool teacher is beneficial both to Dave and…

Just before we left for home assignment, I had an interesting conversation with one of our most trusted language helpers, we will call him Pierre (not his name). Pierre is very well educated and one of the only Bakoum people I know that enjoys reading (in French). I was driving him back to his village and recounting a story that I found to be humorous. I told him that fairly often people will come to my door and we will have this conversation: Them: “I have some chameleon eggs for you to buy.” Me: “Oh yeah, and why would I…