Author: David M. Hare

Check out our August 2017 Newsletter to discover the following: Summer American Tour Plans for the next year Do we miss Cameroon? Prayer Requests and Praises     Hare Translation Newsletter: Subscribe | Unsubscribe | Archive

If you were to come to live in my village, you would know that there is something wrong. It takes time, of course, to sort through all of the cultural differences. Some things feel wrong, but when you take the time to think about it, they do not have a moral component at all. For example, in Cameroon (following France) light switches go down for ON and up for OFF. Sitting talking to our neighbors, you would watch them prepare grasshoppers or rats for dinner. And you would think, “That does not seem right.” But, in reality, “right and wrong”…

We are currently out on our American Tour, and are talking to people about what it is like to be a missionary. We have found that there is a very common perception that certain people are “called” to be missionaries in a unique way. While I certainly have met a lot of unique missionaries, I believe that there are some misunderstandings undergirding this belief. Below are four of these misconceptions I hope to clear up in this post. The first misconception is that… 1. Normal people are not “called” Stacey remembers hearing a song in her church where she grew…

I will not make you raise your hands, but I want you all to consider a question. How many of you have ever questioned the wisdom of God? Perhaps it was in a personal situation: “Why did God let my sister die?” or “Why is God not answering my prayer for the salvation of a friend?” I recently read an atheist mocking the God of the Bible by saying that the idea of creating an exclusive way of salvation is foolish. Even more, he said that God’s choice to send out his foolish message by word of mouth was absolute…

I had an interesting conversation with a couple at church a few Sundays ago. They both were born in Africa, but have lived in the US for a number of years. In discussing children, they told me that they were concerned about raising their daughter in America because of the dangers here. Without a second thought, I knew exactly what they were talking about. As Americans we have become accustomed to comfort, such that we think we deserve it. We have grown cold to the suffering of those in the majority world, and we are greatly tempted to live only…

Imagine waking up one day in your own bed, next to your own wife, but all of your walls are white, when yesterday they were eggshell. And you are not 100% sure that they have changed, but they just feel different. You go to work and to church and on the way you see buildings that you could swear were not there the last time you passed. You see your friends and co-workers and some of them look a little bit older, some a little heavier, some a little lighter. All of the children are taller, more grown up. And…

Walking into one of the first church services we attended in France in 2013, I saw a large bearded man holding the door open. As I approached, he grabbed my hand and moved his face directly next to mine so that our hairy cheeks almost touched. I learned later that this is an intimate greeting that the French call the “bise,” a small air-kiss on each side of the face (although with one man it was straight up a kiss on each cheek). I had heard of such greetings in France, but I was not expecting to receive the bise…

If you knew some of the things that happened here in Cameroon, you would be so angry. There are injustices here that, just to be honest, we would never see in the US. And if they did happen, it would be in the news and people would go to jail. I doubt that this is particularly surprising to most of you. We tend to think that unjust things happen in third-world countries. But have you ever considered that the practices of your nation are shocking to someone in the third-world? I am not talking about just culture shock, but real…