Author: David M. Hare

A few months ago, I read a blog in which some missionaries were talking about a difficult event that occurred with their children. In the comments on that post, a woman wrote something to the effect of: “If you have young children, it is clear: God has not called you to missions.” I was not really surprised. People have asked us questions about our children throughout the years that belied the same assumption: missionaries are unable to keep their children safe on the mission field. I have found that the main reason people do not consider missions is because of…

The Kwakum people, whom we work with, believe that they are surrounded by the spirits of their ancestors. This might sound romantic or even exciting, but in reality for most Kwakum people it is terrifying. I think I have shared the story here before, but early on in our ministry, we did a language survey with a man in a different village whom we had never met before. At the end of the survey we asked him if there were any ways we could be praying for him. At that point, he nearly started weeping. He told us that his…

Jesus, All You Didn’t Have to Do Jesus, we don’t want to clean up our own messes,Let alone our neighbors’.Begrudgingly, we rinse our own plates,As though doing someone a favor. “Why should we have to empty the whole trash can,When to its contents, we only contributed 10%?”We grumble, we complain,Completing the task while throwing a fit. Jesus, we moan, and we fuss,At the smallest responsibilities entrusted to us. You give us a body to clothe and nourish,That it may be used in service to you.But we tend to primp and worship it,Drawing people’s eyes away from the One to whom…

Stacey and I are scientists. No, we don’t wear lab coats, or work in a sterile environment. We are linguists. Some people consider linguistics a “soft science,” as opposed to the “hard sciences” like biology and chemistry. However, linguists do follow the scientific method: 1) make observations, 2) make a hypothesis, 3) test the hypothesis, 4) repeat until data is accounted for. Rather than chemicals or microorganisms, linguists study languages. Our main area of study so far has been the Kwakum language. Kwakum is structured so different from Indo-European languages and we often encounter grammatical constructions that are untranslatable in…

When I was in college, I lived in off-campus housing. The apartment complex was pretty full, and sometimes I would have to park in a lot outside of the parking garage. One morning, when I was heading to work, I came out to find that my car had been broken into. The driver-side window was smashed, stereo stolen, and all my CDs were gone too. I was both a poor college student and an audiophile at this point, so they basically stole everything that I valued. I was crushed, and certain that my car insurance would not pay for it….

If you have read our most recent newsletter, you know that our kids are now attending a school in the capital, Yaounde, called Rainforest International School (RFIS). I cannot tell you how much of a blessing RFIS has already been to us, just over the last couple of months. Our kids are loving it, and it has freed us up to invest more time into the translation work and into the lives of the Kwakum people. Due to a COVID and other reasons, RFIS is struggling and needs your help. Without this school, Christian missions in Cameroon would be hampered…

Greetings friends from Yaoundé, Cameroon. The Hare family arrived back in Cameroon back in mid-July. We spent a couple of weeks out in the village, but we have now settled-in to a house in Yaoundé, the capital (pronounced yown-dey). In case you don’t know, we moved to the capital for our kids to attend an international school called Rain Forest International School (RFIS). RFIS is desperately in need of teachers, by the way. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested in teaching here (even if it is just for one school year), check out this link. Because we…

People often ask us what it is like to live in a Kwakum village. We usually respond by describing the day-to-day lives of our neighbors as sustenance farmers. We talk about their houses, methods of agriculture, the long walk to the field. We talk about their large families, most women giving birth to 8, 9, 10, or even more children throughout their lives. We talk about how the Kwakum people are a primarily oral people group, most (at least in the village) do not know how to read in any language. Sometimes we try to communicate some of the harder…

Recently I read a book called The Body Keeps the Score, which chronicles the growth in understanding of a psychiatrist named Dr. Bessel A. van der Kolk. Specifically, Kolk started to notice that trauma survivors, though incredibly different from one another, tended to respond to day-today stresses in similar ways. This led him to study the effect of trauma on the human body, and to find ways to help these survivors live normal lives. He shares the story of a veteran in the book that I will try to summarize here: A man came in for counseling. He had been…

You may have heard that according to a Barna poll, 52% of practicing Christians strongly agree that the Bible teaches “God helps those who help themselves.” In Cameroon, there is an assumption that everyone should dress up for church. If you were to tell most church attendees here that there is no such command in the Bible, they would be shocked. It seems evident to me that our cultures often set us up to misunderstand the Scripture. And I have found that in churches all over the world, Christians accept certain principles as biblical truth, without examination. Today I would…