Author: Stacey Hare

This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those…who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing…For the present form of this world is passing away. 1 Corinthians 7:28–31 There are two main burdens weighing on me right now. The first and foremost being the fact that my mom has stage 3 ovarian cancer (as we have written in our previous blog posts). This is a deep sorrow that is just always there. The second burden has been the growing hardness of…

This week I received hard news from home: my mom has cancer. And it is in an advanced stage and is very serious. As can be expected, this news has brought a flood of emotions and many, many tears. My oldest son Kaden just sat on my lap and sobbed. He said that he wanted to see her soon “in person” and that he was really concerned for his Grandpa’s feelings through all of this. Makyra stopped a stranger on the street and asked them to pray. And Elias is fervently praying that God will take away Grandma’s “cancer ball”…

There are a lot of really thoughtful, important questions to ask when considering if one should or should not spend their lives in a foreign culture as a missionary. And yet, there are some questions that are more-or-less irrelevant because the Bible already has answers for them. For instance: 1. Will I Hate my Life? Yes. I think it is safe to say that if you become a missionary, you will hate your life. While there are joys, there is also added stress that would not be experienced if one stays in their home culture. But, I do not think…

On Monday of this week, I walked into a mud hut where the body of a young woman lay. She had an unknown medical problem that had plagued her for some time. I had intended to go visit her that very day to pray for her healing, but apparently I was too late. I walked into the cool, dark room and saw many women sitting around its edges, all looking at the body, weeping. Some were sitting on benches close to the ground, others on sacks, and some on the dirt floor. The deceased’s mother was kneeling by the side…

Am I the only one who starts to pray for a Bible-less people group but gets a little stuck? I start my prayer like this: “May they put their faith in Christ”….but then I realize they do not have a good understanding of who he is. So I try a different approach: Oh God, please change this people…but then I am reminded that without the power of the Spirit, we all remain slaves to sin. It is only those who repent and believe in Christ who receive the Holy Spirit. And then that brings me back to prayer attempt #1:…

I am calling today “Black Sunday” because tomorrow our home school teacher, sister in Christ, and friend Bonnie Marcum will be flying out to go back home to the US. We are happy for all the opportunities and relationships that await her there, but we are all sad to see her go. Let me share a little bit about the impact that she has made on us this past year… When Bonnie arrived here, we were all more-or-less dribbling, slobbering babies. Dave and I were barely able to put a sentence together in Bakoum and, on good days, were talking…

The Vacation Bible School has officially come to a close and all in all, it was … AMAZING. God answered every prayer that we (and you) prayed. He held off the rain during the VBS, the Word was taught, the Lord really helped us communicate clearly, and even our unsaved adult neighbors came to listen to the Bible stories (and color pictures!). We had around 60-80 kids each day and, miracle of miracles, they generally sat quietly and listened attentively during our lessons. And, all around our town, catechisms on the trinity, the ways of Satan, and verses of Scripture…

Monday launches our annual 5-day Bible club for the local neighborhood kids! If it is anything like last year, we expect there to be 50-100 kids ranging from toddlers to teenagers at our door eagerly waiting for it to start each day. We plan to do games like tug-o-war, sing songs, have a teaching time, and then have them color pictures. To this day, when we go into people’s houses, there, hanging proudly on their walls are the now sun-bleached pictures that their kids colored last year. Needless to say, both we and our local young friends are looking forward…

Our lives here in Cameroon are becoming our “new normal” but every once and a while we look at one another and say, “Is this for real?” Here are some funny examples… Daily Comings and Goings The other day, I looked out our window and there was a 50-something year old woman with her dress lifted up, squatting in the middle of our lawn relieving herself. We have since posted a sign asking people to not urinate on the lawn…but it strangely disappeared last time we went out of town…. One thing that you would not find in America…fake hair…

The other night, I went on my nightly walk through village to visit with the neighbors and I was struck once again with the poverty that surrounds us. The problems seem insurmountable: open, untreated wounds; sick children; dark, mud-brick homes that contain few possessions outside of what our neighbors find in our trash pit. Then, as I walk back towards my house, I hear my 4 hyper-active children hysterically laughing and playing, without a care in the world. The contrast between their joy and my neighbors’ sorrow makes the heaviness that I often feel even more profound. How Does God…