Author: Stacey Hare

I have spent my life studying the Bible seeking to ground my beliefs in God’s Word. Biblical truths are those that I have spent years thinking through, debating, considering and reconsidering. In contrast, being dropped into a new culture has revealed to me that I have many beliefs that are not so well thought out. In fact, there is much of my worldview that I have never thought about at all, just accepted. The earth is round, mangos do not cause malaria, not everyone who is white is a European, and germs cause sickness. You can imagine Dave’s shock the…

Bible translation is a messy business. It always has been. Whereas there are always “external” threats to this great task (being refused visas, terrorism, trouble finding nationals to work with), I am convinced that the greatest threat that faces us today is internal. Like the armies mentioned in the Old Testament that lost battles because they turned on one another, I fear that we too may be disoriented, thinking our colleagues are really our enemies. Instead of encouraging one another to press on in battle, I fear that we may actually end up destroying one another. Hot-Button Issues Here are…

I recently read a great article put out by our missions agency, World Team, and it inspired me to think through the following scenarios… Imagine two pairs of Christian parents daily loving their children and presenting Christ in word and deed. In God’s mercy, one group of parents receives the joy of seeing their children worship and serve Jesus. The other couple witnesses their children go from hard to harder as the years go by. The couple with the believing children are sought after for parenting advice while the other mother and father are considered a little suspect. Along the…

It is interesting that while we are far away from all things “Christmas-y,” (cold weather, carols, crowded malls, and parties with family and friends), I have never had another Christmas that has been more focused on Christ. The reason for this is because this holiday season has been filled with new-founded sorrows that only Jesus can remedy. To Those Under Life’s Crushing Load… Oftentimes I will go on a walk in the evenings and I pass many women who are on their way back from their fields. They are carrying baskets on their backs that are filled with wood they…

There is a story that the Bakoum people recount to their children. The story is of two fragile deer, a mother deer and a baby deer. These deer were frolicking through a lush green valley when one day the mother stops and looks seriously into the eyes of her offspring. Her tone takes on an air of seriousness when she explains that there are hunters who set traps in the valley to kill deer. She explains to her fawn that she must be very careful or else she could be entangled in a trap. The daughter deer laughs at her…

We did surveys in 24 villages in two weeks and all-in-all we are very pleased with how things went. It is also safe to say that we have a much better understanding of the dialect situation among the Bakoum. Here are a couple highlights:   Reasons Why I Love my Job Dave and I had a great time working together. We would call the chief of the village ahead of time and ask him to designate someone whose mother and father were Bakoum (and who had all their teeth) that we could meet with upon our arrival. Generally this person…

For those of you who did not see our post about this on Facebook, we are looking for a godly young lady to come live with us to homeschool our kids (4 2nd graders) for the 2016-2017 school year. Here are some details for anyone who might be interested: The Opportunity See the missionary life up close! You will live with our family and be an essential part of our ministry. It will challenge your worldview and help you understand the “real” missionary life first hand. You will also have the opportunity to greatly help us as we set out…

A couple months ago, a group of riotous, drunken village leaders threatened us, “If you do not choose our dialect for your Bible translation, then we will not read your Bible.” We had heard about such threats in linguistics school, but now here we are on the brink of having to make a decision about which dialect to make “the standard” as we can only choose one to write down. So which one do we choose? So, for the next two weeks we are going to gather as much linguistic data as we can in order to make an informed…

While it is true that there are various aspects of missionary life that prove to be difficult, there are also so many reasons why I just love my “job.” Let me share a couple of my favorites: 1. Conversations are never boring when you are having them in your 3rd language. If you are trying to have a conversation in your third language, the mental gymnastics that you are doing prevents you from ever getting bored regardless of who you are talking to. Plus, you never know what is going to come out of your own mouth, which keeps things…