Author: Stacey Hare

Most people that live around us live in constant uncertainty. They work hard: clear their fields, plant crops, frequently go out as the crop grows to clear the weeds, and hope for a good harvest. However, they never know if their crop will fail due to out of control fires, rodents, torrential rains, thieves, or for no discernable reason in particular. It is crushing when they come to us at a loss, all their efforts and money spent, with nothing in return. So, many turn to witchcraft. They speak to a “witch doctor” and figure out what sort of offering…

It is hard to believe that we are on the homestretch of homeschooling our children. The Lord has provided 6 different committed, godly young women to come homeschool our kids throughout our time on the field and this coming school year will be our last year of homeschooling our kids. After this year, we will be in the States for 8th grade, and then the kids will be in high school in the capital. The Lord has once again provided someone who is willing to spend a year with our family, making children do their math, and experiencing the discomforts…

People ask us all the time how we translate a word/idea in the Bible that is not present in the Kwakum language. For example, the word “grace” is an enormous key biblical idea yet we do not have a word for “grace” (or even “gift”) in Kwakum. What then do we do? Before answering that question, there are a few underlying translation principles that you need to understand: You cannot translate what you do not understand. It is very tempting for our Kwakum translators to hear a word in Scripture (like cistern) and rush to provide a Kwakum equivalent. However…

As we start this new year, we want to start it with a very visible demonstration of our dependence on the Lord. Therefore, our translation team will be taking the day of Tuesday, February 2nd to pray for the Lord to bless our work in translation in 2021. We are looking for about 12 people who will VIDEO CALL with our team and pray over team of translators. If you are interested, please signup using the link below (if you would rather not put your info on the spreadsheet simply write ‘TAKEN’ on the time slot and email dave.hare@worldteam.org). SIGN…

We are looking for a homeschool teacher for our four 7th grade children for the 2021-2022 school year. A Mutually-Beneficial Opportunity: Coming to Cameroon to be a homeschool teacher is beneficial both to Dave and I as Bible translators and it would also be beneficial to you as the homeschool teacher. It is beneficial to us because we are full-time linguists/Bible translators and really need to spend our days pulling our hair out over translation issues. Our work is very intensive and technical and it requires hours of silent concentration. We have found that juggling multiple languages/Bible exegesis/literacy programs along…

Yesterday was packed with joy from the first rooster crow until people fell into their beds exhausted from all the yipping, cheering, and dancing they did in celebration of something that the Lord holds dear: marriage. It was a day that, I believe, mirrored a celebration in Heaven. Two young believers (Koo and Mami) have taken up their crosses, turned their backs on the ways of their culture, and followed God’s will for marriage. One Kwakum friend told me that he had never heard of two young Kwakum people getting married. This occasion therefore merited the song (composed in Kwakum)…

This Thanksgiving, we were invited to celebrate with a missionary couple, Barry and Desma Abbott who work among the Baka people. We piled into our car and drove along bumpy, dusty, dirt roads for hours. When large trucks would pass, the dust was so bad, we had to pull over until it cleared up so I could see the road. We drove, and drove, and drove, and then we started to feel…lost. We pulled over several times and asked people where we could find the Abbott’s village. We knew we were in trouble when they started to look at us…

This last week, Dave’s drafting team was working in our village. Watching them work and talk, I was reminded how I have come to consider them to be some of my closest friends. We are united in the Lord, in the work, and in our love for one another. During our shared meal, this group of guys started telling some of their traditional folktales, full of wild arm movements, animal imitations, and silly faces. They were cracking up to the point of crying, sometimes having a hard time getting the words out, and slapping each other on the back for…

Someone recently asked us to address this accusation: “By developing an alphabet and insisting these indigenous peoples of color learn a written language, you are acting as oppressive Western colonists.” While it is true that there are some similarities between missionaries and colonists (i.e. both left their home cultures and both come to bring about change) there are enormous differences. Here are a few: We come to give. Have you ever heard of King Leopold II of Belgium? If not, check out Dave’s blog HERE. King Leopold boldly came into Africa (specifically the region of the Congo) and claimed it…

People have asked us for our take on the racial tensions in the US and although I haven’t spent much time following it, this week I watched a video of people vandalizing a Target. The images I saw were strikingly similar to the violence we constantly hear about on the English-speaking side of Cameroon. I think the burning, pillaging, and violence we find here could shed some light on the conflict currently taking place in the States. The Anglophone Crisis: A Little History Relations between the former British colonies and the former French colonies have been tense since the independence…