Category: Africa

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…

In this video Patrice (one of our translators) describes more about the Drafting step of the process.

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…

On Saturday we finished our first Kwakum literacy course (we have worked through the material with some people, but this was the first official class). We went to a village called Sibita every weekend for 4 weeks. The group varied between 4 adults to 20 adults, depending on the week. We explicitly said this class was for adults, but there were always 10-20 kids there too. The kids participated and learned probably more quickly than the adults. Being that it was our first official literacy class, there were some things that surprised me. Here are three: 1. No Abstract Categories…

There truly is a delicate balance between raw determination (I-will-do-this-or-die-trying) and submission to the limits that God has put on his creatures. I feel this on a daily basis and assume that I am not the only one, although I don’t know that all personality types struggle with this tension. I see this battle in one of my children very acutely.   All of our children are learning to type this summer. One child in particular sits down the computer and expects to type like her parents within the first half an hour. So far, she has spent each day…

We have the exciting opportunity to participate in VBS at Grace Church Frisco this summer. How? Well, they are doing VBS completely virtually, online. They are using the curriculum Incredible Race by Answers in Genesis. The main theme throughout is the story of the tower of Babel, which works pretty well with our jobs as Bible translators. So we recorded five short videos talking about ministry here and relating it to the Babel story. I was thinking, if Grace Church Frisco is doing VBS this year, maybe other churches are too. And maybe even if churches are not able to…

Here is a quick, informal video that we put together on why we do what we do. It is designed for churches or individuals who are just learning about Bible translation among the Kwakum.