Category: Bible Translation

The curtains are hung, the furniture is in place, the books are in their shelves. It is time to get this ministry party started. This literacy and translation center (“Kwakum House”) is designed to be a hub of Christian and literacy efforts among the Kwakum people. Our dreams for this place is that the Lord would fill it up with education and spiritual truths to bring change among the Kwakum and to bring about worship of Christ. In September, we plan to kick off women’s Bible studies going through Firm Foundations (an evangelistic curriculum that goes from Creation to Christ),…

A Recap on the Oral Bible Storying Workshop This last Wednesday we spent nearly 8 hours in an Oral Bible Storying (OBS) workshop with about 20 Kwakum men and women. Together we wrestled to understand the context and meaning of the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18. The goal of this meeting was to begin to give our friends an idea of what OBS is going to look like in the future. Particularly we wanted them to understand that it was going to be a lot of work. A goal that was achieved as…

A week ago, chiefs from various Kwakum villages, fellow missionaries, the town mayor, and hundreds of “regular” Kwakum people gathered together singing the words of the song that is written above. It was a time to celebrate two things: 1) The opening of the new Kwakum literacy and translation center, and 2) the dedication of the new Kwakum alphabet. The Kwakum literacy and translation center is a five room plus once conference room building which serves as a hub for literacy work, Oral Bible Storying, children’s ministry, and translation work. Two out of the five rooms are bedrooms which the…

Yesterday morning Kwakum people from near and far gathered together for a joyous dedication of the Kwakum house, a newly-built center for literacy and translation. It was in this building that the new, approved Kwakum alphabet was presented. There was singing, there was dancing, there was a time of thanksgiving for those in America who helped fund the building project, and there were speeches given. A new alphabet song was sung. It started with: We are overjoyed that God has opened the door for a writing system in Kwakum! We are so happy with the letters that have come into…

It has been almost 15 years since Stacey and I started to pursue missions together. We have been through seminary, adoption, support raising, linguistic training, French, Kwakum learning, more linguistic training, and more Kwakum learning and analysis. The point of all of this work has been to be a part of bringing God’s Word to a people group that does not have it. Starting in November we began building a house, which we call Itɔɔ Kwakum ‘the Kwakum House’ where we will begin literacy and translation. That house is going to be opened and dedicated on March 30th. Another missionary…

Stacey and I have chosen to live in a village here in Cameroon and work directly with a single people group: the Kwakum. The longer we are here, the more we are thankful we have chosen this method. Just the other day my neighbor Patrice told me that several people in the same village died at the same time. I asked what happened and he told me that there was mbɔsɔ cyɛti, which they would translate into French as mauvais médicament ‘bad medicine’. I asked some follow-up questions, because I wanted to better understand what happened. I asked if it was tromadol, a…

What is discourse analysis? How does it relate to Bible translation? Is it even important?

When we were out in Southern California, we were able to do a Question and Answer time at The Master’s Seminary about life as Bible translators. Here is one of the questions and our answer: PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOURSELVES AND YOUR MINISTRY IN CAMEROON. Stacey Hare: I’m Stacey and this is Dave. We are Bible translators with World Team in West Africa, in a country called Cameroon. We’re in the eastern region of the country. Dave Hare: In 2004, we graduated from The Master’s University and went to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Both Stacey and I graduated from…

In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. – Luke 10:21 As John Piper points out in his article What Makes Jesus Rejoice, the verse above is only one of two places where Jesus is described as rejoicing. The reason for his joy was because when the seventy-two disciples returned from their preaching tour, they told him that the Gospel message was…

Where we have been. We arrived in the US in March 2017, and you may be thinking we have just been vacationing. Au contraire my friends, we have been quite busy. Let me tell you what we have been up to. STUDY. The majority of our time has been spent in Dallas, TX where we have been studying at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics. The reason we were here is because we knew that we needed more training before we began translating the Bible. At GIAL took the following classes: Advanced Grammar Advanced Phonology Cross-cultural Teaching Seminar Discourse Analysis…