Category: Christian Missions

Since we have returned to our village in August 2018, we have met a young couple that has reminded us why we are doing what we are doing. The young man, named Ko has been an orphan since he was 8 years old. When his parents died, he went to live with his aunt who had him work for his stay in lieu of going to school. Ko has shown interest in learning more about the Lord but confided in Dave that there was one thing holding him back: he cannot read and thus not read the Bible. When Dave…

The death of John Allen Chau in India has brought out an onslaught of internet hatred. While some of this hatred has been aimed at the methodology of this particular missionary, much of it has been against Christian missionaries in general. And as much as I would like to imagine that these comments represent only those who are not believers, I fear that such thinking has also invaded the church. So, I thought I would address some of the accusations… 1. Missionaries are not wanted. In the surprisingly not so distant past, Europeans still had control over Cameroon (where we…

When we came to Cameroon on our vision trip in 2010, I asked our colleagues for their highs and lows of Cameroon living. Without exception, each person told me that one of the hardest parts of living here was dealing with money. Knowing about these challenges we read a ton about the subject before crossing into a new culture. We found that most books written for Westerners moving to Africa deal extensively with the question of finances. We have already written about some of what we have learned from books like African Friends and Money Matters (read HERE) and When Helping…

When we were in Cameroon our last term, we would often spend our Saturday mornings working on our “yard.” This means that we tried to tame the jungle with a couple of machetes and a handful of 1st graders. We have about an acre of land and planted grass more-or-less blade by blade. Other missionaries gave us cuttings of their trees and we planted them in our back yard. Through the years of our first term, we tried to convert the land around our house from the wild jungle into something manageable and something beautiful. We worked really hard but…

As we have been saying goodbye to friends and family, people have been asking us how we feel about going back to Cameroon. In the midst of trying to see how much we can shove into suitcases and eating as much ice-cream as we can, there are three main feelings that keep coming to the surface: Dread, Trust, and Resolve. Dread We know that we are soldiers going back into war. Our war is not one involving guns or tanks but instead we battle and against the spiritual forces of evil that have held the Bakoum people for generations. We…

We are looking for a woman to come to Cameroon to homeschool our children for the 2019-2020 school year. They would all be in 4th grade during this year. Please help spread the word because we would like to speak with anyone interested before we head back to Cameroon on August 20th. We will be in Louisville July 13th – August 11th, and then in Colorado Springs August 11th-20th. We would love to sit down with anyone interested to talk about the possibility. The Mutually-Beneficial Opportunity: Coming to Cameroon to be a homeschool teacher is beneficial both to Dave and…

Just before we left for home assignment, I had an interesting conversation with one of our most trusted language helpers, we will call him Pierre (not his name). Pierre is very well educated and one of the only Bakoum people I know that enjoys reading (in French). I was driving him back to his village and recounting a story that I found to be humorous. I told him that fairly often people will come to my door and we will have this conversation: Them: “I have some chameleon eggs for you to buy.” Me: “Oh yeah, and why would I…

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…

My fear for you is not that you will fail, but that you will succeed in doing the wrong things. Dr. Howard Hendricks (to his students) As we approach missions there are so many different options. Just in Cameroon we know missionaries that work as: doctors, nurses, church planters, educators, agricultural specialists, librarians, linguists, and even a couple that are starting gyms. If you read this blog, you know that Stacey and I are working as Bible translators and most of our time so far has been invested in learning and analyzing the Kwakum language. In all that we do,…