Category: Encouragements and Exhortations

We have been dealing with a lot of issues on our translation team recently. Amidst deaths and funerals and the daily difficulties, we recently had to let one of our translators go because of sexual immorality. Another confessed that he had nearly fallen into the same sin. We spent an entire week just thinking through the Christian response to sin, and how we can seek righteousness. In our discussions, we tread that fine line between demanding righteousness and recognizing weakness/offering grace. Because of a small view of sexual sin, our actions to remove a translator seemed to some to be…

A few years ago, when we still had young kids, we hired a young Kwakum woman to come and help us with cooking and cleaning in our home. She came to us one day and said that she wouldn’t be able to work for a week because one of her family members had died. The reason she wanted a week off was that the Kwakum have funeral celebrations that last for six days. They spend all six days at the burial site, they sleep next to the tomb, and they spend all that time with their family. So, attending this…

Last week I wrote a blog about how fear for safety keeps many people from considering missions, especially when it comes to raising children on the field. One of my points in that blog is that missions is not a monolith. The risks that my missionary friends in Mexico face are different from the ones we face, which are still different than the risks my friends in Ireland face. So, any advice I could give would either be very specific to Cameroon, or very general. That said, here are three general tips for mitigating risks in missions: 1. Join a…

A few months ago, I read a blog in which some missionaries were talking about a difficult event that occurred with their children. In the comments on that post, a woman wrote something to the effect of: “If you have young children, it is clear: God has not called you to missions.” I was not really surprised. People have asked us questions about our children throughout the years that belied the same assumption: missionaries are unable to keep their children safe on the mission field. I have found that the main reason people do not consider missions is because of…

The Kwakum people, whom we work with, believe that they are surrounded by the spirits of their ancestors. This might sound romantic or even exciting, but in reality for most Kwakum people it is terrifying. I think I have shared the story here before, but early on in our ministry, we did a language survey with a man in a different village whom we had never met before. At the end of the survey we asked him if there were any ways we could be praying for him. At that point, he nearly started weeping. He told us that his…

Jesus, All You Didn’t Have to Do Jesus, we don’t want to clean up our own messes,Let alone our neighbors’.Begrudgingly, we rinse our own plates,As though doing someone a favor. “Why should we have to empty the whole trash can,When to its contents, we only contributed 10%?”We grumble, we complain,Completing the task while throwing a fit. Jesus, we moan, and we fuss,At the smallest responsibilities entrusted to us. You give us a body to clothe and nourish,That it may be used in service to you.But we tend to primp and worship it,Drawing people’s eyes away from the One to whom…

Stacey and I are scientists. No, we don’t wear lab coats, or work in a sterile environment. We are linguists. Some people consider linguistics a “soft science,” as opposed to the “hard sciences” like biology and chemistry. However, linguists do follow the scientific method: 1) make observations, 2) make a hypothesis, 3) test the hypothesis, 4) repeat until data is accounted for. Rather than chemicals or microorganisms, linguists study languages. Our main area of study so far has been the Kwakum language. Kwakum is structured so different from Indo-European languages and we often encounter grammatical constructions that are untranslatable in…

When I was in college, I lived in off-campus housing. The apartment complex was pretty full, and sometimes I would have to park in a lot outside of the parking garage. One morning, when I was heading to work, I came out to find that my car had been broken into. The driver-side window was smashed, stereo stolen, and all my CDs were gone too. I was both a poor college student and an audiophile at this point, so they basically stole everything that I valued. I was crushed, and certain that my car insurance would not pay for it….

If you have read our most recent newsletter, you know that our kids are now attending a school in the capital, Yaounde, called Rainforest International School (RFIS). I cannot tell you how much of a blessing RFIS has already been to us, just over the last couple of months. Our kids are loving it, and it has freed us up to invest more time into the translation work and into the lives of the Kwakum people. Due to a COVID and other reasons, RFIS is struggling and needs your help. Without this school, Christian missions in Cameroon would be hampered…

People often ask us what it is like to live in a Kwakum village. We usually respond by describing the day-to-day lives of our neighbors as sustenance farmers. We talk about their houses, methods of agriculture, the long walk to the field. We talk about their large families, most women giving birth to 8, 9, 10, or even more children throughout their lives. We talk about how the Kwakum people are a primarily oral people group, most (at least in the village) do not know how to read in any language. Sometimes we try to communicate some of the harder…