Category: Third Culture Kid

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…

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…

I have a friend who grew up on the mission field and even though both she and her brother grew up as MKs (missionary kids) their lives today look very different. Currently, she is a missionary while her brother totters between being called an atheist or an agnostic. Apparently, this scenario is not uncommon: some MKs live passionately for the Lord and his work and others want nothing to do with Christianity. While there are certainly plenty of exceptions, it seems often the children of missionaries fall to one extreme or the other. If then there are a great number…

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…

One of the main questions we get from our friends and family now that we are in the States is, “How are the kids adjusting?” so we thought we’d take a minute to type up a fairly detailed response. In a word, they are doing great. I suppose it’s kind of hard not to be doing great coming from a poorer nation to a nation of toys and shiny things. In the words of Dave, “Moving our children to America is kind of like moving them inside of Toys-R-Us.” It’s pretty hard for them to not be excited about everything….

We are set to arrive in the States in just 9 days and as we talk to our children about American culture, we have realized that it may be helpful for our friends in America to understand a bit of the culture that they are coming from. I used to think of them as American. They are being raised by American parents, we speak mostly English in our home, and even occasionally watch an American movie all together. But then, we had a homeschool teacher show up in August who later shared that she had no idea how many cultural…

We just finished our annual field conference in Yaoundé. We met with our co-workers from all over Cameroon. It was a very encouraging time that led to a better understanding of what God is doing here. It also led to a better understanding of needs throughout the country. As many of you often ask what you can do to help our ministry, I thought I would give you the opportunity to recruit for our field. Below are some examples of needs in Cameroon right now. Of course we are always looking for church planting/Bible translation types, but look also at…

Most missionaries are not scared of death, at least not substantially. We have weighed the risks. We chose to become missionaries even though there might be terrorists not far away and we live in a region where nearly invisible bugs can bite you without you knowing and deliver an illness that kills more people in the world than any other. Early missionaries packed their belongings in coffins, and it is not surprising to me that ominous warnings like “You will be eaten by cannibals” did not keep men like John Patton off the field. Why? It is simple really, we…

Sometimes when we go on a walk we stop traffic. Seriously. People will slow their cars down and rubberneck with some misguided thought that staring is going to answer their questions. Two adults, four kids. Adults are Irish-looking, kids are African-looking. But just to mix it up even more, all of our kids appear to be the same age (and in reality are pretty close – two 3-year-olds and two 2-year-olds). Conversations only complicate matters: not only do we have 4 Ethiopians that are being raised by Americans, they are going to be raised in Cameroon, in a village, where…

World Team printed this article about a missionary kid who grew up among the Baka people in Cameroon, Africa. We pray that her story will encourage your faith as it has encouraged ours… What God Has Done for Me – Reflections on My Journey What has God done for me? My answer starts with, “He saved my life, many times physically and once forever spiritually.” But what God has done for me exceeds granting redemption and safety on murderous roads. Both of those are extremely important, but God’s work includes using my ‘yesterdays’ to make my ‘today.’ I am a…