I have told the story before of one of my neighbors was being routinely abused by her boyfriend. Although she wanted to separate from him, fear wouldn’t let her. Feeling at the end of herself, she reached out to a Christian woman who told her to pray against the power of the boyfriend in the name of Jesus. This woman did just that and then watched as her boyfriend’s feet became glued to the ground when he tried to walk into the house to do her harm. He struggled and struggled to be set free, but was unable to touch…

Hurdles When we first moved to Cameroon, I was introduced to the machete which is all so common in daily life here. It is used to kill snakes, cut fingernails, slice vegetables, clear a field in the bush, plant seeds; it is used for absolutely everything. And yet, I had never known life with a machete, so I frankly didn’t see the immediate value of it (that has since changed). If “my people” have survived for generations without a machete, is it really that important? This is exactly the same question that is often asked among illiterate people when being…

I was once that young, bright-eyed, seminarian. I studied Greek and wondered at how easy it was to translate passages of Scripture that I already had memorized in English. And when I eventually heard that the vast majority of languages in the world (~91%) do not have the entire Bible, I was a bit shocked. I mean, we have had the whole of the canon for about 2,000 years. Surely, it should not be taking this long. How hard could it be? For those of you that are in the same place, or who at least are asking these questions,…

Yesterday, we, along with about 50 people, sang praise songs to Jesus and danced in the streets for hours. Why? Like my son Kaden said, it was because we were joining in with the angels in Heaven who were rejoicing over sinners who had repented of their sins. We walked through villages as people came out of their homes to see what all the singing was about until we reached the river where three Kwakum people were baptized (two out of the three are our close friends). Let me tell you how the Lord has dramatically changed the lives of…

The last few weeks have been hard. It has not been one hard thing, or even something major, just a steady beating of difficulty. In this short period of time our washing machine broke, our remaining solar batteries (the others were stolen) quit charging, I messed up our generator, and our water pump mysteriously stopped pumping altogether (meaning no hot water). We have made a lot of good progress in Bible storying and literacy, but the success has also been marred by critique. It seems there is always someone ready to let me know what they don’t like. We have…

Yesterday was the most encouraging joy that we have had since coming to Cameroon in 2014. It started by going to a Kwakum church in a different village. The pastor has been our language partner for a number of years and since we’ve started Oral Bible Storying, has been our right-hand man. We usually attend his church a couple times a month and walk away discouraged because he preaches works salvation and often his teachings are far removed from the text of Scripture. However, this Sunday he stood up and from memory recited all of Genesis 3 and then preached…

In his daily devotional entitled For the Love of God, Volume 2, DA Carson notes three privileges/responsibilities which ought to characterize the ministry of all those who “teach the Word of God to the people of God.” All three of these responsibilities are reflected in the ministry of Ezra who “had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the LORD, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). Carson says that all three aspects of Ezra’s ministry are necessary for anyone who teaches God’s Word, but I would say that this is especially…

I have talked to many young women about coming to Cameroon for a year on a short-term trip and, without fail, one of the first questions they have for me is about the state of the local church among the Kwakum. They are curious about what kind of spiritual resources and accountability will be available to them if they were to come. In our circles, there is, rightly, a huge emphasis on the role of the local church in the life of the believer. There are no “lone ranger” Christians – we are part of a body. We are “living…

Saturday marked the end of our second Oral Bible Storying (OBS) weekend! This is a really exciting time because now, for the first time, we have started to translate biblical content into Kwakum. We have spent a total of two weekends working on the Creation narrative from Genesis 1-2, and currently have a very good draft that we will soon be sending to consultants to check. I thought some of you might want to know what that looked like, and how OBS relates to Bible translation. This post is going to go through what we did for these two weekends,…

A couple days ago, I ventured off the beaten path in order to reach remote Bakoum villages with a couple of my Bakoum coworkers. Our goal was to see if there were any people in each village who feared God and who would like to be a part of our Oral Bible Storying (OBS) workshops. The response was very positive which means that we should at least 2 representatives from every Bakoum at our workshops. Tomorrow we will be studying the creation of the world (a summary of Gen 1-2). One of our Bakoum co-workers, Bosco, will start the meeting…