Category: Christian Missions

When I ask the question, “Do you believe in magic?”, if you are like me, what comes to mind is either Disney or that one song by the Lovin’ Spoonful. But magic (or witchcraft/sorcery/juju) has a much different meaning to many people here in Cameroon. Here are some recent examples I have heard of: People will go to shamans (French: marabout, Kwakum: kaah, Anglophone Cameroon: ngambe man) for protection, or to have curses put on their enemies. So, at many funerals a special ritual is performed to determine who put a curse on the person that died. Also at funerals,…

Since our arrival in Cameroon in 2014, there have been a handful of people from our village that have attended church semi-regularly. The services are conducted in French and this group of people speaks almost exclusively Kwakum. These neighbors put on their nicest clothes, arrive at church, and…sleep through the services. This is very regrettable because our pastor just finished a very long series on the book of Romans where he clearly presented the Gospel of grace. When I asked my Kwakum-speaking friends what they understood at church, I would often get answers like, “I learned that we need to…

It is hard to believe that we are on the homestretch of homeschooling our children. The Lord has provided 6 different committed, godly young women to come homeschool our kids throughout our time on the field and this coming school year will be our last year of homeschooling our kids. After this year, we will be in the States for 8th grade, and then the kids will be in high school in the capital. The Lord has once again provided someone who is willing to spend a year with our family, making children do their math, and experiencing the discomforts…

What an amazing Easter! Stacey and I had the privilege of seeing our co-worker and friend Jean Pierre (JP) baptized on Sunday. Baptism is always exciting in our village because the river is a long walk from our church building. That means that the whole congregation (and even a bunch of people not a part of the congregation) end up singing praises to God all along the way. Baptism to me has always felt solemn, sacred, quiet. But baptism here is a party, a time for rejoicing, and very much like the arrival of a newborn. One of the most…

I have seen an increase in missionaries coming to the field for a fixed term. That is to say, they come to the field with a particular term length in mind. Some will come for two, four, five, or ten years. Then, they return to their home country. From my experience, this seems to be the norm now. And when we talk to Americans, they usually ask us how long we are planning on staying. I will respond with, “our plan is to die in Cameroon (hopefully later rather than sooner).” Since this is a less common reply, I thought…

Yesterday was packed with joy from the first rooster crow until people fell into their beds exhausted from all the yipping, cheering, and dancing they did in celebration of something that the Lord holds dear: marriage. It was a day that, I believe, mirrored a celebration in Heaven. Two young believers (Koo and Mami) have taken up their crosses, turned their backs on the ways of their culture, and followed God’s will for marriage. One Kwakum friend told me that he had never heard of two young Kwakum people getting married. This occasion therefore merited the song (composed in Kwakum)…

This Thanksgiving, we were invited to celebrate with a missionary couple, Barry and Desma Abbott who work among the Baka people. We piled into our car and drove along bumpy, dusty, dirt roads for hours. When large trucks would pass, the dust was so bad, we had to pull over until it cleared up so I could see the road. We drove, and drove, and drove, and then we started to feel…lost. We pulled over several times and asked people where we could find the Abbott’s village. We knew we were in trouble when they started to look at us…

In this video Patrice (one of our translators) describes more about the Drafting step of the process.

This last week, Dave’s drafting team was working in our village. Watching them work and talk, I was reminded how I have come to consider them to be some of my closest friends. We are united in the Lord, in the work, and in our love for one another. During our shared meal, this group of guys started telling some of their traditional folktales, full of wild arm movements, animal imitations, and silly faces. They were cracking up to the point of crying, sometimes having a hard time getting the words out, and slapping each other on the back for…

The first step in Bible translation is Exegesis, which leads to a front translation. The second step is called Drafting. In this stage we work to understand the text as a group, then develop the first draft of the text in Kwakum. Over the next four videos we will be describing the process of drafting. In this video, I talk to Koo (one of our translators) about the first part of the process of drafting: understanding the text. The most important concept here is: “You cannot translate a text that you do not understand.”