Category: Encouragements and Exhortations

You always hear people saying that you never know what you have until it is gone. This is the real reason why our moms all told us about the starving children in Africa when we are refusing to eat something she prepared. The idea is that, if you were living in a place where you did not have enough food, you would even be thankful for split-pea soup. It is a principle that I have learned is true since moving to rural Cameroon. There are the little things that you miss, and wish you had previously been thankful for, like…

On Monday of this week, I walked into a mud hut where the body of a young woman lay. She had an unknown medical problem that had plagued her for some time. I had intended to go visit her that very day to pray for her healing, but apparently I was too late. I walked into the cool, dark room and saw many women sitting around its edges, all looking at the body, weeping. Some were sitting on benches close to the ground, others on sacks, and some on the dirt floor. The deceased’s mother was kneeling by the side…

The other night, I went on my nightly walk through village to visit with the neighbors and I was struck once again with the poverty that surrounds us. The problems seem insurmountable: open, untreated wounds; sick children; dark, mud-brick homes that contain few possessions outside of what our neighbors find in our trash pit. Then, as I walk back towards my house, I hear my 4 hyper-active children hysterically laughing and playing, without a care in the world. The contrast between their joy and my neighbors’ sorrow makes the heaviness that I often feel even more profound. How Does God…

“Can you help me? My daughter is sick,” my neighbor asked me the other day. He showed me her swollen stomach and her hands are turning yellow. I looked into her sad eyes knowing that children die here often, usually from curable diseases. My missions professor in seminary called it the “stupid stuff.” There are so many people dying from preventable causes, and that is how it feels: stupid. It is stupid that this little girl might die because of intestinal worms that could be cured with one round of meds. But then again, it could be that she has…

I have spent my life studying the Bible seeking to ground my beliefs in God’s Word. Biblical truths are those that I have spent years thinking through, debating, considering and reconsidering. In contrast, being dropped into a new culture has revealed to me that I have many beliefs that are not so well thought out. In fact, there is much of my worldview that I have never thought about at all, just accepted. The earth is round, mangos do not cause malaria, not everyone who is white is a European, and germs cause sickness. You can imagine Dave’s shock the…

I am coming down off of a pretty difficult time with my own attitudes regarding missionary life here in Cameroon. I can honestly say that right now I feel content, excited, and motivated. But not everyday is like that, and some worse than others. When I mention these struggles what comes to your mind? What do you think is the hardest part of being a missionary? People have told me the hardest part would be the heat, bugs, snakes, isolation, sickness or language learning. But I would say that none of these things are the “hardest” part of being a…

Bible translation is a messy business. It always has been. Whereas there are always “external” threats to this great task (being refused visas, terrorism, trouble finding nationals to work with), I am convinced that the greatest threat that faces us today is internal. Like the armies mentioned in the Old Testament that lost battles because they turned on one another, I fear that we too may be disoriented, thinking our colleagues are really our enemies. Instead of encouraging one another to press on in battle, I fear that we may actually end up destroying one another. Hot-Button Issues Here are…

I recently read a great article put out by our missions agency, World Team, and it inspired me to think through the following scenarios… Imagine two pairs of Christian parents daily loving their children and presenting Christ in word and deed. In God’s mercy, one group of parents receives the joy of seeing their children worship and serve Jesus. The other couple witnesses their children go from hard to harder as the years go by. The couple with the believing children are sought after for parenting advice while the other mother and father are considered a little suspect. Along the…

If you have followed our ministry for a while, you know that we have spent a good amount of time with the Baka people. We visited them during our field visit, we lived among them for a few months while waiting for our house to be built, and we work right next to them here in Dimako. If you were to come and visit the Baka, one of the first things that you would notice how desperate their physical plight is.The Baka have for known history been hunter/gatherers and therefore lived as nomads, never settling in one place. However, with…

There is a story that the Bakoum people recount to their children. The story is of two fragile deer, a mother deer and a baby deer. These deer were frolicking through a lush green valley when one day the mother stops and looks seriously into the eyes of her offspring. Her tone takes on an air of seriousness when she explains that there are hunters who set traps in the valley to kill deer. She explains to her fawn that she must be very careful or else she could be entangled in a trap. The daughter deer laughs at her…