People have asked us for our take on the racial tensions in the US and although I haven’t spent much time following it, this week I watched a video of people vandalizing a Target. The images I saw were strikingly similar to the violence we constantly hear about on the English-speaking side of Cameroon. I think the burning, pillaging, and violence we find here could shed some light on the conflict currently taking place in the States. The Anglophone Crisis: A Little History Relations between the former British colonies and the former French colonies have been tense since the independence…

We thought we would do a video series on the various steps behind the Kwakum Bible translation project. We are still new at this and learning a lot along the way and yet we thought we would share what we have been doing thus far. Throughout the series, you’ll be hearing from our 8 Kwakum colleagues as well as Dave and I. (Also, you’ll notice a woman sleeping in our translation center…She is a blind woman that lives in our village who likes to come just listen as we translate…and sometime she sleeps too.)

One day, near the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus was approached by a Roman centurion. Jesus had already been doing some shocking things; just a few verses before he touched a man with leprosy, healing him. So, maybe his disciples were growing accustomed to his “different” methods. Maybe his offer to heal the Roman’s servant would not have seemed so strange. They may have been surprised to hear that the centurion believed that Jesus could heal from a distance, but I suspect what surprised them the most was when Jesus replied to him: “Truly I tell you, I have…

I would like to make a claim at the outset of this post: proper biblical interpretation requires diversity. Specifically, we need to study the Bible with people different from us in order to best understand the meaning of the text. This claim is not unique to me and when I have heard it in the past, I have brushed it aside. My reasons for rejecting such a conclusion were: 1) as a believer, I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit who guides me into all truth (John 16:13), and 2) I believe in the perspicuity (or clarity) of Scripture. By…

There are two groups of people among the Kwakum: Those who have some knowledge of how to read and write in French and those who have no knowledge of how to read and write in any language whatsoever. We have already started literacy classes for those who have some knowledge of French comparing the two languages and in September we will start literacy for those who do not even know the letter “A”. I recently finished creating a book describing how to read and write in Kwakum for those who have no knowledge of reading and writing at all. This…

On Saturday we finished our first Kwakum literacy course (we have worked through the material with some people, but this was the first official class). We went to a village called Sibita every weekend for 4 weeks. The group varied between 4 adults to 20 adults, depending on the week. We explicitly said this class was for adults, but there were always 10-20 kids there too. The kids participated and learned probably more quickly than the adults. Being that it was our first official literacy class, there were some things that surprised me. Here are three: 1. No Abstract Categories…

There truly is a delicate balance between raw determination (I-will-do-this-or-die-trying) and submission to the limits that God has put on his creatures. I feel this on a daily basis and assume that I am not the only one, although I don’t know that all personality types struggle with this tension. I see this battle in one of my children very acutely.   All of our children are learning to type this summer. One child in particular sits down the computer and expects to type like her parents within the first half an hour. So far, she has spent each day…

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 have the exciting opportunity to participate in VBS at Grace Church Frisco this summer. How? Well, they are doing VBS completely virtually, online. They are using the curriculum Incredible Race by Answers in Genesis. The main theme throughout is the story of the tower of Babel, which works pretty well with our jobs as Bible translators. So we recorded five short videos talking about ministry here and relating it to the Babel story. I was thinking, if Grace Church Frisco is doing VBS this year, maybe other churches are too. And maybe even if churches are not able to…

Stacey and I are reading a new parenting book called Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family, by Paul David Tripp. This particular parenting book is not super practical. Tripp does not lay down step-by-step instructions for how to deal with each and every situation. Instead, he guides Christian parents with Gospel principles, and shows how those principles should affect the way that we parent. The second chapter in the book is entitled ‘Grace’ and hits at the heart of a major problem with my Christianity. Here is a specific quote that I think explains the point…