Skip to main content

what's all this about Cameroon, anyway?

If you're visiting my blog, you probably found your way here because of my prayer letter and already know all this, but just in case you were wondering what all this talk of Cameroon is all about, here's the text of my prayer letter with the explanation.

It seemed to me that many missionaries’ stories involved God leading them to do the very thing they least wanted to do. Despite their apparent unconcerned acceptance of this situation, I feared and dreaded the thought that God might lead me into the ministry I most disliked, and begged Him to be spared.

I have never known what I wanted to do with my life, but there was one thing I did not want to do: become a teacher. In the end, then, my surprise is not so much that God is leading me to do the one thing I never wanted to do in a place I never had any particular interest in going--but that I’m so excited and eager to do it.

In December 2006, a discussion with my cousin Dan Friesen (Bible translator in Cameroon) on linguistics turned into an invitation to come to Cameroon with his family to serve as a home-school tutor for the 4 school-aged children of the 2 missionary translator couples. After pondering all the reasons why I shouldn’t go, I was left with an overwhelming desire to go, and a sense that God had brought about this opportunity.

My role will consist mainly of preparing and delivering daily school lessons to Rachel (10), Jenny (11), Christy (12), and Kenneth (6) from a home-school curriculum. This will free up the parents, Mike & Becky Scott, and Dan & Lisa Friesen, to put their time into the translation and literacy work of bringing the Bible in Oroko to the people of Big Bekondo and the surrounding area. I may also have the opportunity to contribute in a very small way to the linguistic work, given my undergraduate training in linguistics and communication.

The tutor is required from August to May (the school year) and lives in a tutor apartment attached to the Scotts’ home. The Scotts and Friesens live in Big Bekondo, a village of about 3,000 in the heart of Oroko-speaking territory in the Southwest province of Cameroon. I plan to depart in early August 2007 with Dan, Lisa, Rachel and Joshua, as they return to Cameroon after furlough, and to return in May once the school year is finished.

When I confessed my concerns to Dan and Lisa that I would be a burden to them, they said “of course you will, but we’re prepared for that, and in the meantime, you can do a job which will help us.” I may not be doing much “front-line missions work” in Cameroon, but every hour I spend teaching the children is an hour the parents are available to do their work in bringing the Bible to their neighbours in their mother tongue. Ultimately—education, experience, and rhetoric aside—all I have to offer is my willingness to go; the rest I can only leave to God.

I invite your prayers as I step out in obedience into a very new experience in a very new place. I am excited to see how God will challenge, develop and guide me through this experience, and hopefully, allow my small human efforts to build the Kingdom of God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Our pensions for genocide? No!

Just Peace Advocates has found that as of 31 March 2026 (fiscal year end 2025/2026), the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board had over $54 billion invested in 120 companies complicit in Israel’s genocide, war crimes, and apartheid. This represents 6.9% of CPPIB’s total holdings in 25/26. They're trying to fund our retirements by profiteering off mass murder. I'm not okay with that. Are you? Read Just Peace Advocates’ report Send your own letter to let them know. I am writing today after having learned about CPPIB’s 2026 Annual Report. I am disgusted by what I have learned.  After the millions you spent on a cross-country consultation tour, you are ignoring every voice that cajoled and begged and pleaded that you not invest our money in genocide. We'll be happy to have smaller returns if it means our funds aren't causing children to die at the hands of a wanton, sadistic genocidal state. An analysis of CPPIB’s holdings shows more than $54 billion invested in com...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fighting motornormativity one letter at a time

If-you-see-something-say-something strikes again.  Sick and tired of motornormativity, I'm setting event notifications straight. Don't just tell people where they can park when they attend your event. Have some hope for humanity and believe we can step out of our death machines and get around in a more human way. Especially for an event that is pitched as a picnic. This is what they sent: So this is what I wrote:  I know you already have a lot of details in this message. I know that realistically, most of your attendees will come in private vehicles. But can you please add notes for bus and bike travellers the next time you send a message like this? What constructs our view of “normal” is not only what we personally see and interact with but also how our world is talked about. When “where do I park?!” always gets top billing in event information whereas “which bus can I take?” and “is there a safe place to leave my bike?” are never even addressed, it reinforces the impre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bread not bombs

Yesterday, I saw a post from a Dutch antiwar organization: Geen Bommen maar bomen. “Not bombs; trees instead.” I love it.  Today, I saw a campaign from MCC: “bread, not bombs.” So I wrote adapted their letter to write to the prime minister et al.: Sure, money is important, but even more crucial is air to breathe and food to eat.  War makes money for a tiny fragment of human population, but for the vast majority, war means displacement, loss, deprivation and at worst death. Even for those far away from war, like here in Canada, every bomb that drops leaves not only a crater in some distant soil but also further deepens the desperate carbon crisis we are in, which will exact its retribution faster and faster in wildfires, droughts and floods.  That is why I am writing to you today.  Canadians did not vote for war in the 2025 election.  War does not lead to security.  How could the hunger, displacement, and worsening impacts of climate change lead to sec...
Post a Comment
Read more