Can Flashcards Save Souls?

Hope For Our Neighbors

“How can we pray for you?” we asked a man in a small Bakoum village. He looked at us with grief in his eyes and said, “My mother died and I could not go to her funeral and I do not know if she is mad at me. She has not shown up since the funeral, so I just do not know what to do.” He shrugged and looked down at the ground.

When he said “has not shown up” he probably meant that his mother has not communicated to him through a dream expressing her favor or disapproval. Nor has she presented him with a list of demands of how he can appease her. The result is a man living in fear and slavery to his deceased mother. We prayed with him, asking God to free him from the bondage to fear. As time goes by we hope to be able to see him again and explain the freedom of Christ more clearly. But we are realizing that he is just one of thousands of Bakoum people who live every day fearing spirits, ancestors, sickness, and even their neighbors.

This fear manifested itself as we were talking with another Bakoum man. He told us that people often cut their babies faces, rub it with the skin of a red deer and some herbs. They do this because they believe it will prevent their children from getting sick. But what it does is leave them with physical scars and false hope. And knowing the true hope of life as a child of God, we cannot stand around and do nothing.

So what is our response? We return to our house and…we study vocabulary. Does making vocabulary cards free our neighbors from hopeless rituals and demonic influence? No, our flashcards cannot save souls. But we are realizing more and more that unless these people have God's Word in their own language, their chances of understanding our Good News is minimal. These are the scenarios that characterize our lives right now: we see, day in and day out, major spiritual needs and yet feel impotent to deal with them until we first learn the language.

We tell you this hoping you will feel our frustration and turn to the Lord for the grace to learn quickly.
 

Wait and Endure

Hebrews 10:36 says, “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.” This is exactly what the Lord has called us to in this stage of our ministry: waiting, enduring and doing his will until his Son returns. In two years, we hope to be in a place where we could articulate to this gentleman in the village that when Jesus died on the cross, he triumphed over rulers, authorities, spirits and that those who believe in him no longer have to fear. But until then we study, study, and then study some more.

Besides not being able to communicate in Bakoum, we also have been a bit frustrated at the opportunities that we have to pass up in order to protect our Bakoum study time. For instance, Dave has been asked to co-teach with our pastor, Boris, Bible courses for the pastors in the area. What an opportunity to make a difference here and how difficult it was to decline his offer. However, we firmly believe that without a solid grasp of the language our impact here will be minimal at best and the integrity of the Bible in Bakoum would be compromised. 
 

What's New
Thanks to a sister in the Lord, Bonnie Marcum, coming to live with us for a year to home school our kids, we actually do have lots of time to devote to language and culture learning. It has been a huge blessing as we are now able to study around 6-7 hours a day plus spend Fridays going out to Bakoum villages to do linguistic surveys and to keep members of our language committee up to date on our progress. We are so so so thankful for her.

The kids are with “Miss Bonnie” four days a week and the other day they go to the local public school. They are making friends and speaking French, so we are very pleased.

Speaking of kids, we have also started having the neighbor kids over every day to teach them French catechism songs. They do not understand everything that is taught in French, but we can still see some significant fruit of this. They are learning about the character of God, they are learning that God cannot lie, that people are made in the image of God and thus we should not be violent towards one another, and they are learning that sin is disobedience to our Creator. And to top that all off, around our village you can hear them singing Scripture testifying to who God is. Once we have the alphabet ready to be taught to the Bakoum people, we hope to start literacy right on our front porch with this group of kids.