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Happy New Year (to those whom we haven’t already greeted)! Trust you rang in ’25 in good health and spirits. It was a very quiet New Year’s for us this year – I guess we were tired after all our Christmas celebrations. 😊
Sonya is on holidays right now. She is in Winnipeg, Manitoba, visiting our grandson Cormack and the rest of the family there. She will also take a side trip to Edmonton, Alberta, to see her father, plus our daughter and her family. This will be her first time seeing Cormack face to face, and he is a cute kid, so let’s pray she’ll be happy to come back home after her vacation. This was her anniversary/birthday/Christmas gift from me, and so far, I am glad to hear and see (mostly via WhatsApp) that she is enjoying it.
Just to catch you up a bit, back in November, we had our first team from a supporting church in North America come to visit us here, and it was great! They (just two of them; we cannot host large parties here) were from a church in Lethbridge, Alberta, and they came with Randy Schmor, NAB Gateway director and interim VP of International Missions.
In a very short space of time, the team managed to experience a whole gamut of missionary events, including: missed luggage, very early mornings, long drives on bad roads, flat tires, black flies, trip to village, local food, greeting a traditional ruler, playing football (soccer) with the kids, sharing testimonies, and much more. They were even able to see the end result of our NAB White Cross ministry here in Banyo at our mission hospital.
We were joined on the team by two of our ministry leaders here, Aminu and Suleymanu. They were our translators and cultural guides and managed to make the trip very enlightening and beneficial. Aminu came from Nigeria to be with us, while Suleymanu lives with his family here in Banyo. We had a great night with the family over supper on our last night in Banyo before heading off to one of our diaspora villages.
In November, we had another kind of visit. The work in Nigeria required an accountant, and a woman – a friend of mine named Rukaiyatu – was sent to school to learn the basics. Since she has to work with the Cameroon system of accounting, our colleague Walter Grob was kind enough to host her for a week in order to continue her training. All this was down in Bamenda, where Walter lives (and our Cameroon Baptist headquarters are located), so after Rukaiyatu got here from Nigeria, we made the long trip down there, with Suleymanu accompanying us.
Walter hosted us at his house for supper every night we were there (which was a very big blessing to us), and we really enjoyed our time with him. (Unfortunately, his wife, Florence, was working in Douala at the time, and we were unable to see her). Suleymanu spent his time visiting with people he knows in that area – though his movements were quite restricted, as Bamenda is in the conflict zone, and it is not safe going off the compound. Meanwhile, I saw a few people also, but spent most of my time on some writing projects I have been engaged in.
The next thing we want to do with Walter is get him on the other side of the border. After Sonya comes back from Canada, we would like her to escort Walter across to Nigeria, so he can see the work of our Nigerian partners up close and personal. Those personal experiences are invaluable and cannot be replaced by any reporting we might be able to give. The details of that trip are yet to be worked out, but Lord willing, you will hear about it in our next newsletter.
Sonya wants to go back to do more work in the local school there. She has been working with the primary schools here in Banyo and in Nigeria to help children better learn to read and write. Her work has been bearing good fruit, and she is looking forward to continuing her partnership with the teachers.
Christmas was fun here in Banyo. Along with videos and pictures of our grandson and his entourage (his parents, and our other children), we held a Christmas morning service in our Suudu Do’aare (House of Prayer) here, with Suleymanu sharing the Good News of Jesus’ birth there. We had our potluck luncheon afterwards with families and friends. I think we fed about 50–60 people then, including local kids who came around to see what was happening, as well as our local Muslim traditional ruler, who enjoys a good meal as well as the next guy.
Over in Nigeria, on Christmas Day they were in the middle of a series of meetings – including a Women’s Conference and a Youth Conference – which will set the agenda and tone for our LRPG partners all through the diaspora in Nigeria and Cameroon. These are very important meetings, out of which teams are sent to share the reports and resolutions. They held their final meeting in northern Nigeria at the end of January. What comes next is prayer and action in putting the resolutions to work.
One teaching coming out of the meetings was the need for us to be sharing the Good News of Jesus in a context where it can be threatening and even dangerous to do so. Due to the success of the ministry, many more hostile eyes are on the believing communities, and because of the history of persecution and oppression here, this can be very daunting. Still, we know the power of the Gospel, of prayer, and of the God behind it.
This is where you come in – and we thank you for your partnership with us in the ministry, and for your prayers for our brothers and sisters here. As they say here, Allah besdu barka: May God add his blessing.