Getting back in touch
I thank God for you all, and for the prayers, encouragement and support which many have given over the years. It is those prayers which God uses to advance his work here in Africa.
I'm still in Cameroon, working on Bible translations among rural communities. I currently work with two languages in the forest near the coastal part of Cameroon. One group is called the Kwasio, who are traditional farmers and fishermen living in villages near the forest. Another group is called the Bakola--they are Pygmy hunter-gatherers who are kind of the former "slaves" of the Kwasio people. Each group needs the Bible, but they are very different.
New Local leadership for the Kwasio The Kwasio have had missionaries coming to them since 1890 (120 years ago!), and today they are mostly church-goers. The early Kwasio believers really wanted to worship God in their own language, so to do that they separated from the missionaries and started their own church in 1933. Over the years the Kwasio people made
many efforts to write their language and translate hymns and parts of the Bible. Even so, today, nearly all of those efforts remain only as hand-written manuscripts, and there is not even a standard alphabet!
We hope that this will change soon, since we have been working on studying the language and
collecting and typing up the manuscripts. Recently I’ve had to distance myself a bit from the
Kwasio. At the end of 2009 I had many problems with some of the people in the village of Lolodorf, where I had lived since 2004. There was a land dispute involving the house I had been renting, and eventually I had to completely leave the village as things got very unpleasant.
In spite of these difficult events, God is working! He has raised up some Kwasio people themselves who are now taking over the work. I'm working to prepare a dictionary, grammar, alphabet, and style guide for the new local team.
The Kwasio local translators
Dan with three newly trained Kwasio revisers are almost finished with their training and will soon be ready to start working. They are not starting from nothing: one elderly Kwasio Catholic priest has already produced a hand-written rough draft of the entire Bible, and we have that mostly typed up and ready for the long process of editing and revision.
The Bakola
The other group with whom I work are the Bakola, who are forest hunter-gatherers. As some of
you will remember, I've worked with other tribes of Pygmies before: the Bayaka of Central
African Republic and the Baka of Cameroon. I am very excited to work now with the Bakola,
who are widely scattered in small settlements or camps, often accessible only by hiking. The
Bakola have had very little exposure to the gospel, and very few if any are believers. They live
in a forest which has been hunted-out and over-exploited by the logging companies. It is hard
for them to live off of what they can hunt and gather. Many have started farming, which helps
them. Bakola is a language which is very similar to the Kwasio language, since the Bakola
were for a long time something like servants to the Kwasio. I am trying to do a comparison of Kwasio and Bakola, working to find their exact differences and similarities. This will make it possible, Lord willing, to quickly adapt the Kwasio Bible into Bakola using computers.
The Academic world
I'm also now ministering in a very new and exciting field: the academic world. God has brought some famous linguists as well as student linguists from Europe to come and work with me. They
Abbe Bouh finished the rough draft of the entire Bible in January 2010, a Bakola explains to Dan about making traps. Kwasio! The Leiden Bakola research team: Raimund, Maarten, Emmanuel,
Nadine, and Dan are not missionaries but instead are interested in the science of language.
I am now working on a doctoral dissertation at Leiden University in the Netherlands. The dissertation is a grammar comparing Kwasio and Bakola, which is needed for the translation work! Leiden University has put together a team of student researchers from Europe and Cameroon to help me record and study the Bakola language!
This past summer (2010) I was able to spend a few months in Leiden getting input into writing the rough draft of the dissertation. It was a real time of refreshment, which I thank God for.
What’s next For now, I'm living in the capital city of Yaounde and trying to write my dissertation and organize my research on the Kwasio and Bakola. I hope to get my car running again soon (it broke down last June), and then I hope to make trips out to visit the Kwasio and the Bakola.
Another blessing is that someone in Indianapolis built me a three-wheeled vehicle which he calls a "BUV" or "Basic Utility Vehicle." It goes slowly, has no gears or reverse, but should slog well
through the mud. I'm currently without transportation, but Lord willing I'll soon have both a SUV and a BUV! God knows our needs and takes care of us.
Taken personally
For most of my years here, I have been living in rural Africa. Now I'm in a big city. I'm enjoying the fellowship of the missionary community and also a good African church. I am finding opportunities to preach and lead music sometimes. I hope to soon get involved in
some children's ministry, as I often have done in the past. I used to get a little lonely in the remote villages where there was little or no real Christian fellowship. Sometimes people were not very welcoming or cooperative. I believe that God understood that, and He is giving
me some times of refreshing to gain strength before I live out there in isolation again.
Thanks so much for your continued prayers and support. It means so much to me, and also to the people here who are being helped. Many here are finding God in their lives and slowly the Scriptures are working their way into these communities.
Praise God with me for: Please join me in prayer for:
�� Many friends from the academic world have become involved in the Bakola work. They are a real encouragement to me!
�� Miraculous protection during many dangerous situations, including car break-downs, road accidents, and a kitchen explosion.
�� Good progress on the dissertation during the summer of 2010 at Leiden, Netherlands.
�� Good health since March 2010.
��The Kwasio and Bakola peoples
��Continued strength and wisdom for the dissertation
��Continued protection and safety in travel
��Transportation: arrival of the new “BUV” and repairs of the old “SUV”
��Severin’s father who is very ill right now.
