Prayer Letter

Dear SPACE friends,

I'm writing this from Yaounde, Cameroon, Africa, where we are in day 7 of a 10 day mission experience. The sights, sounds and smells of Cameroon are mostly what you expect of Africa – dusty roads, lots of people, roadside stands and a lot of taxis in this city of 1.5 million people. The relationships here though are far deeper than those images relate to. Cameroonians love people and their warm smiles and handshakes only scratch the surface.

Our team just finished helping run a four day youth camp - assisted by an indigenous team of Cameroonian youthworkers - for around 35 high school students. The overall effort is part of a long term strategy to start a high school ministry and our tasks included being a part of small group discussions centered around faith and spiritual things, running fun high school style games and sharing our stories as well as our lives. Most Cameroonians don’t swim, so the combined experience of a youth camp and the location of the beach was a real treat for them. It was also great for us to have a few lifeguards on our team. This strategy is an ideal situation for a team such as ours, as 4 Cameroonians made first time decisions for Jesus and as the Cameroonian youth team already has planned immediate small groups to follow up.

As if being in Africa wasn’t enough of a real time lab about culture and context, our team also took a 2 hour ride – via dugout canoe – into the jungle to see a village of Cameroonian pygmies. I never imagined I would have the privilege of talking about God to a village chief via two translators. It was a wild experience.

Thank you again for praying and supporting this team – we know God is hearing your requests for us. Please continue to pray for:

- Our relative safety for the rest of our time here
most everyone has been healthy except for minor stomach issues.
Also please pray for LFoley, who got a minor bite from one of our hosts' dog. Fortunately, both have had all their shots.
- Our timely and safe travel – we fly to Paris on Sat night and back home on Monday evening.
- A quality time of debriefing and processing the experience while in Paris
- Our new Cameroonian friends, their spiritual growth and that decades from now, Yaounde and all of Cameroon would be a much different place because of Jesus
- That life back home would be lived with the same passion and intensity for what Jesus longs to do with our lives and the communities we live in.