All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it. I Corinthians 12:27

Maksimu Musa and Johnson Balihikya are pastors in the Obadiah Lutheran Synod of Uganda. Last month they visited refugees from South Sudan at the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement. The purpose of this visit was to help a group in the camp organize a congregation. We pray that our Ugandan mission partners will shepherd more and more people with the Word of God.

The above is noteworthy, but how this visit came to be is worth remembering.

Two Bodies

In 2018, members of the One Africa Team (OAT) visited Uganda for the first time. They met with Christians organized as the Obadiah Lutheran Synod (OLS). Since that time and despite the delays caused by COVID fears, regular communication, joint Bible Studies, and additional visits continued.

Simultaneously, South Sudanese pastors in North America began to explore opportunities for outreach throughout the continent of Africa. One of these contacts was with a group in the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Uganda.

In early 2022, the OAT scheduled a visit to OLS with two goals in mind. One was to help prepare a request for formal fellowship with Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS.) The second was to meet with the South Sudanese refugees in Kiryandongo who desired to organize a Lutheran congregation. Visiting the refugee group along with the OAT members was Pastor Musa, the leader of the OLS.

We mutually decided that the Pastors of the OLS would conduct Bible studies with the group at Kiryandongo. In that this work was beyond the means of the OLS, the OAT covered the cost of the workshop. Now they have completed the first of two workshops.

Parts Working Together

The Lord used many different people and groups to make this all happen. The Lord used the online presence of the WELS to make contact with the OLS. He used WELS World Mission’s OAT to pursue that contact. The Joint Mission Council (JMO) coordinates the work of World and Home Missions. The JMO made communication between South Sudanese Christians in North America and those working in Africa possible.

Then the Lord moved the hearts of OLS leaders to share the good news with those in the refugee camp. Then he equipped them to carry out the workshop. The visiting pastors of the OLS used Nuer language materials, prepared by Multi-Language Productions of the WELS World Missions. In addition, thousands of Christians have supported our work with their prayers and offerings.

Truly the church is a body with many parts and one Head, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Missionary Howard Mohlke lives in Zambia and is the leader of the One Africa Team.

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts at https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

23 years ago God blessed the Lutheran Church of Cameroon (LCC) with the gift of newly graduated pastors. WELS missionaries trained these men but have not participated in the training of any new pastors since 2018. May 27, 2022, was an amazing day for our brothers and sisters in Cameroon.  Amidst celebrations that reached across Africa and even spilled into the US, the Lutheran Church of Cameroon graduated seven men into the full-time work of the holy ministry.

A Rough Start

In 2016 the LCC identified fourteen men to begin ministerial training. They were men with a reasonable level of education, a Spirit-led love for the Lord, and some years of service as laymen in their congregations.

There were, of course, losses along the way. A few students left the program for valid reasons. A political crisis made it unsafe for the men to be together and caused the loss of an entire year of classroom studies.  The same crisis made it impossible for WELS missionary Dan Kroll to do any face-to-face teaching in the final three years of the five-year program.  Although the devil uses such things to try to discourage us, we endure with the knowledge that the Lord is refining us as he promised through Jeremiah (9:7): “I will refine and test them.” The Holy Spirit was refining well for the gain of the Lord’s church, so that seven men were able to complete the course to prepare them for full-time ministry.  The LCC’s teachers have grounded these men in God’s Word and prepared them to shepherd the Lord’s flocks in Cameroon. The Lord has strengthened each of them to face the challenges of his unique ministry.

Anim, Solomon

Dooh, Jean-Jacques

Epie, Nicole

Fomenyam, Ferdinand

Ngalame, Thomas

Ngalame, Vincent

Tembuc, David

Prayers Answered

Why has this taken 23 years?  Did we forget our brothers in the “Hinge of Africa?”  Not at all.    WELS has not maintained manpower stability for nearly 15 of those 23 years.  About the time we were ready to restart the Cameroon worker training program in 2008, the Lord called Missionary Dan Myers to glory. Missionary Dan Kroll arrived in the summer of 2014 and started classes in the fall of 2016.  By May of 2018, he left because of the political crisis.  WELS fully supports financial and curricular components of the Lutheran Church of Cameroon worker training program, but “feet on the ground” belong to our Cameroonian brothers and they have stepped up in a huge way!  Obviously, the Lord answered your prayers to send workers into the harvest field (Matthew 9:38)!

One of the LCC’s congregational pastors, Gervase Ngalame, is moving to the Seminary campus to assist in training the next group of men for the ministry. Currently, Pastors Mathias Abumbi, Joseph Njume, Daniel Muankume, Julius Njume, Barnabbas Ngalame, and Fon George are serving as full-time congregational shepherds. We give thanks to God for the addition of these seven men, more than doubling the LCC’s ministerium.  The Lord has reminded us that he is watching over his church in Cameroon!

Missionary Daniel Kroll lives in Malawi and coordinates OAT’s work in West Africa

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts at https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

Eleven years ago, Pastor Mesue Muankume Israel, age 32, had so much leg pain that he got surgery to replace his left hip. Thank you, Jesus.

Four years ago, though, Pastor Israel, the only professor at the seminary of the Lutheran Church of Cameroon in Kumba, Cameroon, again started having bad hip pain. Same hip.

Thank you, Jesus?

Yes, “thank you, Jesus.” It’s always both.

Both what?

Both praying, “Hasten, O God, to save me; come quickly, Lord, to help me” (Psalm 70:1), and praying, “thank you, Jesus.”

“In all circumstances,” Paul says. “All” means all.

“Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

So four years ago, when Pastor Israel was diagnosed with the need for a second hip replacement surgery, “Thank you, Jesus”? Yep.

Even though, according to a U.S. surgeon with whom Missionary Dan Kroll consulted, there was too high a risk of infection to have the surgery done in Cameroon?

Still, “Thank you, Jesus”?

Always, “Thank you, Jesus.”

Case in point: Fast forward to October 2021. Pastor Israel, now 43, is in Kumba teaching 7 students who will be pastors in the Lutheran Church of Cameroon. Sometimes he can’t stand in class. Surgery is still needed, though pain medications help.

Covid-19 concerns lessen in Africa. Plans get made for Pastor Israel and 21 other pastors from Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Zambia to meet for a Psalms course in Lusaka, Zambia in late March and early April 2022. “Thank you, Jesus.”

Could Pastor Israel stay in Lusaka for a month or so after that course, and get surgery at a local hospital? Our One Africa Team investigates. Things look promising, we are told, depending on Pastor Israel’s future X-rays and blood testing. “Thank you, Jesus.”

But the hospital is a Roman Catholic mission, formerly known as the Italian Orthopaedic Hospital, now renamed “Saint John Paul II Orthopaedic Hospital.”

A hospital renamed after a recent pope, declared a Roman Catholic saint? No problem, practically. When I go to inquire about preparations and possible costs for surgery, I wear my clerical collar, and everyone receives me warmly. “Thank you, Jesus.”

What about funding? This surgery and related matters will cost thousands of dollars. The Lutheran Church of Cameroon can’t pay for it. Pastor Israel can’t pay for it. He has no insurance to cover it.

Ah, but here you come in. “Thank you, Jesus.”

The One Africa Team of WELS World Missions and WELS Christian Aid and Relief can fund such needs due to thank offerings you and others like you have given in the past. “Thank you, Jesus.”

Really: Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for the perfect offering you gave in our place.

Our offerings can’t bribe your Father. They can’t wow him. Never could. Every forest animal is his; so are the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10).

He told his people of old, “Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, and call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me” (Psalm 50:14–15).

It felt like a day of trouble right before Pastor Israel’s surgery when needed O+ blood donations were not coming in. Then concerned local members of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa jumped in to help. Thank you, Jesus.

So on Thursday, April 21, Pastor Israel had his second hip replacement surgery. Because I was traveling, I couldn’t be there, but my faithful pastor, Evans Makowani, and my friend Mr. Remise Zulu were right there with him when he got out of surgery. Thank you, Jesus.

Very soon after surgery, Mr. Zulu wrote my wife, “Hi, madame. We are still at hospital. Pastor Israel has come outside the operation room. We prayed together and we are chatting with him right now.”

That kind of thing is the biggest reason I look back at the surgery, now that Pastor Israel has flown back home to Cameroon, and I say, “Thank you, Jesus.”

So many people together helped in so many ways.

As you might expect, recovery is taking time. But it continues to go well. “Thank you, Jesus.”

Pastor Israel recently wrote me from Cameroon, “I and everyone in my family is fine. And the pains dying down gradually. I got so busy that I have not had time to actually write back. In fact as we speak am in the office. Hope all is well with you too and our brethren over there.

“The good memories can’t escape my mind.”

Thank you, Jesus.

Or in Akoose, Pastor Israel’s Cameroonian heart language: “Nsome, a-Yesu.”

Missionary Daniel Witte lives in Zambia

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts at https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa