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

Greetings from Uganda!

One Africa Team (OAT) Representatives Missionary Howard Mohlke (OAT Leader) and Missionary John Holtz (OAT Liaison to Uganda) met with the leadership of the Obadiah Lutheran Synod (OLS) in March 2022. This was another meeting among many (in-person and online) that have taken place since 2018.  It was back then that they began working through the Four Stage process to declare doctrinal unity and fellowship.  It has been a long and adventurous road! 

This March meeting marked a memorable milestone occasion: OLS leadership wrote a draft (but official) request for doctrinal unity/fellowship with WELS!  Together with that request, they have also written a summary of doctrine and practice and a report describing the relationship between OLS and WELS/OAT.  After our in-person meeting, the OLS has again met on their own to finalize and formalize their draft documents.  These documents will be sent to the WELS/OAT for consideration.

In addition to the OLS leadership writing official documents, the visit was fruitful in other ways: 

We shared the Word of God

We visited OLS congregations

We visited South Sudanese refugees in two different settlement camps

The Lord has opened doors for mission work in Africa. What a joy to walk through them. Thank you all for your partnership in the gospel.  What a blessed relationship it is! We appreciate your prayer, encouragement, and financial support as we “work while it is day!” (John 9:4)

Missionaries John Holtz and Howard Mohlke live in Malawi

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

This week’s post is written by Missionary Dan Kroll, the One Africa Team liaison to Nigeria and Cameroon. He recently went back to Cameroon for a regional meeting with pastors from the Lutheran Church of Cameroon, Christ the King Lutheran Church of Nigeria, and All Saints Lutheran Church of Nigeria.

We’ve been pretty busy in Cameroon the past few months.  We were there in October to discuss the Lutheran Church of Cameroon’s ministry plan and consider some of the changes they might want to make in the near future.  There’s a lot of ministry happening there!

Missionary John Holtz also led a workshop on the topic of Dialogue Education, as a part of ongoing professional development courses that One Africa Team offers our mission partners in Africa through the Confessional Lutheran Institute (CLI). The course on Dialogue Education was eye-opening for the local pastors, many of whom had only rarely experienced anything other than learning by rote. In the midst of this workshop, somebody commented, “this changes everything!” 

Last month we went back to Cameroon to walk our partners through a Seminary Consultation, another branch of the CLI. The last few years have changed our partners’ worker training programs drastically. Because of security concerns, WELS professors are currently unable to visit Nigeria and Western Cameroon. Our Nigerian and Cameroonian brothers are the only feet on the ground. They receive support from OAT remotely.

The lack of face-to-face meeting time makes it more urgent than ever that their worker training programs are suitable to meet the needs of their church bodies.  All six Seminary teachers – Edward Obi and Michael Egar from All Saints in Nigeria, Aniedi Udo and Idorenyin Udo from Christ the King in Nigeria as well as Israel Mesue and Gervase Ngalame from Cameroon – were trained in a WELS designed and operated worker training program.  Our mission partners’ worker training programs now reflect a West African designed curriculum, tailor-made to serve people who are uniquely Cameroonians and Nigerian.  We have been talking about handing things over to our brothers for over half a century. Now we are giving them some space to take responsibility.

Starting in September of 2022 our mission partners in Nigeria and Cameroon will be teaching classes they have chosen for themselves, based on their experience and their own needs.  They will be following their own schedule, and they themselves will have determined how to use the funds available to train their men well.  It’s an exciting time for us here.

As we say in West Africa, “God is good…all the time.”  We pray for God’s blessings on these men and those they will train. Until we come back to Cameroon, they will carry the gospel forward.

Missionary Dan Kroll lives in Malawi.

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