Greetings from Cameroon

This morning, we are preparing to leave Cameroon and fly to Lagos, Nigeria and then onto Enugu, Nigeria, where we will spend a week training a group of church leaders.

This past week in Cameroon, we faced a couple of new challenges and were compelled to change our process. The biggest challenge that we faced was that the leaders in the training were only French speakers. This meant that everything needed to be translated. The second challenge is that we had was caused by the first one…we did not have any handouts or other materials that they could read. The third challenge was that we had two groups of leaders that wanted to receive our training.

To address these challenges, it forced us to alter our normal training plan. We ended up training one group of 27 leaders from 9 am to 1 pm from Monday-Friday. In the afternoons, we would train a second group of 24 leaders from 4 pm to 8 pm. We also did not conduct any teach-back sessions. We were able to present the material and spend an entire day (four hour session) reviewing each of the various topics to make sure that they understood the key points and answering any questions that they may have had. In addition, we made arrangements with our hosts, after we have been able to translate our material into French, to come back and get the leaders organized in coaching groups and conduct several days of teach-back sessions.

Overall, the training went well and both groups of leaders were hungry for the message of serving leadership and are eager to take it back to their churches and their communities.

It has been very hot and humid here in Cameroon. Temps have been in the mid-80’s everyday and with the heat index in the mid-90’s. It has rained nearly every day. There were a couple of days where we had some really severe thunderstorms. One night we spent the entire night without power, lights, or water. Fortunately, the hotel staff brought us candles for our rooms.

Well, that’s my report from Cameroon. I also will post a couple of pictures. Thanks for your prayers. I hope to be able to update you daily on what we are doing in Nigeria this next week.

Blessings!

Fred