The Alex Steddom International Student Fund Campaign will end September 30. Please pray whether you are called to support this ministry.
Dear partners for the gospel,
I write with a heart overflowing with gratitude for your generous support in the name of Christ and the spread of his gospel. The Alex Steddom International Student Scholarship, which you have so generously contributed to, has not only served many who are now serving among the nations, but it has also deeply impacted my own journey. I was one of the fortunate recipients of your generosity, and now I am able to give myself for the joy and progress of the faith of my fellow Cameroonians and Africans who have not had the privilege that I had to study overseas. I write to express my deep gratitude for all your generosity.
While I thank God as I look back to how he has used your generosity, I also look to the future with great hope and joy because of how God might use your partnership to equip gospel ministers. The recent shift in the scholarship to supporting students here in Cameroon and possibly India gave me a lot of joy. Joy because this shift means that my poor, struggling African brothers may now be able to work and earn while preparing for ministry. Jobs are tough to come by in our city, and the World Bank has predicted that if nothing changes in Cameroon, 25% of the country will live in abject poverty by 2026. With this bleak economic future, our hope is in our God, who has shown through you that he can meet every need as we walk the path of love and the lavish spreading of his gospel. Your generosity has not been in vain.
We have seen several men move from the prosperity gospel to the true gospel. In our annual expositional preaching workshop for preachers, many have confessed to seeing for the first time that they were wrong and now are committed to learning and preaching rightly. One dear brother three weeks ago shared with me that after our last expositional preaching workshop, he went back and burned all of the books that he had by prosperity preachers, and now is committed to preaching every text in its proper context and pointing to Jesus as the center of God’s revelation.
This brother and many others were at our pastors’ conference as well. At this conference, which was held early this month, several pastors were confronted with the truth, and many left eager to learn more. Several of the pastors came to me at the end of the conference asking me to study at Bethlehem Seminary to learn to read and interpret God’s word rightly, live it, and preach it. Just last night, a man in the prosperity gospel stream was in my office with tears, pleading to be granted a chance to study in our seminary because he wants to know the truth.
There are more stories I could share, but I will leave it at these and ask you to pray for us and continue to give as God provides for you. We are facing some very, very difficult and heart-breaking challenges, and your prayers and support are crucial. Join us in praying so that we may give our God many thanks when he works for his praise and our utmost pleasure in him.
Sorrowful yet always rejoicing,
Dieudonné Tamfu, Ph.D.
Director of the Cameroon Extension Site &
Assistant Professor of Bible and Theology