Summer is the season during which we plead for God’s help and yours in replenishing funds on hand to support The Alex Steddom International Student Fund. These funds are used to support the tuition and extraordinary living expenses for select seminarians who have come from theologically famished regions of the world and who desire to return to the nations.
We hope you’ll agree that the forthcoming testimonies and updates more than justify your continued confidence in this program—especially news of the march of the Gospel in Cameroon. We are also praying that this report will stir you to a new expression of God-honoring generosity toward the fund.
TWO DECADES OF PRAYER AND PREPARATION ARE BEARING FRUIT IN CAMEROON
The aim of The Alex Steddom International Student Fund is to identify gifted pastors, preachers, and teachers among largely unreached and unengaged people groups, and bring them to Bethlehem Seminary for graduate-level theological education such that the Lord may dispatch them back to their homelands or elsewhere in the theologically famished world.
God has shown his favor to this initiative in manifold ways, not the least of which has been in already raising up men from Myanmar, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and El Salvador to benefit from this program.
But nowhere in the world has the promise of The Alex Steddom International Fund come to fuller blossom than in the West African nation of Cameroon from which the fund’s first grantee was recruited, degreed, and sent back to plant a thriving, Bible-preaching church, establish an extension site of Bethlehem Seminary, and shepherd five seminarians to graduation, locally.
We pray this profile, and that of the other current Steddom Grantee will justify the confidence you have reposed in the program and stir you to new expressions of generosity toward this work.
“I sense the Lord calling me to serve the church in the academy through teaching, research, writing and apologetics. God used the Master of Divinity program to grow my love for biblical languages and an in-depth study of his word. I believe the Th.M. will grow my understanding of the languages and further equip me to serve in the ministry of writing, teaching, research. I would love to pursue the Th.M. at Bethlehem Seminary because my time in the M.Div. has shown me that the faculty at Bethlehem care for both the head and the heart of the student. I never want my head to grow bigger than my heart.”
Daniel Yuh
M.Div. ’23, Bethlehem Seminary, Yaoundé, has been named the 2024 grantee of The Alex Steddom International Student Fund.
“My wife Ajenie, Noah my son, and I are counting few days until we leave Cameroon for Minnesota. I have completed my M.Div. program at Bethlehem Yaoundé. Presently, I am looking forward to pursuing a one-year Th.M. in Minnesota thanks to the Alex Steddom Scholarship! I am coming to Minnesota to be equipped for ministry in the church back in Cameroon. For the moment I assist in leading worship at Église Baptiste Bethléem Yaoundé. I love the biblical languages, preaching in a local church, and leading worship. Lord willing when I come back to Cameroon after my studies, I would be happy to engage full-time in leading worship and teaching the biblical languages at Bethlehem Yaoundé.”
Elison Tango
M.Div. ’23, Bethlehem Seminary, Yaoundé, hopes to complete Master of Theology studies as a grantee of The Alex Steddom International Student Fund in Minneapolis this year, before returning to Cameroon.
THE ALEX STEDDOM INTERNATIONAL STUDENT FUND AT WORK
