Gateway Teams

NAB Youth gave towards the purchase of this motorcycle for the Ndu Field Youth Pastor back in 2003.


Youth Leaders that attended the Ndu seminar.

Nick Reyes teaching on the 'Building' section of our seminar.

No, it's not Greg Jennings but Richard Apongde, one of our trainers who has become a recent Packer fan! (Just kidding, but he did like the shirt! Especially in Ndu's cool 7500 ft. altitude!)

The group of CBC Youth Leaders attending our seminar in hot and sticky Mutengene, close to the coast.

Hello friends from Bamenda, Cameroon in West Africa!

As some of you know, I (Randy) am here with Youth Pastor Nick Reyes from Fontana, CA working together with youth leaders of the Cameroon Baptist Convention for the past 2 weeks. We completed the 3rd of our 3 discipleship seminars for youth leaders here using material from J-Life Africa on the Strategy of Jesus (as well as a follow-up seminar entitled 'Foundations'). Thank you for your prayers!

The training that we've been doing is a part of a partnership between North American Baptist (NAB) Youth and Leaders and the Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) Youth and Leaders that has been going on for the past 5-6 years. I led the first training team of 6 youth leaders here back in 2007 and this current mission is the follow-up to that. From this point, the training of lay youth leaders in about 800 CBC churches here will be done by the Cameroonians. As a matter of fact, although just Nick and I traveled out here, we actually were a team of 5 as Tah Martin, Daniel Wango and Richard Apongde, who are all a part of the CBC youth leadership, joined forces with us as one training team.

We started in Mutengene, close to the Atlantic coast and about an hour from the Douala airport, moved on to Bamenda about 5 hours inland, and then went 5 more hours further inland to the village of Ndu, close to the Nigerian border. All together, close to 300 youth leaders were in attendance with over 135 attending at Ndu on June 25-26. (back in 2007 we had about 150 youth leaders in 4 different locations) The response was exceptional and our team was very encouraged as these youth leaders traveled, some over great distance to be a part of these seminars. Examples: at Ndu, some youth leaders walked on foot 8 hours to come; one man, Pastor Genesis, was in a car that he hired along with some others to come that rolled over a number of times, he ended up climbing out and helping the others and still made it to the seminar.

But what impressed us the most about the attenders here was their commitment to God and their knowledge of the Scriptures. They asked very good questions, knew the Scripture references they quoted and showed an incredible love for youth and the desire to see them grow spiritually.

We also have had our share of adventure as many of the roads here are unpaved with many dips, holes (potholes would be way too mild of a term) and slick mud because we're in the middle of rainy season. As a matter of fact, as we were coming back from Ndu to Bamenda on Friday, our car slid off of the road and it took the 5 of us with the help of 4 other persons to actually lift the car out of it's prone position, ready to fall 4 feet down into a ditch, back onto a part of the road that was a little more stable; and all of this in slick mud and rain.

But we thank God for this time, for commited youth leaders and CBC youth leadership to pass this training onto and for the opportunity to share in ministry together with these committed followers of Jesus. And...we thank you for praying! Please don't stop! Nick and I will be traveling back to the coast tomorrow and then our flight will leave on July 1 late at night taking us to 2 stops in Europe before we finally end up back in Milwaukee late on July 2. Nick especially needs your prayers as he deals with excrusiating back pain that the rough trip back from Ndu revived, the result of a car accident he had some years ago. It hasn't been easy for him since we returned here to Bamenda last Friday and we have a lot of miles/kilometers to cover in the next few days.

Thanks again for your prayers and interest! If you'd like more details, please send us an email and let Shelly or I know.

In His Grip,

Randy