The Folkers Family
Missionaries to Cameroon, Central Africa
Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
We are Seth and Kaitlin Folkers, missionaries to Cameroon, Central Africa, since 2017. Our children are Atarah, Benaiah, Christy and Céleste—all born in Cameroon.
Our ministry focus is to train and equip faithful men, and assist them in the work of evangelism, church-planting and discipleship among their people. The Lord has also led us to begin a Bible translation project into Cameroonian Pidgin.
Our Testimonies
Seth
I was raised in a godly home from birth, and came to faith in Christ as a child. The Lord brought me to a place of surrender to His will at 13 years old, and I distinctly sensed His call to foreign missions. After high school graduation I spent several years working with my Pastor, Ken Schultz, at Emmanuel Baptist in Box Elder, SD. I did my Bible training through Pioneer Bible Institute, a school founded by my grandfather for training pastors and other church leaders in the West. During that time I also worked at a boys’ home in SE Missouri. In further preparation for missionary service, the Lord led me to the seminary at Baptist College of Ministry, where I graduated with an M.A. in Bible in 2016. I received my M. Div. through the same seminary in 2020.
Kaitlin
Growing up, my family was Catholic. It was more than a religion—really a culture that had gone back many generations. Even so, I had much curiosity and hunger to know more about God, Jesus, Mary…I remember praying, trying to do better, but never fully knowing the depth of why I was doing what I was doing. Compounding difficulties in our lives created a greater hunger and pushed my Dad towards searching for Truth.
When I was 10, a couple of men from the small Baptist church in town came to our house on door-to-door visitation. It was during that visit that I first heard the Gospel. The word “salvation” burned in my mind. I had never heard that word before. So many questions I’d had started to be answered. We went to their Wednesday evening service, where I again heard the Gospel. I finally understood that the death and sacrifice of Christ was for me and my sin debt, that I felt already as a little girl. I received God’s gift that night along with my father. Through the following years, the rest of my family also received Christ. God began a change in our lives that night, and set us on a path to a growing personal relationship with Him.
Through my teenage years, the Lord deepened the burden in my heart for missions. At about 14, I surrendered my life to “wholly follow the Lord” as a missionary in whatsoever field He might call me to. After high school, I had several opportunities to minister in Ghana, West Africa as a missionary, until the Lord led my husband and I back together in 2016, when we were married. Together we have been seeking to fulfill His purpose for us as missionaries in Cameroon, Central Africa.
Our Marriage
Seth’s perspective: We met at Kaitlin’s home church not many years after her salvation, and I was immediately smit-ten by her beautiful smile and impressed with her character. The Lord gave further opportunity to be around her family when I filled in for her pastor for a couple of months the following year. Although I was convinced that she was the one, and I had the blessing of our parents and pastors, it was necessary to wait and pray for several years before revealing my interest to her. The unforgettable day finally came when I heard from her pastor that she had agreed to begin writing to me!
However, a few months later circum-stances arose that required us to end our relationship, with no human hope that it would ever revive. Through my years at seminary I tried to move on, but I always knew that Kaitlin was my heart’s desire… so I kept praying about her.
“The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it.”
—Proverbs 10:22
She herself had raised support and gone as a missionary to Ghana, where she expected to spend the rest of her life. Then, just before my final year at seminary, some tragic events on the mission field forced her to return to the US—and, at the same time, opened the door to a renewal of our relationship. Prayerfully, I began to pursue her once again, and discovered that the Lord had kept me in her heart as well. I flew out to see her and her family, we began communicating, and the Lord con-firmed to both of us that marriage was His will. After ten years of waiting, we were joyfully united on October 7, 2016!
Since then, the Lord has blessed us with four children, all born in Cameroon. I am very grateful for the prudent and virtuous wife the Lord gave to me. It is a privilege to be “heirs together of the grace of life,” laboring together in the work to which God has called us.
Our Ministry in Cameroon
Shortly after our marriage in 2016, my wife and I began deputation to go to Cameroon for one year. We had the privilege of joining with a wonderful, like-minded team of missionaries that the Holy Spirit had brought together in the English-speaking regions of that country, building upon the foundation that they had laid. Our primary focus was holding two-week Bible classes in strategic villages in areas where multiple churches had recently been planted, teaching and mentoring the national leaders. We enjoyed this work immensely, and the Lord gave us many mentorship opportunities, including welcoming a couple of promising young men into our home for a few months. By the time the year was finished, God had knit our hearts with the other missionaries and the national believers, and we were convinced He would have us to continue in Cameroon.
However, a growing conflict between English-speaking separatists and the government forces gradually intensified to the point where our whole team of missionaries had to leave those regions. We felt the Lord leading us to learn French (8 out of 10 regions of Cameroon are officially French-speaking), and in 2019 we relocated to the capital city of Yaoundé for that purpose. During our time there, we became deeply burdened by the dearth of Bible-believing and -practicing churches. Syncretistic combinations of traditional pagan practices with Catholicism and Charismaticism abound, but there is little biblical Christianity. There is also a large Muslim presence in the city, with Muslims comprising around 30% of the population of Cameroon. We began gathering a small group of believers in our home on Sundays. This group eventually formed into Biblical Baptist Church of Yaoundé, which was officially constituted in 2020.
Throughout our language-learning time in Yaoundé, I had taught several modular classes in a Bible Institute run by a fellow-missionary in another city. As several of his students graduated and his ministry shifted, we felt the Lord leading us to begin a Bible Institute to take its place. Although the program would include plenty of class time and study, we wanted to emphasize mentorship and practical Christian training, just as we believed Paul would have done with Timothy. The Lord provided us an ideal house in a rapidly-developing quarter on the edge of Yaoundé—a place that could serve as our home, as well as housing the Bible Institute students and our new church plant. He also brought us nine fine young men from the English-speaking regions who had the desire to train for the ministry. Timothy Bible Institute was launched in February of 2021.
The ministry which the Lord graciously entrusted to us during the next three years was exceedingly rewarding, as we built relationships with these young men and sought to develop them into faithful, effective servants of the Lord. The classes emphasized direct, personal Bible study and a solid understanding of Bible doctrines and our spiritual heritage. We sought to instill consistent devotional habits and personal discipline. We worked together to plant churches in Yaoundé, and they were sent out in teams to other villages. Most also received three years of training in Biblical Greek, with a view towards Bible translation. Other missionaries and national pastors assisted us through the years, contributing immensely to the development of these young men. In January of 2024, eight of the nine students graduated and went out into ministry.
Our graduates are now serving the Lord in four regions of Cameroon:
- Three are pastors of local churches
- One is a full-time evangelist
- One is helping a national pastor
- Another is assisting small, pastorless churches and has a home for young men
- One is furthering his education at West Africa Baptist College in Ghana
- And another stays very busy as manager of the recording studio for Camp Joy Revival Radio, director of the Cameroon Bible Quizzing Association, and with his own YouTube channel
During the last three years Biblical Baptist Church has grown into a bilingual church comprised of both English and French speakers. It is cur-rently being pastored by one of our graduates. Just before our departure, the Lord marvelously provided a piece of land for the church, and construction of a building is now in progress.
Through one of our first converts, the Lord also helped us to start Faith Baptist of Medima in a distant little farming village without an existing church of any kind. In addition, church-plant efforts are ongoing in other parts of Yaoundé, which we trust will ripen into future churches in this city of almost 5,000,000 souls!
Our Bible Translation Project
Used by permission, © SIL International, Language Clusters of Cameroon, 2002, further redistribution prohibited without permission.
With over 270 recognized, distinct languages, Cameroon has the second highest number of languages per capita in the world. Because of this linguistic diversity, most communication takes place through the official languages of French and English, and trade languages like Fulfulde and Cameroonian Pidgin. Although mostly derived from English, Cameroonian Pidgin has developed its own unique grammatical structure and vocabulary. It is spoken from earliest childhood by nearly all English-speakers and many Francophones, with an estimated 10-15 million native speakers. Many of these people struggle to read and understand English, or cannot even read at all.
The need for a Pidgin Bible translation based on the TR, using a formal equivalent translation methodology, led us to take up the task of a NT translation in 2024. Working together with six of our graduates—all native speakers and trained in biblical Greek—we have finished the first draft of Mark, and it is already being used in some places. We hope to complete the project in about five years. Although printed copies will be useful, we believe an audio version may be even more helpful in order to make the Word of God available to the many illiterate Pidgin-speakers.
In conjunction with this project, two of our graduates are also translating the Scriptures for the first time into their own tribal languages: Ugare and Meghankah.
Future Ministry Plans
Lord willing, we plan to return to Cameroon for another term by late 2025. We remain burdened to see more churches established in Yaoundé, but we are still praying about where we should base. Several of our main goals for the next term include:
- Nearing completion of the NT Pidgin translation (including its publication in written and audio formats)
- Working together with national church-planters to see more churches started in Yaoundé and throughout the country
- Preparing for the launch of a French Bible Institute
- Continuing to host regular fellowship meetings and seminars, for the purpose of uniting, encouraging and edifying like-minded brethren towards the fulfillment of every part of the Great Commission
Truly, the Lord has sent us to reap where we had not sown, as we have entered into the labors of the missionaries who have gone before us. Their sacrifices and faithful labors have produced a ready harvest, and there is great need of laborers to reap it! We trust that the Lord will give us grace to continue reaping that harvest, as well as sowing seeds for future generations to reap until the Lord’s return.
Thank you for your part in this ministry!
Because of the Lord that is faithful,
The Folkers Family