Dear friends of KumboKids and Community,

I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Dave and Ann Norckauer for hosting the annual Spaghetti Dinner, which raises funds for KumboKids and the Community. This year, seventy people attended the Spaghetti Dinner on Saturday, March 29, 2025. While reflecting on the significance of the number 70, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your love, your dedication, generosity, and missionary spirit. You have exhibited these qualities through your coming together to support the mission of KumboKids and Community: “to ensure access to education for kids in the Diocese of Kumbo…

Every academic year, we inventory students who have not received some of the Sacraments of Christian Initiation and ensure that we adequately prepare them for these Sacraments. Some come here when they have not even received the Sacrament of Baptism. Since this is a minor seminary that prepares Catholic boys for the Diocesan priesthood, all who come here must be in good standing concerning the Sacraments and must have the initial intention of becoming diocesan priests, even if they change their minds…

Dear friends of KumboKids and Community,

On October 4, 2024, I received a text on my mobile phone from a non-registered contact and an unknown person. The message was written in horrible, pidgin English, which took me time to understand. The person accused me of rejoicing when they got killed. I had to figure out that it came from a member of one of the rebel groups of the Anglophone Crisis. I shared the information with the bishop and with some priests. Then, I blocked the number.

On January 10, 2025, the person started texting me again. He went from one accusation to another…

Dear friends of KumboKids and Community, once more, happy and prosperous New Year 2025. The year 2024 is now history, and all that happened, good or bad, could be stepping stones to more incredible things. I wish everyone a fantastic year in 2025 and pray that we should all upgrade all that made us happy in 2024 and try to eliminate anything that would make us unhappy. The Holy Father, Pope Francis, has declared 2025 as the Jubilee Year of Hope. According to the Church, Christian hope is “the theological virtue by which we desire the Kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness…

On Saturday, December 14, 2024, we had the Christmas party for SAMS, Kitiwum. Since the school is closed for the Christmas break on Wednesday, December 18, 2024, we decided we should celebrate Christmas or have the feel of Christmas as a SAMS Community before dispersing to our various destinations to meet family members. The other event was finishing the New Saint Martin de Porres Catholic Church roofing in Nkanchi village at 2:00 p.m.  How would I be present for these celebrations on the same day and at different locations so far apart? 

I lack the adequate vocabulary to report on the progress made on the New Saint Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Nkanchi village. The schedule shows that the roofing will be completed by next week. The carpenters are doing a marvelous job. Looking at how far we have gone, I can only render my immense and sincere gratitude to you and ask God to give you your heart’s desires, especially at Christmas.

After the roofing, a lot will still need to be done: the ceiling, the plastering, the painting, the pews, the windows, the doors, the surroundings, the acquisition of different statues, and the church bell. We will still need about $150,000 to complete the work on the Church.

A critical goal for KumboKids and the Community is to help children have equal access to education. The upsurge of the Cameroon Anglophone socio-political crisis has put many things at bay, but children's education has suffered the most tremendous blow since the rebels stopped public schools from operating in Anglophone Cameroon. We are thankful that the Catholic Church, through the help of the bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda, succeeded, through serious negotiations, in keeping Catholic schools functioning, although under serious difficulties of insecurity, lack of freedom of movement, kidnapping and asking for ransom, roadblocks, and killings. We are thankful to God that we can keep our schools running amidst these mishaps. Thus, due to the hardships brought by the crisis, many students cannot afford basic school needs like pens, pencils, rulers, and notebooks and cannot pay tuition and fees.

This past year we made some improvements to help the students. I reported earlier this year that we refurbished the chairs on campus. I discovered that some iron and plywood chairs had been abandoned in one part of Fr. Wankuy’s Hostel for years. The phrase “Old-New” expresses the fact that the old chairs that were abandoned have now become new chairs.

The students carried chairs around when they moved from one activity to another. On Saturday evenings, they would bring their classroom chairs to the hall during recreation. This frequent carrying of chairs around led to the destruction of some of the chairs. Thus, I decided to fix the abandoned chairs. Initially, their seat covers were made of plywood. When the plywood got terrible, the chairs were packed and kept in one of the dormitories. I looked for a welder, and work began on August 3, 2023…

When I was growing up in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was rare to see a bishop—the then bishop of Bamenda who became the Archbishop of Bamenda, Mgr. Paul Verdzekov (RIP) used to come on a pastoral visit to Nkanchi once in three years. The type of huge, joyful welcome accorded the bishop was what I saw on Thursday, November 21, 2024, when the corrugated sheets (the “zinc”) for the roofing of the New Saint Martin de Porres Catholic Church, Nkanchi, were brought. Immediately, once they heard the truck; men, women, young boys and girls, and children came out in great numbers to celebrate in song and dance, prayers and meditation, the arrival of the material that would give a complete roof over the new church…

In the Diocese of Kumbo and SAMS, the celebration of the Solemnity of All Saints begins on the eve, that is, on October 31. However, when this Solemnity occurs on a Weekday, it is transferred to the Sunday closer to November 1. This year, the bishop wrote a letter postponing the Solemnity to Sunday, November 3, 2024, and the closer Sunday to Friday, November 1, 2024. This transfer enables many people to join in the celebration and give a prominent place to the saints who intercede for us day and night…

The Rector’s Cup (also known as the Marguerite Bourgeoys’ Competition) for the 2024/2025 academic year here at SAMS, Kitiwum began on Sunday, October 20, 2024. The sports master, Rev. Fr. Keman Desmus, divided the students and teachers into five teams, each given a name from the European Champion League: FC Barcelona (Spiritual Director’s team), FC Dortmund, Manchester City (Rev. Ronald’s team), Real Madrid (Fr. Mbinkar’s team), and FC Bayern Munich…

In October 2018, one of my University of Dayton teachers, Dr. Gloria Dodd, connected me with Fr. James Manning, the then Pastor of Saint Mary of the Assumption Parish in Springboro, Ohio. Fr. Jim became not just a mentor to me but a great priest friend with a kind and generous heart. One of the reasons for the success of KumboKids and Community is Fr. Jim and his generous Parishioners. In addition to helping me, he encouraged his parishioners to reach out to me. Fr. Jim had the...

Amidst the commotion following the announcement by the rebels about a two-week lockdown beginning from September 9 to September 23, 2024, I rushed to Nkanchi on Friday, September 6, 2024, to see the progress on the Church and to greet my family and the rest of the people before returning to the school in Kitiwum for lockdown. The carpenters have finished working on the rafters and are working on reinforcing the rafters with the irons. They were also working on the fascia...

On Thursday, August 29, 2024, the school reopened for the academic Year 2024/2025. On this first day, we recorded 150 students on campus - the highest number of students ever to turn out on day one of reopening since 2021. To prepare adequately for the academic year, they began with the annual retreat on Sunday, September 1, 2024. The retreat is to help them channel their joys and sorrows to God and ask for his guidance and protection, especially during this time of conflict in west Cameroon...

Since last school year, we began fixing the iron chairs that were packed in one room. We saw that fixing them will enable us to distribute enough chairs to various places: the classrooms, the refectory, the library, the computer laboratory, the science laboratory, and the library hall where the students recreate. Instead of moving chairs around every now and then, there will be no need for that and the chairs can last longer. Last week the workers completed many of the chairs in anticipation of the new school year...

Dear friends, today we celebrate the Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This memorial was first instituted by Pope Pius XII in 1954. The Catholic Church teaches that “as Christ is King of the world and saves the people from their sins, Mary is queen over the earth because of her role in the story of divine redemption, serving as mother to the Savior.”  The fifth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary speaks of the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This means that Mary is crowned Queen of heaven and earth...

Dear friends,

I have been in the United States for a visit and I'm about to go back home to Cameroon. I am overwhelmed with the outpouring of hospitality, love, and generosity from all of you. Your faith is put into practice as an amazing witness to Christ and his Church.

Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been helping me push forward the mission of KumboKids and Community. I thank of all my supporters from Maryland, the Cameroonian communities in Burtonsville, MD, Virginia, and Baltimore, the Laue family…

Construction on the new Saint Martin De Porres Church in Nkanchi Village has begun! We began the work toward the roofing of the Church by, first, getting a carpenter to estimate the cost. We hired Mr. Yufenyuy Bertrand Setinyuy to be the main carpenter. We then bought trees in the forest and paid a sawyer to saw the planks into varied sizes as indicated by him. We bought poles to use for the scaffolding and on June 24, 2024, the scaffolding work began…

Dear friends, for those of you who are already supporting KumboKids and Community, you already know my story. I am Diocesan priest for the Diocese of Kumbo, in Cameroon, Central West Africa. Read my story here: https://www.kumbokids.org/my-story.

My humble beginnings, the difficulties I went through trying to get an education, and the fact that God, through many people, helped me to become …

Dear friends, the scaffolding is up at the new Saint Martin de Porres Church in Nkanchi Village! After the completion of the church building to the roof level, it took us a while to furnish the supply of the wood needed for the roofing. The rainy season was intense, making transporting materials impossible. And the rebels blocked the roads and forbade movement and circulation of vehicles for over three months…