**A Multi-Generational Story**

The story of alumna Sophia Thomasson’s mission trip to Cameroon begins not with herself, but with her parents, who met while they were students at Master’s.

“My mom was a new believer when she went to Master’s,” Sophia says. “It was her first time really being exposed to the Word of God and understanding it. And she ended up going on a mission trip led by my dad. That’s where they got to know each other, while serving in Paraguay.”

After they married, they had hopes of going back to the mission field. But when Sophia was born, they decided that, for the time being, it was best to move back up to Northern California, close to Sophia’s grandparents.

Several years later, though, when Sophia was eight, their desire to go overseas returned. Her dad went back to school at The Master’s Seminary, and their hopes began to crystalize into a plan to move to Russia as missionaries. Their family began to study Russian, and Sophia’s dad visited the country to scope out opportunities.

Then the Great Recession hit, and the sudden financial insecurity caused their plans to fall out from under them. The Thomassons would have to stay in the States after all.

“My parents have always wanted to go on the mission field themselves, and the Lord has closed the doors for them. But I think their interest in missions, and their heart for pursuing that, and the way they welcome missionaries, all really impacted my brothers and me when we were young.”

**The Call to Cameroon**

“By high school, I was thinking, ‘What can I do to serve the Lord on the field one day?’” After studying at a community college, she transferred to TMU for focused biblical preparation for the mission field. It was while she was here that she met missionaries Dave and Stacey Hare, who spoke in chapel about their work in Bible translation in Cameroon, Africa. “Getting to hear about Bible translation was new for me, because I had always considered linguistics for teaching, but never for translation.”

“And then, when the Hares shared their testimony, it got me thinking, ‘Lord, this seems like something I’d love to do! Could this be me? Help me figure out what you want me to do.’ So, I ended up going and talking to the Hares and having coffee with them later that week, and asking them a bunch of questions. And they were really helpful in helping me to start think about translation.”

Later, shortly before the start of her senior year, Sophia received a message from Stacey Hare out of the blue: “Would you be interested in being the homeschool teacher for our kids next year?”

“My parents were excited,” Sophia remembers. “They were like, ‘Sophia, this seems like the perfect opportunity for you, with your interest in linguistics and translation.’” So, she pursued the idea. She graduated from Master’s in May 2019, and that August she flew out to Cameroon.

**Life on the Field**

Working to teach the Hare kids every day was delightful and profoundly difficult all at once, especially as the new food and new surroundings left Sophia sick for much of her first weeks in Cameroon. But through Dave and Stacey’s example, this became an opportunity to learn how to serve faithfully in spite of exhaustion.

“It reminded me of what the apostle Paul says about being spent for the sake of the gospel. The Hares were willing to give up their own comfort for the sake of the greater joy of reward in heaven, and of being side by side with these Kwakum believers one day, worshiping the Lord.”

Sophia is also grateful for how her seven months in Cameroon (she originally planned for nine, but the pandemic forced her to come home early) gave her a window into what life looks like in the field long-term, with all of its ups and downs and unexpected complications.

“There were three weekends where the national Bible translation team was discussing how to translate the word ‘sin.’ It was this big debate, and they had to do it in a very careful way to make sure that they maintained a unified group and didn’t turn anyone off of the Word of God, while still trying to accurately translate it.” Sophia says, “I think I got a better grasp on how it’s not as simple as just saying, ‘Let’s translate chapter two of John today!’ It’s a lot more difficult, and it’s much more people-oriented work.”

One of the biggest blessings of the trip was having Rachel Sullivan, Sophia’s friend and college roommate, join her in the field for what ended up being the final weeks of the trip. This gave Sophia the opportunity to learn yet another lesson: how to work as a team under difficult circumstances.

When Rachel first arrived, Sophia was at a low point, drained and discouraged from several difficult circumstances. “I didn’t want to say anything at first,” says Sophia, because Rachel was still in the “honeymoon phase” of being fresh onto the field. But she discovered that when she finally did communicate her discouragement to Rachel, it actually helped tremendously, because they could then work together on planning how to respond.

“After that, we started to feel so unified, and we started getting into a groove of doing things together, for maybe three or four weeks. And then the whole coronavirus thing happened.” Their plans of finishing out the school year with the Hares changed very quickly after that. They had only a few days’ notice before their evacuation flight.

**What Comes Next**

As she is planning for the future, Sophia is more determined than ever to return to the mission field long-term.

“It’s not just that initial, idealistic, romantic excitement about missions on a foreign field that’s driving me anymore. There’s still very much that sense of excitement, and I like adventure, but I think that the desire goes deeper now. It’s a more deeply-rooted and settled conviction that my life is not my own. I saw people live and die over there. And I don’t know how long I’m going to be here, but I want to be an effective servant of the Lord for however many days He has for me to live.”

Sophia is deeply grateful for the opportunities at Master’s to learn about missions, interact with missionaries, and ultimately get connected with this opportunity to serve in Cameroon. She encourages current students to take prayerful advantage of these opportunities, if they are looking to get onto the mission field themselves.

She also encourages students to not be intimidated by how big the project of getting onto the field can seem. In Sophia’s case, it started with a conversation, which led to filling out an application, which led to a Skype call, and so on. The road to the field is made up of many small steps.

Sophia would also like to ask for prayer as she plans her next steps and thinks through whether she should continue her linguistics education or immediately pursue returning to the field. Please also pray that God would continue raising up ministry partners for Sophia and other believers who long to be on the mission field, and that TMU would continue to have the resources to help prepare future missionaries for service to the Lord.