Evangelical Lutheran Church. Board of Foreign Missions.

The work in Cameroun was begun as an independent work known as the Sudan Mission. Aldolphus E. Gunderson (Although historians such as E. Theodore Bachmann have spelled the name Gundersen and used the initial L, Gunderson himself signed his letters A.E. Gunderson), a Norwegian-American layman who had served with the Sudan Interior Mission in Nigeria from 1912-1916, went before his church board (The records do not indicate which church Gunderson approached. It was probably the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church, but that is not stated) in 1917 to plead that work be opened in Cameroun. The church declined. Gunderson then established an independent Sudan Mission Committee to help support the work and to present it to possible supporters.

After preparing for the ministry and completing two years of language study in France, Gunderson, along with his new wife, Marie, and two deaconesses, Sister Anna Olsen and Sister Olette Berntsen, reached Cameroun in 1923. They went first to N'gaoundéré finding building materials scarce there, soon moved to Mboula and established the Sudan Mission among the Gbaya tribe.

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