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.

In 1950 the Sudan Mission petitioned the Board of Foreign Missions (BFM) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELC) to take over its staff and field. Gunderson died in 1951 before this petition had been approved. Rolf A. Syrdal, executive secretary of the BFM of the ELC from 1946-1960 and the first executive director of the Division of World Missions of The American Lutheran Church (TALC), then took over the task of presenting the need to the ELC. The ELC assumed responsibility for the field in 1952. The Sudan Mission also worked cooperatively in several areas with the Norwegian Missionary Society, which had established Cameroun work in N'gaoundéré in 1925.

In 1960, when the ELC became a part of the newly formed TALC, the work in Cameroun was placed under the Division of World Missions (see TALC 16/7/2/1 and 16/7/2/2).

From the description of Correspondence, Program Files 1904-1963. (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Library). WorldCat record id: 48086344