Seventh-day Adventist Church Pastor Celestin Rakotoarisoa Herimanana, 44, was killed May 4 in a bus crash while returning to Douala from Yaounde, the nation’s capital. He is survived by his wife and two young sons.

Pastor Herimanana, a native of Madagascar and a missionary to Cameroon, was president of the church in West Cameroon. He was one of the first graduates of the Adventist University of Central Africa in Rwanda, and after pastoring churches in Madagascar and serving as local church president there, came to the West Cameroon region in 2001. During the past four years, his work led to the region qualifying for “conference” status within the Adventist Church, and, colleagues say, was a beloved minister in the area.

Administrators in the church’s West Africa region had planned to elect Herimanana as president of the church in Chad on May 6, meaning a new assignment for the veteran worker.

Herimanana had gone to Yaounde, a three-hour, 155-mile (250 km) bus trip, on May 4 to pick up a long-awaited visa for travel to St. Louis, Missouri, United States, to attend the 58th world business session of the Adventist Church in June. According to reports, the bus crashed while trying to avoid an oncoming truck.

There are more than 100,000 Adventist church members worshipping weekly in Cameroon. The Adventist Church has been active in the nation since 1926.