Category Archives: Missiology

Transition, again/still

Church, Family, Holidays, Missiology, Thoughts, Travels, , , ,
Joel applying for his first job, on an ipad, during a sunbreak

We’re behind on getting news out, but we’re starting a furlough/home assignment year. Part of the news issue is that we’re much in need of rest. So if you haven’t heard from us, please don’t take it personally; most haven’t.

So we’re trying to get some rest, but can’t seem to stop moving around. We’re currently in Orlando, FL for meetings, and heading for a couple days at the beach. The current schedule has us starting to set up our furlough house in August (thanks for those already working in this!!). 😂

Joel stayed behind in Washington, starting work at a Christian camp today until he starts at LeTourneau University. It was surreal going through the application form with him, filling out form after form, most of which I’d seen before but only in paper, the whole process on an iPad… So we hung out outside the main office while he filled it out, and got to participate in a sunbreak. 😉 After growing up in the tropics, he has only seen jokes about sunbreaks…

Applying for jobs has changed. Lots has changed in the US since we spent more than a couple weeks here. We’re planning on occupying our house in Fort Worth to minimize transition stress, but things won’t be the same. We’ve heard of lots of changes in the church and wider culture since we left in 2019 (remember, before COVID?). Yes. We left BEFORE COVID. It will be interesting re-adapting to what’s going on now. If you see us acting weird, please be gracious with us as we figure this out.

I’m other news, I ran into a couple from Togo yesterday, and had fun chatting with them (in French) with no problem. 😉

Celebrating Our First Rule of Tone Writing

Cameroon Culture, Linguistics, Missiology, Travels, ,

We took this photo at the end of the day today, to celebrate our first tone rule, resulting in our first rule about how to write tone in this language!

It took us awhile to get there together, but I think it was worth it. We found eight different tone melodies in nouns of form CVCVC (where C is a consonant and V is a vowel). In isolation, each of the melodies falls in the second syllable. The same thing happens when you put a high tone or a low tone before the word.

But when you put either a high or low tone after the word, none of them fall anymore. This happens if you’re adding one or two syllables.

The short version is that the last syllable of the phrase falls. So it looks like the words have a falling tone in isolation, but that’s just because they end the phrase. The same thing with the possessive pronouns (high and low after the noun); they fall because they end the phrase, not (necessarily) because something in those words makes them fall.

So people will certainly be tempted to write this fall, as it is easy to hear. But as it is clearly attached to the phrase (rather than any of these words), it shouldn’t need to be written, except perhaps with a period.

For this interested in what “phrase” means here, so am I.😅 This may be an utterance, a phonological phrase, or a syntactic unit. We’ll need to investigate some longer utterances to find out.

Using the Scriptures in a Digital Age

Cameroon Culture, Church, Linguistics, Missiology,

As we think about Bible translation, and how to facilitate the impact of the scriptures in the worldwide church, it’s interesting to consider the impact of recent technology. Many Americans show up to church on Sunday morning without a printed Bible (I have observed). Whatever you think of that, it constitutes a change of culture and practice, which is driven (at least) my the fact that you can store a whole, searchable Bible in no more space or weight than you already carry with your phone.

How does this impact the worldwide church? Others noted at least a decade ago that in Africa, cellular technology leapfrogged over land line telephones. That is, while I grew up learning to use a phone that was permanently attached to a wall in our house, many Africans (that I know) have cell phones, never having seen a land line telephone. I have seen cell towers in the rainforest in DR Congo, where no one would ever consider laying down wires for telephones.

In a similar way, I know people here with access to the scriptures on an Android app (as in the above picture, from church this morning), but this week I saw my first print new testament in this language –in my third workshop with this group! They are working on the old testament, having had the new testament since 1988 (if I have my facts correct; this at least sounds right).

So are people printing Bibles? And are they buying and selling them? Why would they, when installing an app on the phone they already have costs so much less in money, volume and weight? I’m not saying this is the best for the long term health of the church, but it is certainly a reality that we must consider –people may be leapfrogging over the printed scriptures, to access them digitally without ever having used them in print.

The pic above is obscure, because it was taken inside the church. For those interested in seeing more of my friend Paul, here’s another picture taken outside:

If you’re wondering why I’m working in a language that already has a new testament, this is one of a number of languages which was found to have problems with the writing system. Tone studies have come a long way since this work was done (50+yrs ago), as have writing system development studies.

So people are hoping we can come up with a way to write tone which will work better for these guys and enable more fluent reading, giving more powerful and effective scriptures.

Which brings us back full circle: how can you think of making changes to the writing system after printing your scriptures? That would be very cost prohibitive –in print. But electronically, you just put in the changes and update the app, and move on…

I personally think there should always be a place for written, printed scriptures, if only to archive them in a format that doesn’t die with electricity –or time. But for many use cases, Android makes a lot of sense, at least in the eyes of many here. So I think it’s wise to consider how to make the most of it.

POSTLOG: after reading the above, Paul informed me that his phone battery died just after I took the above picture –a risk not present in printed Bibles.

Work in Progress

Anthropology, Missiology, Personal, , ,

I saw this building this evening, and we commented on the logic of putting walls on the top storey of a building before the lower ones were done. Then as I thought about it, that’s a bit like what I’m doing with A→Z+T.

The work on tone on words in isolation is basically done, but I’m still getting started on the work for consonants and vowels, which a linguist would normally do first. One reason I did it this way was because tone is much harder for people to get on their own, as compared to consonants and vowels.

But another reason has been creeping around the back of my mind for some time, and I’ve just come to understand it more fully. That is, one can look at the tone of full word forms and ignore (to an extent) how words are composed of meaningful word parts. This can’t really be done with consonants and vowels, as the place in the root is often much more important than the place in the word.

So now in order to implement consonant and vowel analysis, I need to implement root parsing, and account for multiple forms per word (e.g., singular and plural for nouns, imperative and infinitive for verbs).

I’m order to do this, I’ve been digging into the foundation, to make the ~9k lines of code (in the main file) more manageable, so that the building process will be more manageable. Practically, this means converting ad hoc functions I’ve built over time into sensible classes, so things will be more terse, flexible, and easier to fix each problem in just one place, and to build (just once each) functions and objects that can be reused in multiple contexts. So a deep dive into object oriented programming, of that means anything to you. Things have come a long way since BASIC…

So, having the fourth storey more or less livable (people plan to use it in a workshop next March/April), I’m now shoring up the foundation (OOP) so I can build the first storey (root analysis), so I can then build the second and third storeys (consonants and vowels).

Just so you know what my work is like these days, when I’m not actively addressing user issues (as come to me most days), or consulting in linguistics issues. Not exactly building an airplane while flying it, but definitely trying to manage short, mid, and long terms goals all at once.

Perfectionism and the Strife to Enter Rest

Anthropology, Bible, Missiology, , ,

for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Hebrews 4:10‭-‬11 (ESV)

This passage I have long found difficult to understand, and even moreso to apply. But today I heard a sermon addressing rest, and a couple things fell in place.

The preacher said that God didn’t rest because he was tired, but because he was satisfied. I think this is not the only motive here (the example for our good also being there), but I think it is an important point.

For us, then, if we desire to follow His example, then rest should also include satisfaction. But for some of us perfectionists, satisfaction is hard to achieve.

My doctoral coursework beat some of that out of me. I was constantly faced with the choice of trying to work longer on something, in hopes of being satisfied with it later, while acknowledging the cost that work would have, on my family, sleep, and ability to do other things which I also found important. Ultimately I came to say that I simply needed to be satisfied with what I considered B level work. The irony is that I never actually got a B, however much I felt that was the most that my work deserved. So the standards of those judging my work were not the same as the standards I held for myself. In this case, logic dictates that meeting higher standards is in excess, and a bad use of my time and energy.

But I still want things to be without flaw, even on points which are clearly unimportant to everyone around me. So there remains a discipline to be satisfied, to “strive to enter that rest“.

Which brings us to the irony of the passage: “strive to enter that rest” is not something that easily fits into the head. How does one strive to rest? One answer suggests itself by the reason for doing this: “so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience”. That is, not striving to enter rest is disobedience? That doesn’t necessarily help things make sense, except to make clear that the striving and resting is a question of obedience, rather than just putting our work towards our pleasure or ease.

The word obedience leads us to another. While verses 6 and 11 use the word disobedience, chapter 3, verses 18-19 equate disobedience with unbelief:

And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
Hebrews 3:18‭-‬19 (ESV)

Thus not striving to enter rest is not just disobedience, but unbelief. This reminds one of this principle:

For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23b ESV)

Biblical though it be, it would be nice if the above also made sense. I think the connection is that when I insist on using my perfectionist judgement, I’m actually trying to protect myself from failure, and I’m trusting in my own work to do so. Rather, the satisfaction that comes from faith (and thus a right relationship with God) acknowledges that I have already failed so seriously that my works are (and will always be) far insufficient to make up for my failure.

So God’s command to me in these moments is to trust Him and His work in the cross, rather than my standards and my work to meet them. It is an act of faith to set aside my vain attempts at perfection, and to trust rather that I am already OK.

But the act of faith is at the same time an act of striving, because of my need to be freed from slavery to my current set of oppressive expectations, a slavery that I work hard to maintain:

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?… I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
Romans 6:16,19 (ESV)

When we present ourselves to a master other than God, this is sin by definition: idolatry and a lack of faith (however you want to look at it). I think the trick is to understand that we present ourselves to our perfectionist expectations just as much as we present ourselves to drunkenness, adultery, or pornography. We think that adding another law, or higher expectations, must be something else. But when God talks about lawlessness above, he’s not only talking about no law, but about living outside His law.

So, to wrap this all up together, the command is that we say yes to God as an act of faith and no to our inclinations, as an act of striving, without these being two different acts. And this command is sweet, because the act of faith/striving it requires gives me both a right relationship with God and liberation from slavery to my own oppressive expectations.

Indeterminate Culture Shock

Cameroon Culture, Church, Family, Missiology, Texas Culture, Travels, , , , , ,
Back in the land of cheap, yummy avocados.…

I’ve written before about triviality, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about its application to our current times. That is, for missionaries and others working cross-culturally, there is always an element of adjusting to a new environment and culture. This includes how to find your bedroom light switch in the dark (if you’re moving house), but also how to not insult someone on the road, and how to not be insulted by someone else on the road —i.e., knowing when someones behavior should be offensive, and when it is just normal for your new environment.

But the kicker in all the above (and many other things to adjust to) is that knowing the new reality is only the first layer of adjustment. Being able to point to your light switch after thinking for ten seconds is not the same as being able to reach it intuitively —in the dark, and while still mostly asleep, when your brain is not really working yet. This is where the concept of triviality is helpful (to me, anyway!). Normal life has lots of trivial items in it: how to shop, how to make food, how to greet, how to get around town. There is some adjustment when these things change, but the goal is normally to move these things to a place were we just do them, without having to think through them each time/day.

So the twist that hit me this morning, is that whether we’re talking about culture shock, or reverse culture shock (or reverse reverse culture shock…), the transition is normally from one more or less stable environment to another more or less stable environment. The problem is that one house isn’t laid out the same as another house —but they’re both houses, and neither changes much over time. Similarly, moving from one culture/city to another requires adjusting from one status quo to another, but there is a status quo in each place, which doesn’t change much over time. But this is not what we find in 2020.

Rather, this year we have political and medical facts which seem to change on a regular basis. Then the recommendations, orders/laws, and rulings, which change in response to those facts (or not), then the implementation of those recommendations, orders/laws, and rulings on various levels, which must respond to all of the above. So the question “should I wear a mask right now?”, for instance, has been a non-trivial question for months, for many people. Are the CDC and WHO recommending masks right now, or not? What kind of masks, in what situations? What are the relevant recommendations, orders/laws, and rulings of our federal/national government? And of our state? Of our County? Of our City? And perhaps most frustrating of all, how do we respond when the neighboring nation/state/county/city says something different than ours? Or when the state says something that contradicts what the county says? Most of us are simply not accustomed to thinking through all these issues on any kind of regular basis, much less each time it might be appropriate to put on or take off a mask. And masks or not is not the only question (e.g., distancing, quarantine/isolation, and contact reporting), nor are on and off the only answers to that one question (e.g., public/online shaming, rebellion, political advocacy, and non-/violent public protests)

Now, if there were one set of rules imposed (for better or worse), this might just be a matter of adjusting to them, however much time, energy, and libery that takes. But when the info we’re basing a decision on changes every couple days (on some level), we have to re-evaluate, and the decision never has a chance to become trivial –so we continue to spend energy we shouldn’t on menial, daily tasks.

There is, of course one condition where this problem doesn’t apply. Namely, if your allegiance to a particular body medical/political/whatever is significantly strong to trump all others, then you make your decision once, and only change it when that one body changes advice —and hopefully that’s not often. But I have a hard time distinguishing that from bigotry, especially in the current political climate in the US. That is, if your response to the mask question is really just a badge of political affiliation (as I’ve heard from MANY people), then can you still say you’re wearing a mask (or not) because it is the right response to the pandemic?

I read twitter enough to know that for many people, there is only one correct answer to the mask question. But there seems to be a strong correlation between those people and the many who feel there is only one correct answer to the “which party should be in power” question, on both sides. And I, for one, have never felt fully comfortable voting for either party, as neither seems to represent me particularly well. So for me, my conscience dictates that I continue to reevaluate both questions, as new data comes in.

And I know there are many people out there that feel (at least a bit) the same. I’ve heard from many the difficulty of adjusting to constantly changing goal posts. And I think that this idea of having a culture shock (or lack of triviality) that has no real end in sight, is a large part of it. Even in this context, I feel obliged to continue to insist on my right and responsibility, as a human and as a Christian, to think, to use and develop my conscience, and to pray for the Holy Spirit to give guidance, and to follow that guidance even in the face of direction to do otherwise from lesser authorities:

But Peter and John answered [their rulers and elders and scribes, in council], “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

Acts 4:19-20 (ESV)

So where do we go from there? I think the bigotry answer, as flawed as it is, has something to it. That is, in the midst of a storm, hold one to one thing that doesn’t move. But I think we want to be careful to not make our one thing a human or human institution, which will all fail us, sooner or later. Rather, Jesus tells us

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

Matthew 7:24-25 (ESV)

So let us continue to read what Jesus had to say, and try to put it into practice, and let the storm flow around us as it will. Not that I think this will be easy, but I think it’s the only answer that doesn’t result in our eventual destruction.

Opportunities lost, opportunities gained

Anthropology, Cameroon Culture, Missiology, , , ,
Downtown Lolodorf, on my exploratory visit in December

Friday I had officially given up on the idea that I would run a workshop in February. I wrote the committee involved the Friday before, a week after they said they would get back to me with dates. I’m not ruling out working with them in the future (in fact I hope I do!), but it won’t be this month. Because this was the time I had set aside for them, it probably won’t be this fiscal year.

After speaking with the Center of the Christian Life church

Which is sad given the time and energy I put into visiting local churches, and preparing for this work. But I think it is best to move forward on the right footing, so we will wait for now, and trust that God will provide for this work at the right time.

Perhaps ironically, The same day I also had another opportunity fall into my lap. I have been having pain in my lower back, so I’ve been icing it a lot, and wearing a brace if I’m going to do a lot of sitting (as often happens in an office :-)). Often, that means I wear one of my newer shirts that we made since we got here. It is large and long enough to cover the brace comfortably, so it is a good choice, even if a bit more dressy than I would normally go to work. Anyway, today at a group meeting our director scanned the crowd for someone more dressed up to go on a visit to the ministry of primary education, and she asked me.… Definitely the first time in my life I could be said to have won anything like a “best dressed” award.…

Me Dressed Up

This isn’t my first time on an official visit like this;  a few months ago I joined her on a visit to an Indigenous Peoples Day event, and I actually enjoyed several interactions that would not have been possible had I not been there, as a linguist. These events may be more about politics and public relations, but given the amount of linguistics we do, I think it is good to have a linguist around as well, which is why my being there made sense.

This time there was a lot less interaction between myself and the other people at the conference, though I did get to hang out with Cameroonians who work with us.

me, the crowd, and the banner

One reason for this is that this event was put on by a government ministry, so the power distance between me and the guy at the center of the front table (the minister of primary education, a cabinet level position in Cameroon) was much greater. And there were other Cameroon government officials, e.g., SG MINEDUB on the right here:

Which didn’t mean there was no interaction; I got to take pictures like everyone else, and got a selfie with the minister (blue suit):

my selfie with the big wigs

And later, I got to see him visit our table, and get a short spiel about our work and some brochures:

The Minister of Primary Education, flanked by our director and two other Cameroon ministers

Anyway, the theme of the day (mother languages) is important to me, so I think it was a good investment to hang around and see how Cameroon does it.

Writing Systems

Bible, Linguistics, Missiology, , , , , ,

One of the side benefits of the consultant conference I attended in September was that it was in Thailand, where some of our colleagues are based. Specifically, those who work on WeSay, a program I have put to good use in DRCongo, and hope to continue using in Cameroon. The same group also works on non-roman scripts (Writing Systems Technology). Anyway, I got to greet them face to face for the first time, having corresponded with some of them for more than a decade.

One of the highlights of that visit was seeing different font and printing issues they had faced. As I work in writing systems development, this was particularly interesting to me. They work on a different end of the puzzle, though: I work on figuring out what are the consonants, vowels, and tones in a language, and how to represent them well in writing (#FluentReadingMakesPowerfulBibles). This team works on how to take a developed writing system and represent it well in a (unicode!) font for printing.

They have examples of printed Bibles with roman scripts (like our letters, though with additional signs for additional vowels, tone, or other important language features):

Even though this script is based on the same alphabet as English, you can see that there are some potential problems for typesetting it. For instance, in many places there are two distinct marks (diacritics) above a vowel, what we call “stacked diacritics”. For instance, in John 13:26 (the first verse on the page) Jesus’ second word “tônuô̌” has two different marks on the final vowel. I assume the one marks a vowel difference (i.e., “o” and “ô” are not the same vowel —like English “bet” and “bit” aren’t the same vowel), and the other marks a difference of tone (i.e., “o” is not the same tone as “ǒ” —like English “convict” (n) and “convict” (v) don’t have the same stress).

When you put these two together, and you have a potential conflict. In my browser anyway (and maybe in yours) the word “tônuô̌” has two diacritics (from ô and the ǒ) typed more or less on top of each other, rather than the diacritic on ǒ being placed above that on the ô, as it should be (and as in the printed Bible). If you scan through that page, you can see lots of variations of these stacked diacritics, meaning its is important to get this correct for printing.

But they also work with non-roman scripts:

These scripts have their own issues, though I haven’t gotten into them myself, since most African languages I have worked with use roman scripts.

One interesting issue they had to deal with was multiple scripts for the same language. In this example, there was a script of high cultural value, which was not really understood by much of the population. So they wanted to print the valuable script in parallel with the script that people could actually understand:

On some occasions, they have dealt with two (or three) scripts for the same language because it is spoken in multiple countries, and each country as it’s own mandated writing system. Converting checked scripture between these poses its own set of problems.

Here is yet another script:

I don’t remember the details of this one, though the tabs a the top of the page each indicate a problem that needed to be fixed in terms of the printing of the writing system. How one writes is typically very important, both to individuals and people groups, so we want to be able to move past making mistakes if possible —though imagine checking the typesetting on this Bible!

Often the two books that help clarify and preserve a writing system are the Bible and a dictionary, which is why we want to get the work done on the writing system early, before we do a lot of printing of scripture portions. And it is again why I pair my dictionary work with writing system development, so people can see lots of words in writing, and give us feedback on problems with the writing system, whether they are technical or aesthetic.

This hard, technical work in advance is worth it because we want the scriptures to be used, and to speak with power into the hearts of the people who read and hear them read. For this to happen, the writing system needs to be acceptable and valued so people will use it, but also accurately reflect the language, so people can use it fluently. #FluentReadingMakesPowerfulBibles

Established

Family, Missiology, , , , , , ,

We’ve neglected blogging this first month of our arrival in Cameroon. There was so much to be done! Our first two weeks, Kent was frequently in planning meetings before his supervisor left for a year of furlough. Then for about 2 weeks our attention turned to housing. We were initially in a company-owned apartment with rented furniture, dishes, etc. The challenge here was that we have some big eaters in our family and the tiny oven could bake about 6 muffins at a time. The pots they gave us could fit about 2 servings. One meal, I boiled up 4 different things in rotation with the same little pot! The advantages to this apartment were that the kids have friends very nearby and access 24/7 to a playground and soccer field.

We had still preferred to live with a bit more space out in the neighborhood nearby, closer to Cameroonian neighbors. Kent went on several long hikes up and down the hills looking at available homes and apartments with a realtor he met at a local church. The end result was that anything big enough and ready enough for us to live in would be in a high-rise apartment building. We were disappointed because we had really hoped for a garden and yard of our own. In our third week, we learned that this company-owned apartment could be ours long-term. We also had the first few coconuts drop on us, and found that the backyard is already fitted with a raised bed for vegetables. During a recent water shortage, we also discovered that this apartment has some of the best water in the area! It wasn’t exactly what we had dreamed of, but it seems God has chosen this apartment for us – at least at this time.

So we began to discuss what it would take to make this current apartment our home, and began to work toward that. Most of our belongings are still on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and we hope to be ready to receive them in October. We taxied 30 minutes downtown to locate the appliance-row of Indian-owned shops piled high with stoves, fridges and washing machines from Turkey, Italy, China, etc. and began to bargain. After 5 hours of bargaining, the prices were not coming down and we decided to leave. It took another day or two of bargaining before we had prices we could stomach (so expensive!) and Kent brought home a nice big stove we can actually use and a new LG washing machine! We have never owned a washing machine in Africa. I think in Kenya we borrowed one for a while.

Bit by bit we had needed items for cooking and cleaning. Bit by bit we could establish routines our kids are familiar with (like homemade pizzas and movies Friday night and coconut chocolate chip muffins Sunday mornings). A friend heard we had no tea pot and found one she didn’t need that we could use. A colleague heard we were looking for a cast iron pan and she happened to have one. Our HR Director spotted a stainless steel stock pot in the storage unit and grabbed it for us. Kent was given a furnished office and even has an official sign on the door! Pieces.

We have yet to conquer the ordering of furniture. We decided our bed would have to be first because it is super small. I am 5’8″ and my feet stick over the end. You can imagine Kent’s legs sticking off the end! Last week I mustered up the strength and went with a Cameroonian colleague to bargain for the making of a bed. There were about 5 kinds of wood they mentioned that are unfamiliar to me. After about 3 hours we had finally agreed on the type of wood and the simple design and the price. They were shocked over and over that I wanted it to sit higher off the floor. We’ll see in 2 weeks what we end up with. I asked to do the finish on it myself at home because often dust and dirt gets in the layers of finish at the workshop.

I have a pretty long list of all the furniture we need made, so we can give the rented items back to our office, and I was overwhelmed at it all yesterday. Kent and I had both had spiritual attack dreams. Mine was being chased and bitten over and over by a huge, long albino serpent trying to save my daughter. In my morning grogginess, I looked around the bedroom and envisioned how many pieces of furniture I had yet to bargain for, haul home, upholster and finish myself – just for one room! In Congo, it had taken me over a year to get it all done. And I half-prayed in hopelessness, “Lord, will we never be established here?”

I heard a message pop up on my phone.
I picked it up.
The verse-of-the-day on YouVersion popped up before I even put in my password:

“But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.” 2 Thessalonians 3:3

I almost didn’t believe my eyes. God had heard my despair, and He had answered immediately. He will establish us. It’s not on me alone. He sees all the language and culture changes we are dealing with, and He will establish us. When my energy is low after 10 days of mysterious fever. He will establish us. When our colleague’s little baby is struggling to breathe in the hospital and we need to help. He will establish us. When the ants are taking over the kitchen. When the drizzle deeps coming and the laundry won’t dry. He will establish us.

He reminds me why we are here. Kent has work that he loves. People groups get Bibles they can actually read and use. Our kids get a quality education. All of those things are happening. He will establish us and protect us. In retrospect, I can see Him working in the teapot that just shows up, the stock pot, the cast iron. He has been establishing us all this time. How quickly I doubt!

Financial Partnership Instructions

Giving, Missiology, , ,

How do you become a financial partner in our Wycliffe ministry? Click the “Give” link.  But what does that mean? How does it work? In this post we will walk through step by step how to contribute to our financial needs online. The side bar of our website includes a “Give” link to our Wycliffe personal missionary page, (where you can also send us a note in case you lose our address). This page looks like this: Continue reading Financial Partnership Instructions →