Last month I wrote about changes we were considering. Before finishing that entry, we made a blitz trip to Oregon to see many of you. In the weeks that followed, we continued engaging with our current ministry partners by zoom, phone, and over coffee, to make sure we had gotten to hear from as many people as possible before moving forward.
What we heard from you was almost exclusively positive. The largest substantive potentially critical comments we heard were
- stay focused on the field
- make sure that your computer tool works, and is adopted by people who do this work
To which we could respond as Paul did in Galatians 2:8-9:
and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. (ESV)
That is, on our agenda for this year we already have working to finish and document A−Z+T in action, so that people who might use it will have reason to. Since the whole point of this work is to make field work more efficient —including for nationals who have more desire and availability than computer experience or available consultants— the reminder to make the tool useful (and actually used) in the field is confirmation that we are on the same page.
What I hadn’t expected back then, was that I would be getting work requests from people, and that I would have to make daily decisions this early, between finalizing our assignment details and communicating with current and future ministry partners, on the one hand, and doing the work, on the other. In the last few weeks, I’ve consulted for people in Zambia (via zoom, above), DRCongo, and Malaysia. Each of these groups has particular needs, some of which I can meet. It’s crazy (but fun!) to see already that the need and possibilities opened by this new work are already visible. I don’t prefer meeting over zoom with most people I have worked with —communication is just harder when you’re not looking at the same physical environment together. But the freedom to be available to people for a couple hours in one country, then to do the same for people in another country the next day, is incredible.
And this is, in large part, the point of A−Z+T. People don’t need someone like me to arrange all the logistics of a workshop, whether it is for one language (as in Zambia) or multiple languages (as in DRCongo), or if they are still trying to figure out how they want to do this work (as in Malaysia). But A−Z+T helps them work fairly independently, assuming someone like me can give some basic orientation, and be available for questions and problems that come up. So it has been gratifying to see that this is possible, even if inideal, over zoom.
So we have decided to move forward with assignments based in north Texas, developing computer tools to facilitate good writing system development for the worldwide Bible Translation movement.
That decision being done, we still have more or less immediate problems to address. There are a couple administrative hurdles between us and confirming these assignments. Please pray that we would address each with appropriate care, and for good communication with each person involved (there are several, for each one).
But perhaps the biggest immediate concern is financial. We currently have a significant shortfall, so we need additional financial partnership, either from new ministry partners or from increases by current partners. This is not to obligate anyone —not in the least. But it is a practical reality that we need help to do this work. Please take a moment to pray and ask God if he would have you (cheerfully!) share in the financial provision for our Wycliffe ministry.
Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. —2 Corinthians 9:7 (ESV)
This work by Kent is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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