Category: Current Events

My day began by watching my deceased neighbor be buried in his front yard. My day ended by watching another neighbor beat a little boy violently. It has not taken long for us to remember that death and violence are a part of everyday life here in the village. And there is a part of me that asks the question: Is it ever okay to put my headphones in to drown out the constant strain of yelling that surrounds our home? Is it okay for me to look the other way while a grown man beats a whimpering child? Is…

Where we have been. We arrived in the US in March 2017, and you may be thinking we have just been vacationing. Au contraire my friends, we have been quite busy. Let me tell you what we have been up to. STUDY. The majority of our time has been spent in Dallas, TX where we have been studying at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics. The reason we were here is because we knew that we needed more training before we began translating the Bible. At GIAL took the following classes: Advanced Grammar Advanced Phonology Cross-cultural Teaching Seminar Discourse Analysis…

A few years ago, as we were having our house built in our village, I noticed an older gentleman peeking at us through the tall grass that was behind his house. My immediate thought was, “What does he think of us?” and after spending the next few years getting to know this man, I am sure he was thinking the same thing: “What do they think of me?” Both of us did not know what to expect from the other, but I am sure that both of us did not expect friendship. This man (Simon) was an unexpected blessing from…

In just a few days, we will be packing up to leave our village so that we can spend 16 months in the States completing our MAs in Applied Linguistics / Bible Translation. As we pack up our suitcases, we are reminded of the thoughts and feelings that we had when we left America 4 years ago. We are coming to realize that many of the perspectives that we held to on the plane ride over have changed. For instance, we now realize that… Language Learning is a Beast. On the plane ride over, I was sitting next to a…

I distinctly remember saying that I was willing to be a Bible translator but I was unwilling to translate the Bible for a tonal language, because that would be just too hard. But after support raising, French school, culture shock, all with four young children, a tonal language did not seem so bad. Every stage of our missionary journey has seemed impossible, so why not add learning and analyzing a tonal language to the list? We have sought not to focus on the life task of translating the Bible, but instead have tried to just conquer what is just ahead…

The Vacation Bible School has officially come to a close and all in all, it was … AMAZING. God answered every prayer that we (and you) prayed. He held off the rain during the VBS, the Word was taught, the Lord really helped us communicate clearly, and even our unsaved adult neighbors came to listen to the Bible stories (and color pictures!). We had around 60-80 kids each day and, miracle of miracles, they generally sat quietly and listened attentively during our lessons. And, all around our town, catechisms on the trinity, the ways of Satan, and verses of Scripture…

Monday launches our annual 5-day Bible club for the local neighborhood kids! If it is anything like last year, we expect there to be 50-100 kids ranging from toddlers to teenagers at our door eagerly waiting for it to start each day. We plan to do games like tug-o-war, sing songs, have a teaching time, and then have them color pictures. To this day, when we go into people’s houses, there, hanging proudly on their walls are the now sun-bleached pictures that their kids colored last year. Needless to say, both we and our local young friends are looking forward…

Bible translation is a messy business. It always has been. Whereas there are always “external” threats to this great task (being refused visas, terrorism, trouble finding nationals to work with), I am convinced that the greatest threat that faces us today is internal. Like the armies mentioned in the Old Testament that lost battles because they turned on one another, I fear that we too may be disoriented, thinking our colleagues are really our enemies. Instead of encouraging one another to press on in battle, I fear that we may actually end up destroying one another. Hot-Button Issues Here are…

We did surveys in 24 villages in two weeks and all-in-all we are very pleased with how things went. It is also safe to say that we have a much better understanding of the dialect situation among the Bakoum. Here are a couple highlights:   Reasons Why I Love my Job Dave and I had a great time working together. We would call the chief of the village ahead of time and ask him to designate someone whose mother and father were Bakoum (and who had all their teeth) that we could meet with upon our arrival. Generally this person…