Sunday's PassionBite Video!

The Road to Transformation from Wycliffe USA on Vimeo.

The translation needs of the Americas!

Today, we look at the Americas! This is often the region that people assume is completely finished! In our North American paradigm, it is too easy to forget the true diversity all around us, and that there are more than a thousand languages spoken on these continents and their surrounding islands! Have a look below at the facts, and please pray for translators to rise up to work in each of these language groups. There is a need for people willing to give their lives to the cold, huddling up in Nunavut with First Nation languages, and  for translation teams to continue working in the balmy jungles of South America until every tongue has access to God's voice...

Translation needs in the Pacific

Through the rest of this week, I want to showcase some beautiful graphic-representations of the needs left in five major world-regions. Today we look at the Pacific, an area dear to my heart because of Papua New Guinea! Many of the Bibleless people groups are in this area of the world, with 1,311 living languages still spoken within this region! Language varieties were often kept separate and distinct in these areas (as opposed to the expansion and overlapping of many other languages, like how English spread) due to sharp geographical features, like mountains that historically made communication between people groups much more unlikely. Take a look at these language and world facts, focusing on the work that is left to be done. 

View a clickable, larger version at http://blog.wycliffe.org/2014/06/16/wycliffe-world-highlights-pacific/

Portrait of translation

This tapestry, it fills my heart now in a way more than ever before. I mentioned last week that many years ago, I didn't understand all the roles that were required for this task.. I didn't understand its vastness, I had no concept of two thousand languages spoken by 180 million people without the Bible in their language, so at that time, my mind had only two categories for this work: Bible translator, and sender.

With my interest came research though, and then the hunger for more research brought me on a trip to Ghana with Wycliffe Discovery in 2004! And adventure and knowledge were added to research, and with knowledge came fire. Through that experience and through getting to begin linguistic training, I learned of Language Survey, alphabet-writing, night literacy courses being taught in the jungle by the light of thunder-lamps. I learned about data programs being written by the tech-minded missionary that can accelerate the "code cracking" of language development and translation. And there are teachers that are needed for the families called to this life-long work. And none of it works without the rest of it.

And now, on the other side of some life-changing events for me, through health issues that, at least for now, change my ability to be a Language Surveyor in uncharted territory, I look through the prism at God's call on my life to be a part of Bible translation, and I understand this call now more than I did before. Just as He expanded my two categories of Bible translation into the more real tapestry-paradigm, replete with the many categories of roles that are needed, I now know with more certainty and trust that this is what I'm made for, and that this call will continue to surprise me, in all the many forms and roles that Abba places before me. I see a fuller picture now, and that each role is one of the exquisite colors needed to complete what He is creating, and that there is a call and a role for every believer in this commission to make disciples and bring the gospel.

The anatomy of the translation process and... cartoons?

One of the things I get asked a LOT is about what the process of Bible translation actually looks like! Years ago, I myself thought there was just this one large, all-encompassing role of "Bible Translator" that sort of did it all.. I hadn't been given a full glimpse into the HUGENESS of what needed to be done yet, and I hadn't thought critically about how necessary lots of checks and balances are in the process, so that we know that the end-product translation is accurate, clear and natural to the native-tongue speaker.

This video is today's PassionBite, and the best resource I've found for making this enormous task make a bit more sense!

Mourning a path and gardening willingness

This is the week I was supposed to move to Papua New Guinea. ..Was supposed to get on a plane and leave everything behind but the relationships sending me, all my family and friends tethering me with love to this place. ..Was supposed to fly in multiple stages across datelines and timezones to a mountainous land throbbing from the ground with groans of longing for the Word in their languages...

I feel it pulse under my skin, everything put on hold, a twelve-year process prolonged into waiting once again.

And there is deep sadness in that, sorrow that some weakness in my physical body could explode into such severity now, and delay me from this work that I have felt my Lord tug at me about for more than half my years. Maybe it’s the steroids, but I find myself weeping often now, grasping to grieve for the scariness that November in the hospital was, for the confusion caused by getting so close to launching into Language Survey and then hearing God’s clear “No, still not yet.”

But that’s not quite it, maybe not quite true enough. I find myself grieving for the ifs. It’s too soon to know, but I find my soul reaching for answers about what things can be like once I’m in remission again——will it be possible to be a surveyor still, or will I need to do less physical roles in the Bible translation process? Will the Third World ever open up as an option again, or will these medicines (immuno-suppressants) be God’s tools of redirection, bringing me to work in a country I didn’t expect?  If it can no longer be Papua New Guinea, why did God spend all that time moving me in that direction, researching these people and their languages, investing in this Survey team, and creating a passion in me for the work He is doing there?——the questions can go on an on, but even they only scratch the surface, as it's more complicated than that. I can SEE God weaving together intricate stories that require more complexity, more ambiguity and waiting on Him than I'm comfortable with, but His results are always better than I can dream up, and the answers to those questions aren't the point..

Maybe more than this, then, I am grieving for how I can be so fully sold, so completely the property of my Jesus, and then still find willfulness in me that—in a tiny corner of my most honest and bare soul—hopes for my vision of things, my understanding, more than I fling myself at His feet to do whatever He pleases. Because He is most concerned with the conversation. There is no doubt that He will win. There is no doubt that all will hear, and He is mobilizing everyone who is willing to form the lines that will march forward with His healing, His breath, His salvation for every tribe and tongue. But more than just this end result, He uses every sorrow, every delay, every fog-enshrouded question mark, tear, and crumple to draw us and everyone around us into His lap, and to cultivate in us every good thing that cannot be there without whatever furnace He has brought us to. His sovereignty demands that I redefine everything—that if He allows it, that I should then call it Good, and open up my whole being to being drenched by that fire so we can continue on our way, refined and sharpened, and not consumed (Isaiah 43:2). He is fiercely committed to exacting every small rebirth of ferocious trust in us that will come from changing our plans, that will come from a million little deaths during our lifetimes, a million little lettings-go, even when He authored the direction of those plans in the first place (John 12:24). He loves me enough to forge an evermore iron-clad trust even when that process hurts.

So this week I grieve with my ribcage cracked open. I unlock that chamber so alter-flames can lick this heart with fiery tongues, can lap up disappointment and fear of loss, can dress every physical wound and every veins’ ache, can let in every EXTRAVAGANT joy that God has placed in my life in this season and every need that is before me right here, remembering that trusting Him is worth immeasurably more to Him than ministering for Him in any particular way. One will ALWAYS lead to the other (trust and love leading to ministry and worship), but He will zealously continue refining my trust until I am a closely-knit-to-Him shadow, turning on a dime, pouring Him out in the most unexpected ways and places, following His dancing Image more closely and with more abandon than I did before. Amen.

A few little thoughts around midterms

There is a Jiminy Cricket that works in the Homework Department of my psyche that is maybe not so pleased with me right now, but I have not taken a moment to come and breathe here in just over FIVE weeks, so he will have to whimper on tonight… 

Dearones, I’m so sorry! Weeks have tugged at small fibers so that every mental and emotional facet I have are all focused on school; but you all, your faces and your voices and your support tug back without you even knowing you’re doing it. I MISS YOU, am bolstered by you, and am lonely for how well I’m known by you, but it's a delight to be here, and I'm learning so much!

These last few weeks have been a roller coaster—I’ve been trying to juggle the course load here (Phonological Analysis, Sociolinguistic Survey, and Language and Society) with Skype-interviews and meetings with my Wycliffe Personnel Administrator; and then stuffed somewhere in between those major players have been gorgeous little bursts of either time outside to process my whirwind-head, or time with my uncle or other students… 

Last week was a crux of extremes: it began with the most exquisite beauty (our group went for a day of hiking and night of camping a few hours north to the most beautiful spot!), but then we all returned to midterm exams, awaiting projects, 12-page papers, and all the while the need to think and pray through the large decisions that are on the horizon. I found myself bucking at feeling inadequate—my brain wriggling in the one class that stretches it against its regular constructs of thinking (to the point of embarrassing tears in front of my professor!)—and I observed my initial frustration (two weeks ago?) when my history with health issues was discussed as a factor for Wycliffe in where I will be assigned… I am reminded that no matter how many seasons my faithful Christ walks me through that pull back my expectations and identity to a gloriously content and worshiping place, I am still not comfortable being a vessel filled with the right kind of emptiness sometimes.

If I’m completely honest, I gravitate back to wanting to be defined by some sort of skill or ability or unique characteristic—to have “something to offer”—but always I’m returned to the place where weaknesses or past bouts of sickness are a defining factor, or my mind’s struggle with the data/structure side of this task before me overwhelms me and I feel defined by lack. But THIS is where He begins to move again, this is where he uses my disillusionment with myself to open my eyes again, to fill them with light, to show me that those specific weaknesses that He has allowed in me are exactly as they should be and that He has always woven good stories around weakness whose only acclaiming attribute is a steady, resounding “yes, Lord”.

Once again He has to whisper, hold loosely, with your hands wide open… don’t choke it; your clasped, tiny fingers are ineffectual anyway, but you’re going to want Me to be free to move these things over and around you, across your flattened, receptive palms, little one, so trust Me and stride forward, delighted.