Christmas Greetings 2017

Dear Friends and Family,

We love the Christmas season. This year I was teasing Lynée about starting the season before Thanksgiving as Christmas movies started in early November on a certain cable channel when we were in Georgia. While much of it is just consumerism, we love the music and the message it brings about Jesus and God’s love, which is true all year. Family, giving to others, and the beauty of God’s creation in winter are also worth appreciating. We pray you can find time in the holiday rush to enjoy these things as gifts from God. If Christmas can start early, Thanksgiving can continue through Christmas! (and all year too!)

What a glorious mystery this season celebrates. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth … No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” John 1:14,18 (NKJV)

Though I’ve read the Christmas story many times, the following surprised me:

“In the Christmas story, when the shepherds heard the angels speaking and singing, they heard it in their heart language. When the Wise men from the East were warned not to reveal where the child was born, they heard it in their heart language, a different language than the shepherds. The Christmas story is a translated story.”

The latest statistics say that at least 1.5 billion people do not have the full Bible in their heart language. Over 114 million people, speaking 1,636 languages, are waiting for translation just to start; however, translation is happening in 2,584 languages in more than 170 countries!

Let’s rejoice in the progress being made and be thankful for the part He has given all of us in it! Thank you for your part in supporting our ministry as we work to advance the spread of His Word around the world. (End-of-year giving can done at www.wycliffe.org/partner/wards.)

May your Christmas season be joyous and glorious!

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I could not help but get goosebumps...

On November 11, 1933, Cameron Townsend (Uncle Cam), Wycliffe’s founder, was at the border to Mexico with his friend LL Legters. When the Mexican government wouldn’t let them enter the country, Cameron & Legters stopped and prayed. Uncle Cam remembered that he had a letter in his possession from a government official inviting him to visit Mexico. After showing the letter, he and Legters were allowed into Mexico to start Wycliffe’s work in that country! (See http://bit.ly/entering-mexico for the full story.)

Each year, Wycliffe’s membership commemorates that event with a day of prayer acknowledging that we cannot do this work without God’s help. This year we spent Friday, November 10, in prayer. We had time for worship and break-out prayer sessions to pray for various areas of the world. We ended the day recognizing people who had joined Heaven’s ranks and praising God for the Scriptures (in 64 languages!) that were completed since we met a year ago.

A highlight for me (Lynée) was a presentation displaying the years when major languages received the Bible. (Did you know the New Testament was first translated into Korean in 1887?) As the year for each language was shown, someone started saying the Lord’s prayer in that language. By the end, there were about 10 people saying the Lord’s prayer in various languages, and I could not help but get goosebumps thinking about what it would be like in Heaven with peoples of all languages praising God together.

We hope you are doing well during this season of Thanksgiving. We have a lot for which to be thankful!

• For jobs that allow us to be a part of the Bible translation movement
• For a great trip to Georgia visiting friends, family, and ministry partners
• For the joy of celebrating a niece’s wedding with her and other family in Tennessee
• For you: for praying for us, for providing for our ministry budget, and for encouraging us!

What are you thankful for? How can we pray for you? May you have a blessed Thanksgiving day!

Oct 2017 newsletter (pg 1)

This summer we said good-bye to
Lynée’s two uncles and to Tess,
our 19-year-old cat.

Virtual Teams Around the World
Alan has mentioned that he works on a team of about 17 people in 11 locations in five different countries. How does that work? It definitely would be harder to do without technology! Instead of weekly “staff meetings,” Alan’s department has weekly “teleconferences.” They can see each other on the computer and talk about necessary topics. They also have a virtual “water cooler” where they can talk to each other by typing online, sometimes one-on-one and sometimes to the group as a whole.

I experienced just a tiny bit of this earlier this year when we held a virtual baby shower for some of Alan’s team members. Tim and his wife, in Thailand, recently adopted a little boy. Nico and Bekah, in France, were expecting their first baby. Someone collected money ahead of time using computer technology and arranged for the gifts. Then during their weekly teleconference, each person on the team had a chance to share either a verse or a bit of advice. Spouses were invited, which is how I was a part of it.  :-)

I am just now getting the feel of being remote even though we have had remote people as part of our department before. Up until a year ago, the leadership of my department has been here in our local office; now they are in the U.K., California, and Nebraska. Since these changes, it has been a lot easier for me to feel disconnected. It has taken a while for us to figure out how to work as a remote team so that everyone feels connected, but we are making progress.

The teacher orientation had 13 participants.
Lynée put together the notebook amidst
funeral travels.

The MK Care Team
Our missionary families work around the world, sort of like a remote team. One way we work to support and stay connected with them is through the regular emails we send. The email we sent in April had to do with special needs and where to get help. The contact person we recommended had an email within 24 hours from a mom who was trying to homeschool her kids (at least two with special needs) in an isolated location. Yes! That is what we are here for — to encourage them so they can stay on the field doing what God has called them to do.

Our Remote Team
You are also part of a remote team — our team, and we greatly appreciate you. As team members, we want to update you on our work and finances. Thankfully, for the last 10 years, we’ve been able to report that while our committed giving has been less than our ministry budget, occasional gifts have made up the difference, but this year we had a gap of $140/month over the last 12 months. (For reference, committed giving is about $600/mon low.) Since 40% of the giving to our ministry comes from people in our parents’ generation, giving will likely decline further in the coming years.

Please pray that God would raise up more people who can partner with us prayerfully and financially, especially in the next few months. We are planning to visit Georgia from October 22 to November 5. If you currently are not partnering with us, would you prayerfully consider doing so?

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Oct 2017 newsletter (pg 2)

I’ve Already Memorized It
Jean,* a worker in Asia, was traveling in an area where a certain minority language was spoken. She was invited to a family’s home for lunch. After the meal, the host began to ask her a lot of questions about her faith. “Do you have a Bible in my language?” he asked her. “I want to read it.”

Jean replied, “I don’t have a printed copy with me, but I have one on my phone.” He said he would need to find a phone and meet her later. That evening he showed up at the home where she was staying, carrying a phone. The area had no internet reception, and though Jean could transfer Scripture via a memory card to his phone, the phone was very old and they could not get the Bible app working.

Unwilling to give up, the man asked, “Can I just hand copy it from your phone?” “Of course,” said Jean. He grabbed paper and pen and started copying. He copied much of the first chapter of John before leaving. The next night he came back! “I’ve already memorized what I copied,” he said. “Could I copy more?” He spent the next few hours copying more of John’s Gospel by hand.

Jean left the language area a few days later, joyful that her new friend was hiding the Good News about Jesus in his heart. Jean’s new friend reminds me of the Prophet Jeremiah, who said, “When I discovered your words, I devoured them. They are my joy and my heart’s delight.” (Jeremiah 15:16, NLT) How thankful I am that those words are available to you and me, too.

*pseudonym
Excerpted from Bob Creson’s blog. See bit.ly/memorized-it.

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Testing Matthew in Safwa

Dear friends and family,

We are thankful to report that the flooding around Houston has not affected us, though we do ask for prayer for the many people who have been impacted (and for those about to be struck by Hurricane Irma). About 4,000 people from the flooded areas are staying at a large shelter in Dallas. Also, thank you for praying for us in the loss of our cat and for our second funeral trip in July. We received many encouraging replies!

The following story was shared by Steve Pence, a colleague working in Africa. After it are some personal updates.

Making Matthew Speak Real Safwa
Waya and Lawi are translating portions of the Bible into their own local language, Safwa. Today I would witness the testing of a draft of Matthew in a Safwa community… Reaching our destination, we stood under the eaves of a building, trying to escape a steady drizzle. Waya and Lawi pulled out their trial texts of the Gospel of Matthew. The texts were printed in a large font and double spaced, with lots of room to write. Peppered across each page were words and phrases highlighted in pink, each of which needed to be investigated to make sure it communicated clearly and accurately.

With almost no introduction, just a few words saying that they were translating the Scriptures, Waya and Lawi began reading the Safwa words aloud. It was as if electricity shot through the air. One moment men quietly waited out a storm on a day that had turned gray and wet and sleepy. The next moment, eyes popped and hands waved as everyone tried to talk at once.

Lawi and Waya both started writing, scratching through words, drawing arrows into margins and making notes. A word they had used for “axe” was unknown here. It was used in another Safwa town at the bottom of the hill, but not up here on the mountain. And up here people don’t use the same word for killing another person as they do for killing a plant or a cow. Here they use a special word for each. Still, nearly everyone nodded in amazement, saying “Yes, this is real Safwa!”...

The animated conversation over God’s Word continued without a pause. One teenager excitedly told us he was born again. Another confessed, “I’m not born again. I don’t even go to church now.” But all were glued to the Safwa Scriptures being read and discussed.

In another town that afternoon, Waya approached a roadside checkers game and quickly drew keen interest from the crowd … When it was time to go, one young man stood and said, “Safwa! This is good! I understand it very well. I have been made happy.”

All across the highlands of southwest Tanzania, an area the size of Austria, scenes like these are being replayed... Eventually, more than three million people speaking thirteen languages will have God’s Word.

Excerpted from: http://bobcreson.com/2017/07/05/making-matthew-speak-real-safwa/

Progress at work
Lynee is thankful that August’s emails to our parents and teachers (pointing them to resources to help raise and teach missionary kids [MKs]) were sent without any problems last week. This week key staff from her department are having meetings in Virginia and then attending a conference on MK education that goes through Sunday noon. Please pray her colleagues will work well together, cover pertinent topics, and have good interactions with people from other mission agencies, and for follow up on things from the meetings and conference.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve made progress on a complex program my team will be using in all our font development projects. This is a praise since I’ve had trouble finding time for such focused, technical work in the midst of other non-technical tasks. I had a good discussion with my manager about relative priorities and am trying to adjust how I use my time. Please pray for good balance.

We are planning a trip to Georgia at the end of October and into November. We do need to build up our team of prayer and financial partners. Please pray for opportunities to share our ministry work with others and for the writing of our next newsletter. Thank you for your partnership with us! We greatly appreciate all those who pray, give, and help in other ways. We would love to know what’s happening in your life and how we can pray for you.

In the faith, hope, and love of Christ,

Alan (& Lynee)

Jun 2017 newsletter (pg 1)

A Vision for Writing Systems?!?
Imagine you grew up speaking a language only understood by a thousand people and written using extra letters no one else in your country uses...and you open Facebook on your new phone and can immediately type in your language to talk to your brother in the city...or you can find a Bible for your language in the Google or Apple app store! The vision of my group is to make it easy to use such languages on computers and to support Bible translation for the 4,000 languages where translation needs to start or is happening. How do we do this?

We have small font development groups for Arabic, Indic, Southeast Asian, and Roman scripts, which create computerized alphabets where they’re needed. There are also groups collecting information about the writing systems used by these languages, such as what letters are needed and how those letters are keyboarded and ordered. By providing this information to major computer companies, they can provide better built-in support on smartphones and the web. We also want to provide an automated way of finding a font and keyboard for any language.

Because of my role on our group’s leadership team, I’m more aware of everything my group does. In addition to meeting weekly to discuss management issues, I relate to the software development group that creates programs and web services to support Bible translation, literacy, and language development. This sister group uses the fonts and technologies my group develops, and we hope to collect writing system information (as described above) from their tools. I’ve been on the leadership team for 1.5 years, and I’m still doing some technical work, as I have done for 28 years.

Passion for Families & Teachers
Lynée has been adding useful resources to her group’s website (iched.org) to help families and teachers overseas. She continues to send out regular emails to actively share these helps and to publicize relevant events. One recent email contained links to resources on transition, since summer is a common time for missionary families to travel:

“Thank you very much! Great resources and so relevant for our family right now!”

The teacher orientation Lynée helps with starts June 30th. Because only twelve participants are coming, she will not be on staff. However, she will still prepare all printed materials, including the 100-page notebook. The airport simulation, which has been one of the highlights of the last few years, will not happen — the “Emperor’s Pot” will take its place. While it doesn’t accomplish quite the same things, it does give exposure to cross-cultural issues and doesn’t involve recruiting people outside of the orientation. Please pray that the orientation will provide the preparation needed for those going overseas to keep families on the field and that Lynée can provide help from afar.

We are truly thankful for all our partners who have a part in this work through prayer, giving, and other means. Currently, committed giving to our ministry budget is about $515/mon low. About 40% of the giving comes from people who are retired, so we foresee a growing shortfall. Would you please pray that God would raise up more people to partner with us? We could travel in August or October/November. If you would be willing to advocate for us by arranging for us to speak in a small group or Sunday school class, please let us know.

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Jun 2017 newsletter (pg 2)

Canyonlands Nat'l Park - Thanks to special gifts, in May we enjoyed a wonderful week out west!

What Language Does God Speak?
Morgan Jackson, director of Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH), remembers the day some years ago when he visited a Konkomba village in Ghana. FCBH partners with Bible translators to produce audio recordings of Scripture, and he asked Konkomba leaders if they’d like to listen to God’s message in their language.

They didn’t believe it was possible. “God doesn’t speak our language. He only speaks English.”

“But God does speak Konkomba,” Morgan said. He turned on an audio player, and words of Matthew 1:1 in Konkomba filled the air. “This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah….”

Amazed, leaders called for villagers to assemble. Soon 300 people were listening to God speak Konkomba. As they listened, they entered into the story. They were walking and talking with Jesus. “Jesus is now one of us,” they said. “He speaks our language!”

Digital technology is allowing people to engage with Scripture in new and meaningful ways so they can experience God’s love, his healing, and his power to meet life’s challenges. If a translation of the Bible exists in a language, it is, or soon will be, as close as the nearest smartphone. While printed Bibles may be stored thousands of miles away, a speaker of one of these languages can find digital versions on mobile apps like Bible.is or YouVersion. In one recent 28-day period, people in the United States used YouVersion to access translations in 554 languages, requesting 626,250,279 chapters of the Bible!

What language does God speak? He speaks all of the nearly 7,000 languages in the world. People can talk to him in any language and he understands. But many people—including some we meet every day—can’t understand him when he speaks. The love letter remains a closed book. The good news is that more people than ever before have more access to Him in a language they understand best, the language of their home.

For the full article: http://bit.ly/whatlang

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Her last morning in Central Africa Republic...

Dear friends and family,

Greetings from beautiful Texas! Things are growing and we have had wonderful weather. We haven’t really needed the a/c or heater the last two months. We are very thankful for the health to get out and enjoy God’s creation.

I love this!
Ann Kaptey, a translation consultant, was in a bit of a hurry as she reviewed a translation of Galatians in the Mpyemo language. This was her last morning in the Central African Republic before she returned to Michigan. She was trying to go over the entire book with Constantin, one of the translators.

She and Constantin were speeding through verse after verse when he suddenly stopped paying attention. They’d reached Galatians 4:1-7, where Paul says that believers are no longer slaves, but children of God and his heirs. Constantin began rereading the passage, totally engrossed in what he was reading…Then a smile spread across his face.“This is good! This is wonderful! I love this!” he exclaimed!

Constantin had read that same passage many times in French and Sango (the official languages of his country), but reading it in his mother tongue stopped him in his tracks. The depth and breadth of the meaning became clear to him as it never had before.

The full story is at https://bobcreson.com/2017/05/03/i-love-this/

Personally
We were hoping to send you a newsletter this week, but that is not going to happen. Alan has been working long hours and accomplishing good things, but that makes it harder to get things like newsletters done. But things are going forward. He wrote a small program yesterday that helped one of his teammates with an immediate need in building an Arabic font for western Africa using things he’s learned recently about some new technology. The style of Arabic in that region is quite different from other parts of the world. Acceptance of Scripture in those languages is enhanced by having the right script. Pray for wisdom in his job and that he can get the down time he needs.

My job has been going well. In addition to the emails we regularly send our parents and teachers, I am now learning about infographics -- a visual way to easily portray information. I’m looking forward to it, as we think they will be useful in the online teacher orientation we are working on. Pray that I will be able to understand how they work and how to create some that will be useful for the course.

More prayer needs
We only have seven people who have registered for our yearly face-to-face teacher orientation to meet over 100 needs this year. Teachers are needed so families can continue their work overseas. Pray God will bring more teachers to meet the needs.

My cousin’s daughter (age 19) received two concussions six years ago from which she has never healed. Her quality of life has been declining. She’s in Orlando this week (May 8-12) at a brain trauma center receiving daily treatments to start healing. She needs complete bed rest for two weeks after that. Pray that this treatment will be effective.

On a lighter note, thanks to a partner’s generosity, we are going to Colorado and Utah next week for vacation! We are looking forward to the rest, to seeing friends, and to enjoying the beauty God has made!

Thank you so much for lifting us up in prayer. Please let us know how we can pray for you!

Lynee (for Alan, too)

Alan returns from Germany

Dear Friends and Family,

My trip to Germany went very well. Thank you for praying! I felt like I was getting sick a couple of times but no illness developed. The conference center where we worked and stayed was on the outskirts of a small town in the country. We had a couple of clear bright days to enjoy the natural beauty.

During our face-to-face team meetings in the first week, we decided to restructure our team a bit to make it easier for those working on font projects to collaborate. We also settled some technical issue in how we’ll create fonts in the future. The workshop during the second week succeeded in helping many people with technical issues related to the Arabic script. At the end of the week, we had people indicate if they had accomplished certain technical goals and most everyone raised their hand more than once. Please praise God and rejoice with us!

Lynee had no problems at home while I was gone and stayed busy with work and visiting friends. We’re both glad for me to be home.

On a sad note, one of the founding members of Wycliffe, George Cowan, recently passed away at 100 years of age. He expressed our passion for everyone to have God’s word in this 1:36 min. video: Feast or Crumbs?

In the Goodness and Greatness of Jesus,

Alan (& Lynee)

Alan's trip to Germany!

Dear Friends and Family,

On Friday I leave for Germany! I'll be gone for about two weeks (Jan 27 - Feb 11). The team I work with will be holding a one-week workshop (Feb 6-10) to help IT people who support those translating into minority languages that use the Arabic alphabet. About 25 people have registered. We'll also have our annual team meetings where we work together face-to-face on strategy and technical issues and also renew our relationships. Please pray for wisdom, creativity, and the Lord's direction for all those attending as well as for good health and travels. It's a 9.5 hr direct flight to Frankfurt.

Please also pray for Lynee who will remain at home — it's hard to be apart for two weeks. Pray everything goes smoothly at our house. She should stay busy reorganizing part of her department’s web site (iched.org).

You may be interested in seeing the Wycliffe 2016 Year in Review video (2 mins): wycliffe-2016-year-in-review. In it, Wycliffe USA President Bob Creson and his wife, Dallas, highlight the progress made in Bible translation last year. We thank you, along with them, for being part of this life-changing work.

We hope your Christmas and New Year break was blessed. We are thankful for great visits with both our families and safe travels.

In Christ's Love, Joy, and Peace,

Alan (& Lynee)