Translating Romanian Sign Language; Alan's meetings started

Dear Friends and Family,

We hope your year has gotten off to a great start. We had good visits to my family in Nashville and Alan’s family in north Georgia for Christmas, and our house sitter survived our new cat (Simon)! We both got sick while traveling but are much better now, though please pray that the lingering cough I have will clear up.

Translation for Sign Languages
One group of languages that Wycliffe has started translating for relatively recently is Deaf sign languages...

More than 90,000 Deaf people living across Romania use Romanian Sign Language to communicate. Culturally, they view themselves as members of a vibrant community with its own unique language and identity.

However, the Deaf face challenges reading and understanding the written language used by the hearing society around them. That’s why it’s critically important that the Deaf gain access to God’s Word in a language and form they clearly understand.
____
The Romanian pastor wasn’t sure what to do. He had adopted a deaf boy into his family and wanted to teach him about the Bible. But after trying for a while, the hearing pastor could tell that his deaf son didn’t understand the Scripture in spoken and written Romanian.

Then one day on Facebook, he saw a video of a New Testament passage. The story was of Jesus calming the storm — and it was in Romanian Sign Language. When the father showed the video to his son, the boy perked up and seemed to clearly understand the story’s message.

Excited, the pastor reached out to the Romanian Sign Language translation team who created the video. As a result, the team members soon connected the family to a local Deaf church. There the boy is able to form relationships with other Deaf believers while growing in his faith through Scripture — communicated in a language and form that impacts his heart.

(The above story was excerpted from Wycliffe’s annual report in the Romanian Sign Language section.)

Personal update
The two weeks of team meetings that Alan’s department is blessed to have each year started tonight (2/2) with a welcome dinner. This year they are gathering in Dallas. The first week will be at a retreat center which they haven’t used for twelve years, so please pray that everything works out okay there. The second week will be at our campus in a different conference room than usual.

The theme for most of the font development sessions will be testing, which is currently Alan’s main focus. They are trying to find ways to share and standardize the testing done on the fonts that several subteams develop for different parts of the world. In the past, each subteam developed their own way of testing based on what they needed, what they knew, and what technology was available, so there’s a lot of variety right now. Sharing the best of what each subteam does and somewhat standardizing the process are the goals. Alan will be leading three sessions and taking notes on many others. Pray for unity, clear communication, and practical steps/goals moving forward.

I am continuing to work on my department’s website. I am rearranging some of the content and adding new material. We hope the site will go live soon. Pray that I can make some good progress, even as I keep up with my other responsibilities. Simon continues to bring us joy as well as challenging us when we tell him “no” - he acts a lot like a toddler. :-)

In the Love and Grace of Jesus