Nearly Done X 11!

This is an exciting time to be a part of Bibles International. We currently have 11 projects that are in their final stages and are scheduled to be completed within the next 18 months or so. Soon 11 language groups will have the Word of God available to them in their own languages! This is a great praise!

But it is also a prayer request. It costs a lot of money to print all these Bibles. God is providing, but there is still a great financial need. Please pray along with us as we seek to complete these projects.

The chart below shows these 11 projects, their locations, status, and remaining financial needs. 5 of them are in Asia, 4 are in Africa, and 2 are in South America.

No More Cadillac!

Yes, I gave back the fancy Cadillac this afternoon and drove back home in my own Buick! And I didn't feel the least bit sorry to make that exchange! I still favor the Buick.

For those of you who have not been following my car situation, I had a little fender-bender a couple weeks ago which smashed up the glass in one of my headlights. Ever since then, my car has been waiting for parts. Well, now it is fixed and looks almost as good as new. And, it was fixed within the budget I had set, so this is a double praise!

This was yet another situation where I've had to sit back and be patient while God worked on His timetable. If He worked on my timetable, every difficulty would be solved 10 minutes before it began! But, of course, God doesn't work that way, and it's a good thing, because I don't think I'd grow very much. Life would probably be pretty boring, too!

A Day on the Phone

Yesterday I spent a busy day on the phone, calling churches. I thought I'd try to give you a little taste of what that is like for this missionary appointee. The method I use for calling churches is a three-step process:

1. First I call the church once to ask them if I can send them some information. I used to skip this step and go straight to #2, but after some frustrating experiences with spending postage money to send my information only to find that the church had moved or changed their phone number, I took a suggestion from another missionary and started calling them first. It saves a little postage money, but also it means that the church will be watching for my information when it comes.
2. I prepare and send an information packet, including a brochure introducing me and my ministry, two recommendation letters from pastors, and a cover letter.
3. Then comes the really hard work. After the church has had time to receive the packet and look at it, I call them to follow up on it. Occasionally I get a meeting scheduled after only a few calls, but more commonly it takes many calls, and even then I may find out that the church is not able to have me come. But, as my dad always says, "patience is a virtue"!
   

I've been getting ready to send out a bunch of new information packets, so yesterday I was mostly working on Step #1 - calling the churches once first. But I did call one church where I'd been trying to find a date that worked for both the church and me, and finally we found a convenient date (just after New Year's Day) and got the meeting scheduled.

Here's a breakdown of the other 45 churches I called yesterday:

• For 25 churches, the answering machine or voice mail picked up. That's okay, at least I know I have the right number! I'll send them some information and then try again to contact them by phone.
• In 13 cases, I got a real person, and they told me to go ahead and send in my information. This is good, because hopefully now those 13 churches will be watching for it.
  
• For one church, I already know the pastor quite well from my seminary days, so I skipped the first two steps and went straight to step #3. As he doesn't keep regular office hours at the church, I called his home number. He wasn't home at the time, but I left a message with his wife.
• 2 other churches told me not to send them information, because they are currently unable to take on any new missionaries. Good, that saves a bit of trouble!
  
• 2 churches didn't seem to have an answering machine, as the phone just kept on ringing. Or maybe the church has moved or closed down. Or maybe the machine just wasn't turned on. I'll try calling them again some other time.
• At one church, I got a recorded voice saying the number was no longer in service. I guess I better double-check to make sure my number is correct. But maybe the church has moved or closed down.
• One church had changed its position and is no longer a Baptist church. So I won't pursue that one any further.

Well, I hope that gives you an idea of what missionary appointees experience on a daily basis. If I've counted right, I now have to prepare and send out nearly 40 new packets, so I guess I better go and get to it!

Languages and Dialects

What's the difference between a language and a dialect? Some people use the words interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing, so it can be a rather confusing question. Other people use the word "dialect" as a sort of condescending term: "The variety that has the higher social value is usually called a language, while the one with the lower social value is called a dialect." (1) For example, European languages may be referred to as languages, but indigenous African languages may be referred to as dialects.

But this is not the way linguists use the terms. Generally speaking, speakers of two different dialects of the same language can more or less understand each other, while speakers of two different languages cannon understand each other. "Dialects are varieties of a language used in specific geographical areas or by particular social groups, and the speakers of the dialects of a particular language can usually understand one another even though each speaks his or her own variety." (2)

Sounds simple? Maybe, but in practice it gets pretty complicated, especially in places like Africa where there are so many different languages and varieties in constant contact with each other. In Africa (and other areas of the world), there is the complication of dialect chains. This means that while speakers of Dialect A can understand speakers of Dialect B, and Dialect B can understand Dialect C, speakers of Dialect A cannot understand speakers of Dialect Z. Clearly Dialect A and Dialect Z are two separate languages, but where do you draw the line between the two? At Dialect L or Dialect M? It is a constant debate among linguists. "A particular linguistic variety may thus be categorized by one linguist as a language and by another as a dialect." (3)

Social and political distinctions also complicate matters. Sometimes even if two dialects are mutually intelligible, their separate speakers may have such strong feelings about the distinctions between their two groups that they refer to their dialects as different languages. You can understand their feelings a little bit if you've ever experienced the reactions you get if you tell a Canadian that he is American, or an Australian that he is British - yep, you get fireworks!! Social identity is very important to people, and can even have a major effect on languages.

The results of all this confusion is that it is very hard to say exactly how many languages there are in Africa. I've seen figures everywhere from 1500 to 2100 (4), which is why I usually say that there are around 1800 languages in Africa. But however you count them, Africa is still one of the most linguistically diverse continents on the planet, containing some 30% of all the world's languages.

Footnotes:

(1) Webb, Vic and Kembo-Sure 2000. African Voices: An Introduction to the Languages and Linguistics of Africa. Oxford University Press, page 61.

(2) Webb and Kembo-Sure, African Voices, page 29.

(3) Same as above.

(4) The current figure from a leading authority, the Ethnologue, is 2,110 languages in Africa, a close second to Asia, which is listed as having 2,322.

Update on car situation

For those who have been following the situation with my car and the little fender-bender I was in, here's the latest. I expect to get a check from my insurance company tomorrow. So, now I have a budget for how much I can afford to spend on repairing the headlight. The mechanic says it looks like they will be able to fix it for a price within my budget, so things seem to be working out. The car will still be in the body shop until at least next week, as it has to wait for the ordered parts to arrive, but I don't have any more meetings until August 12 so I can wait for a while. In the meantime, I've still got the rental car (yep, the fancy-shmancy Cadillac!) if I need to go anywhere.

This incident has reminded me again how important it is to wait on the Lord and trust in His plan. I'm as dependent on modern technology as much as anyone - my car, computer, Blackberry, projector and so on. Yet really it is the Lord that I must depend on, not technology. I guess it never hurts to practice a little patience too! I like to get things done right away - yesterday, if possible! But it is when I must practice patience and wait for the Lord's timing that I grow the most.

The Deputation Trail

"What does a missionary have to do to get to the field? I always thought you just hopped on a plane and went!" A church member asked me this recently, and I thought maybe others have wondered the same thing. It's actually quite a process! Even though I grew up in a missionary family, I had never been through the process of deputation, and I quickly found that it was a lot more complicated than I ever imagined! Well, the details do differ for each missionary, but let me take you through my own deputation experiences. For now, let's skip the parts about God's call and the necessary Bible training, and go straight to the place where I was ready to start deputation.

• Church approval. Usually the first step for a potential missionary (called a candidate) is to make sure that his sending church is supportive of his calling. It is the local church that sends the missionary, not the mission agency; the agency's job is to help the local church in their missionary endeavours, not replace it. So this step is very important. In my case, God called me to the mission field when I was just 8 years old, and my sending church has been supportive of my calling since the very beginning. So I actually got past this step a long time ago.
• Choosing an agency. A candidate also has to decide which mission agency he is going to serve with - if any. Some missionaries do choose to work independently, through their local church. Both of those options have pros and cons; it's too big a subject to discuss here. One factor that influenced my decision was the nature of my ministry. Bible translation is usually best done through a team of experts, which is hard to find apart from an organized agency. As to which agency to choose, my options were quite limited because there are so few agencies who are doing conservative Bible translation. So, for these and other reasons, God clearly led me to Bibles International, the Bible society of Baptist Mid-Missions.
• Application. After I had gotten past these initial steps, my next step as a missionary candidate was to apply to the mission agency. This was much more involved than just sending in a resume. First there was an initial application, which was pretty general and relatively short. After that it was one form after another! As I recall, there were at least 4 or 5 of them in all, including health forms, my doctrinal statement, and forms for my sending church to fill out, and probably one or two others that I can't remember now. Each of these forms had to be approved before I could go on to the next stage.
• Oral doctrinal examination. I think that most missionaries would agree that this was the scariest part of the whole process! I had to go in front of the mission board, which included members of the BMM administration as well as pastors of local churches from around the USA, and other missionaries and friends who sat in on the meeting. I think there were about 30 people or so there at my examination. I had had to fill out a doctrinal statement when I applied, and they had a printout of that in front of them; all I had was a Bible. They also provided me with a big jug of ice water and a box of tissues - they were prepared for emotional moments! Anyway, the board got to ask me any questions they wanted related to my statement, myself, or my ministry. I was petrified, but they were all very gracious, and I got through it without much difficulty. And I even lived to tell about it!!
• Candidate Seminar. After I had passed my oral exam, I got to join more than 30 other candidates for nearly 2 weeks of day-long classes on such topics as managing finances, various missionary ethics issues, working with technology (PowerPoint, prayer letters, prayer cards, etc), and many more. At the end of the seminar, we were officially accepted as BMM missionaries, and moved from being candidates to being appointees.
• Gathering materials. Well, then it was time to put it all into practice. I needed to get a lot of things together before I could actually start deputation - design my prayer letter, get prayer cards designed and printed, organize a display, and get the necessary equipment. All of those things have undergone several major revisions since I started, though!
• Setting up meetings. Once I had things more or less together, I started contacting pastors to set up meetings. Sometimes this can be quite a process in itself. I had to get my information to the pastor and then follow it up with a phone call ... or more typically, multiple phone calls. Sometimes it can take many calls before I actually get hold of the pastor (or whoever is in charge of scheduling missionaries at the church) and find out whether he is willing to invite me to give a presentation there. These days, I spend up to 4 or 5 hours a day, 4 days a week calling churches.
• Presenting my ministry. When I get some meetings line up, there are a lot of details to be worked out for each one, such as which services I will be speaking in, where I will be staying, and who will meet me at the church to unlock it and help me get my equipment set up. Then, of course, I get to actually present my ministry before the church! After the service is over and I leave the church, I try to keep in touch with them through my prayer letters, and sometimes they also keep in touch with me through their emails and letters. God leads some of the churches and individuals to support my ministry through their prayers, encouragement, and/or finances.
• Launch Seminar. When I have reached 60% of my support, I will be able to attend another series of classes with a group of appointees. While candidate seminar focused on the skills we needed to start deputation, launch seminar focuses on the skills we need for getting to the field for the first term of service. The launch seminar classes are shorter, though - less than a week long. BMM holds launch seminars several times a year - I'm praying that God will provide so that I can attend the one coming up in January 2010.
• Final steps to the field. I'll also need to go to language school to study French. For now, I'm learning what French I can on my own. Other steps that are involved before getting to the field are getting a visa, getting plane tickets, arranging to have my belongings shipped to the field, making housing arrangements there, and much more. For me, all these things are still in the future ... but I pray not too far in the future!!

I hope I've given you a bit of an idea of what appointees go through! Thanks for joining me on this quick journey through the experiences of one appointee!

Aren't All African Languages Closely Related?

Well, yes and no. The African continent is linguistically very divers, containing as many as 2,000 languages, some of which are closely related, while others are totally unrelated.

You see, the languages of the world are divided into major "families", which in turn are divided into sub-families, and sub-sub-families, and so on (for example, English is in the Indo-European family, which also includes French, German, and Greek). It's rather like your own extended family: you have immediate family members, close relatives, and distant relatives.

In Africa, there are so many different languages that it can get rather complicated trying to sort out all the family members. But to simplify things, I'll just give you a quick overview of the major language families in Africa (as accepted by most linguists).

• The Niger-Congo language family is the largest one in the world, including around 1500 languages all across the southern half of Africa. On the map below, the Niger-Congo family is conveniently divided in two groups, A (red) and B or Bantu (orange). We are currently working with several languages in the Niger Congo A group.
• The Afroasiatic language family (blue) includes around 375 languages, spoken in north and eastern Africa. The family includes Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic as well as many African tribal languages. We are currently working with two different Afroasiatic languages.
  
• The Nilo-Saharan language family (yellow) includes about 200 languages, spoken in central and eastern Africa. We are currently working with several languages in this family.
• The Khoisan language family (green) includes only around 25 languages, since many of them have become extinct (i.e. they are no longer spoken as a mother tongue by anyone in the world). This family includes some of the rarest and most fascinating languages on the continent. They are famous for their wide variety of "click" sounds. One language called Ju/'hoan (don't ask me how to pronounce that!) has 77 different consonant sounds, of which 44 are clicks! By the way, English has only 24 different consonant sounds! Anyway, these languages are mostly spoken in Botswana and Angola. We aren't currently working with any of them.
  

So, to get back to the original question, are African languages all closely related? As you can see, it is more complicated than a simple yes or no! God has put a great deal of variety into human languages. While some are very similar to each other, others are not so similar or even completely different.

For a complete listing of the language families of the world, go to this page in the Ethnologue (a major authority on languages and linguistics). For statistics on the different families, go to this page in the same site.