‘supporting’ (4 of 5)

As we said in the first of this series of posts, we feel that the best thing we can do with our skills and experiences is to share them with others. We don’t have all the answers and we certainly don’t get everything right (we’re very much still learning too!), but we are sure that by sharing our knowledge and experiences with friends, colleagues and others, our efforts can be multiplied many times over. As the saying goes, ‘give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime’. Well, or at least until the river/lake/sea becomes too polluted and the fish all die… but that is a subject for another post…!

It seems pretty basic, but the best people to help teach others how to read and write a language are the speakers of that language themselves. However, in many situations where people’s first language is a minority language (where there are other larger languages spoken around them, such as a national or international languages) unfortunately there are often very few resources to train teachers and little or no materials to aid learning in that language. This is where the transfer of our skills and experience comes in: supporting and enabling the training of mother tongue minority language speakers to become teachers and to produce reading materials in their own languages.

At the same time, for us to be coming alongside others we also need people to come alongside us! Although Wycliffe comes with some of its own structures, helping us do what we are doing, we do not receive a salary for our work. Instead we need to find people who are willing to partner with us, people like you, who will commit to support us in the work we are doing. Could you commit to support us financially? No amount is too small. To make a regular or one-off donation online click here.

Raising your own financial support is a tricky subject. If you’re interested in reading some more of our thoughts on ‘money and life as an [overseas] missionary couple’ you can read a blog we wrote a little while back here.