Discovering this summer in two different places!

  

 Planning my 2013 Discovery trip has been quite the adventure so far of following where God is leading. It started last year in Ghana when we met the language projects manager from Central African Republic. He invited us to come to his country with Discovery and we agreed…but some months later rebels attacked and we were forced to postpone our trip plans.  Then began a long process of finding a country that was willing to host Discovery on rather short notice; that country turned out to be Benin.

   This will be the first time I have led a Discovery trip outside Ghana… and going to a French speaking country will be quite a challenge for me!  My co-leader Jacques  is a national missionary I met in Ghana in 2002; Jacques has hosted Discovery students previously when we sent 3 students from our 2008 Ghana team to Benin.  My Discovery team this year will be significantly smaller than our typical Ghana teams; currently we have 4 American participants and the possibility that our field partner Wycliffe Benin will be recruiting some local students to join our team as well .   We are praying for this to be possible.

   Like most of our Discovery teams,  we  start off with an online pre-trip orientation which our participants have almost completed.  Our first week in the country will consist of on-the-field orientation while living with national host families.  Our French will be tested and improved  as the team learns additional skills they will need to live in Benin successfully.  After that, our participants will spend the next month in various language projects where they will continue language & culture learning while doing research into linguistics and observing how Bible translators live and work.  We will likely partner with 2 or 3 different mission agencies while there.  Then the last week of our trip our team will regather for an on-the- field debrief during which we will process our experiences and prayerfully consider next steps into ministry for all.

Discovery….stateside!  While John is in Benin, there will be plenty for Shevawn to do here in our office, including:

¨ Helping John prepare his debrief and other trip materials that can be done via cyberspace.

¨ Dealing with some of our Wycliffe USA tasks: taking them off of John’s plate so he can concentrate on his team in Benin.

 ¨ Training Elizabeth in Orlando, again via cyberspace (more on this next week!) 

¨ Catching up on this and that in the office that we never get around to.

  

Although I will not be leading a team this year, I will definitely not be on vacation as I continue to do my part in helping bring more people into involvement with Bible translation.