In 2015 I was on a People Group Assessment (PGA) trip in a remote corner of Guinea. It was a memorable trip, what with our car getting a flat tire, so having to take motorcycles, driving through brackish water, falling off motorcycles, and every meal being way too spicy for me to be able to eat. Let’s just say that I survived on white rice for those few days, and was grateful the day someone came in from the fields with a bunch of peanuts!
The people group we visited were very remote, and their area had a distinct lack of non-spicy things for sale at the market. They also had a distinct lack of health centers, schools, and even roads. And churches. These people live way out in the boonies, and on our whole trip we didn’t see evidence of a single church, a single Christian, or a single person working towards sharing the gospel with them.
Fast forward to 2023, and now there is a missionary team who has come to live and work in this remote, remote place. They built houses and are now working on learning the language and culture of this unreached people group. Desiring to translate the Bible and plant churches, one of the steps that they need to take now is to make an alphabet and spelling rules. And that’s where I come in!
It’s now been 13 months since we’ve had our own alphabet in My Language, and over those last 13 months we’ve worked on coming up with different spelling rules. So now, as my friend helped us with our very first Alphabet Party, I am heading back to Guinea to help the team and people there create their own alphabet and the beginning of their spelling rules. I’m no expert, and I know that working with less-educated people in the village will be very different than working with our highly educated people in the city. I’m also a newby at this, compared to my friend who got us started. So I feel a bit like a big sister on the first day of first grade, taking my little sibling’s hand on their first day of kindergarten, and saying, “Don’t worry. It’s not that scary. I’ll help you. You can do this!” Could you pray for our Alphabet Party in Guinea which is soon to start?