Category: Uncategorized

It’s noon and *Ibrahima calls, asking if I’m home.  I say yes.  He follows it up with, “I’m nearby.  Can I stop over?”  (I think he adds that question because I’m white.)  I say yes again.  And I quickly think – hmm, when *Adama called a little after 11 saying he was coming over, I […]

Ethnos360 is sometimes seen as “old school” among missions organizations working in Bible translation, since we still see the importance of the missionary learning the language and not just facilitating mother tongue speakers as they translate into their own language. And that’s one of the factors that has drawn me to Ethnos360 and continues to […]

Just over a year.  That’s how long it’s been since I stepped off the plane, finally having permission to return to My Country, after 1003 nights out of the country since my planned return in 2018.  And though it hasn’t always been easy, it’s still so wonderful to be back for however long God has […]

I have good news to share with you – our alphabet is approved by the leaders of My People! I was recently in Senegal for some meetings, and it was on my first Sunday in Senegal that the chief of the whole people group, as well as many village chiefs, literacy teachers in the language […]

I’ve posted about the traffic here in the city before, but it continues to strike me as something to share since it’s so different from the traffic on the other side of the ocean.  I often feel like it would be fun to drive with a Go Pro camera to let you really see what […]

For those of you who are parents, what do you do to help your children succeed? Do you read books to them? Send them to a good school? Enroll them in extra-curricular activities? Bring them to church? Try to help them make good friends? Or do you sacrifice a goat or two and shave their […]

When I was at the orthography (alphabet) conference in Kenya last month, one of the presenters (thanks, Helen Eaton!) showed us the slide that you see in the picture above.  She asked us to take two minutes to note down whether these were written as one word, two words, or with a hyphen in English.  […]

Grammar. The mere thought of it has most of you running away in fright and the rest yearning to hear more. I have to admit that I never liked English grammar classes either. But it’s fascinating, even though a bit frustrating, to study grammar in another language.  That’s especially true if it’s a language that […]