"Gobsmacked" from the President of Wycliffe Canada

I have often reshared a post on facebook but I have never gone through the 'trouble', the 2 or 3 clicks it takes are so much work you know, to repost a blog on my blog. But I am doing so today.

So why repost this one called Gobsmacked, by Wycliffe Canada's president (this post is edited to include the post below as it is no longer available online)?

• because we first started our cross-cultural experience in Attawapiskat
• because both of my sisters live and work in Moosonee
• because I am part Metis and while that is only a small part of who I am, it is a part of who I am
• because Roy, the president of Wycliffe Bible Translators is right when he says:

      But the way I understand the Bible, believers should be first in line to repent, first in line to forgive, first in line to reconcile. Therefore the Church must lead with apology and honest attempts at addressing past wrongs.

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“Gobsmacked”

2018 – 04 – 06

by: Roy Eyre

That was not the word I was expecting to hear from a federal judge.  I was attending a Call to the Bar ceremony for a colleague stepping into a role as our in-house legal counsel and privacy officer.  An experienced lawyer stood and gave the judge an introduction to our colleague Maria Mach and to Wycliffe Bible Translators.  Before the judge began her prepared comments, she paused to respond to what she’d heard.

“I’m not sure if ‘gobsmacked’ is the right word, but I’m going to use it.  Given all the harm that the faith community has done to them, I’m gobsmacked that the First Nations would be coming to a Christian organization to help them with literacy and translation!”

The judge is right in implicating the faith community, of course.  Mark MacDonald, National Indigenous Bishop for the Anglican Church, described it as an intentional strategy at the time: “The mission of the church had been to suppress our cultures.”  The results are heart-breaking on so many levels.  A Plains Cree bishop told me, “Our generation is blaming the Church for losing their language and culture,”

Doesn’t that break your heart?

So you can imagine how an outsider would view our current work; the kind of cooperative effort we’re engaging in is stunning.  To me, it just makes sense.  Yes, the residential schools were cooperative efforts between government and Church.  Both share blame.  But the way I understand the Bible, believers should be the first in line to repent, first in line to forgive, first in line to reconcile.  Therefore the Church must lead with apology and honest attempts at addressing past wrongs.  The Truth and Reconciliation Commission called religious denominations to take action in educating on our tragic history and why apologies were necessary, in respecting indigenous culture and spirituality, in repudiating colonial thinking, and in actively seeking reconciliation.*

Having done that, an innovative collaboration can take place.  The Cree have some interesting motivations to ask us for help.

In restoring their languages, the First Nations seek to reclaim their cultural identity and stem the tide of alcoholism, victimization and suicides.  Oji-Cree teacher Zipporah Mamakwa longs for a change in the next generation:

“It is my belief as a language teacher that the language amongst our children brings a sense of identity, a sense of belonging, a sense of security and comfort.  We don’t feel whole without our language.”

But that’s just the first step.  Our Cree brothers and sisters believe their people need to understand how God views them.  God wants to speak directly to every man, woman and child to show them they are created in His image, that He loves them, that He understands their pain and that He desires to redeem what has been broken and lost.  That understanding doesn’t come because someone outside their culture tells them.  It comes when they can hear God speaking their language.  The Bible clothed in local language and culture is never an outsider.

These two strands come together powerfully to effect real change.  A holistic program that blends literacy, language development, community development, health awareness and mother-tongue education together with the Bible in a language that speaks to the heart can be the catalyst for a whole new trajectory.  Indigenous people groups can see themselves as God sees them.  The can plan for a more hope-filled future.  They can find healing from past hurts and injustice.  Self-esteem grows, as the people begin to use their own language.  Quality of life and life expectancy increases.  Children’s education and adult literacy reverse the sense of inadequacy and ignorance.  Relationships in families improve.

Why shouldn’t the Church go first in atoning for past harm?  Why shouldn’t the First Nations see in us a willingness to make amends and seek reconciliation?  If we know the gospel and the lavish grace of our Saviour, we know that no sin is too great, and no wounds too deep for His healing touch.  If we know the immense power of radical repentance, confession and forgiveness, we aren’t gobsmacked when God restores a path for the First Nations to work with a Christian organization like ours.

This is not Wycliffe’s story.  It’s not even the First Nations’ story.  It’s God’s story, and we’re privileged to play a part together in it.

Interested in learning more about Wycliffe’s work among the Cree?  Even better, you can participate through funding.  Check out the Cree Initiative or contact us.

If you want a story today of God's redemption, even when it's the actions of the church which must be redeemed, take a few minutes and read through this post. And maybe, even, follow the other links and learn more about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

*Not familiar with the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action that specifically called out the faith community and church denominations?  For an easy-to-read version, click here.  Start with nos. 48, 49, 50, 59, and 60.  CBC recently created an assessment of progress at Beyond94, and I was pleased to see that the Christians have gone first.  The mainline churches responsible for so many of the residential schools are leading the way.  The Kairos program, which we have invested heavily in, is also mentioned.  But there’s very litter progress mentioned from evangelical denominations.

Life in the Fast Lane

It has been five months since I last sat down and thought to myself "I don't have a lot to do, I should write an update." Why? Because the last 5 months have been FULL. Yes, all capitals are required. I have been living life on high speed for several months and with summer, thankfully, life and work will slow down for a time. Here is a bird's-eye view of what has been going on.

March

• in early January Wycliffe's Toronto Office was put up for sale and we expected it to take five to six months to sell. Instead it sold very quickly and with a closing date of March 16th (which also happened to be the last Friday of March Break). So the first full week of March was packing the office and the first Monday of March Break saw me at our new office storing everything that was being moved over. We had 20 years worth of office stuff to sort through!
• also in March we bought a house and put our home on the market. The house we bought is only about a five minute drive from our old house but puts us within the same high school boundary lines as 95% of our kids' classmates. 

April

• Though we left our old office in March, our new location was not yet ready for us. For several weeks each Toronto staff member worked from home. On April 2 and 3 we began the process of unpacking all the boxes, which we had stored at the new location, receiving delivery of office furniture, setting up computers and networks, making sure phones worked, etc. This was a long and busy week and I was grateful to have two colleagues from our head office - our properties manager and one of our IT staff. We are now located in a building owned by SIM and shared by us along with OMF (moving in in mid-August), Jews for Jesus, Interserve, and the Langham Partnership.
• Jeff traveled to Alaska for ten days, during which I traveled to Campbellville, Ontario (near Milton, on the west side of Toronto) for a week of meetings with my member care colleagues. During these meetings we worked on the next budget, reviewed and updated policies, and walked many times around the building trying to find cell phone signals :) Thankfully Jeff's parents came up to stay with the kids and Grandpa Green did a great job on his own with them for a few days while Grandma was at her own work meetings.
• The week after we both arrived home Jeff and I both spent a day in Guelph. One of the ways, perhaps the only way, our jobs overlap is in relation to Cree Bible translations in Canada. Each year Cree Bible translators come together for a training workshop in Guelph. The projects represented are split between Wycliffe Canada and Canadian Bible Society. While Jeff went to teach at the workshop, I went to meet with Wycliffe members who also work in these projects often as trainers and consultants. We did not, however, manage to go on the same day.
• During the last week of April Jeff was in Italy for work meetings. This was his second last training/orientation meeting for working with Canadian Bible Society. 

May

• Directly after Jeff's trip to Italy, I was in the Kitchener/Waterloo area for a two day program called Discover Wycliffe during which people interested in Wycliffe can come and get an overview of the who, why, what, and hows of Wycliffe Canada. I taught two sessions during this time, one on health and one on cross cultural living. 
  

• We moved house on May tenth, which means over the past several weeks we were also packing! With the help of our small group and Jeff's parents we loaded up a large UHaul (which. by the way, I drove!) and moved about 1 km away, and set up home for the last time, honest. 
• Two days after moving Jeff left for his last two-week on-campus residency near Boston, Mass, as part of his D.Min. Those two weeks were not without hiccups in our new house but my folks came down for five days and helped me set up, buy carpets and other things, and enlarge the patio and put in a small garden. A lot of work but I am so grateful for our home and them. We are in a very friendly neighbourhood.

June

June was truly meant to be slow. I had planned for it to be slow. And even now I look at my calendar and there are not big events. But there were several little events:

• numerous plumbing appointments (it turns out we have a stream under our house; I am not joking, I promise)
• meetings with members overseas who are facing some challenges in their assignments, with members returning to Canada for home assignment and needing a space to process, and meeting with others moving back to Canada and deciding what is next for them
• one of my members died suddenly in early June
• Ana was baptized!
• the girls' school's end-of-year festival, which I love to help run and makes an 11-hour day from set-up through tear-down
• finalizing an agreement to send Wycliffe Canada members to somewhere we've never sent our members. This was exciting though laborious work and came to a satisfying conclusion a week ago. 

Going forward, the summer is expected to be less busy, at least that is what the calendar says. With the kids home every day I leave the house at 6 a.m. and work till noon. While that is awfully early for this night-person it lets me spend more of the daytime at home and truly, our kids are not moving much before 10 or 11 a.m. anyway.


As you read above, there are many things I am thankful for. As you give thanks with me for the things above, please pray for 

• rest over the summer
• Ana, who is having difficulty falling asleep at night because she is alone in her room
• Eli, who will be starting a new school for gr. 10 - he will be back with his classmates from gr. 8, so this is a plus
• the members returning to the field after a time in Canada - that I would do due diligence in ensuring each member is ready to return (sufficient finances, sufficient rest, mentally, spiritually & emotionally healthy...)
• two families who have returned to Canada permanently, that each would know where and how God is leading them next

Reason to Celebrate

The beginnings of Wycliffe started 100 years ago because of a question asked by many others since then. In 1917 Townsend arrived in Guatemala as a Bible salesman. Townsend later recalled that Guatemala’s indigenous inhabitants (in particular the Kaqchikel) kept asking, if not in these exact words, something like: “If your God is so powerful, why doesn’t he speak my language?” Staggered by the implications of this question, Townsend blazed a new path in missions. By 1930 Townsend completed the Kaqchikel New Testament and at the same time began a training school to teach indigenous pastors. In 1934 these beginnings arrived in the United States and were known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). In 2001 Jeff and I attended CanIL, the Canadian SIL training school, and in 2004 boarded a plane to Asia.

SIL is key to the work of Bible Translation. These schools, which exist in several countries around the world, are where translators-in-training go to learn both linguistics and exegetical training. A good Bible translation begins with a good translator. But there’s more to what we celebrate this year besides the beginnings of the training school, we celebrate the purpose of this school and all that followed it.

In the year 2000: there were about 3,000 languages with no portion of the Bible

In the year 2007: there were about 2,250 languages with no portion of the Bible

In the year 2017: there were about 1,636 languages with no portion of the Bible

In the year 2017: at least 3,300 languages representing over 652,000,000 people have the New Testament

This is reason to celebrate - progress is being made. We celebrate not because the goal is to produce a well known book but because the word of God has the power to transform lives and it is reaching more people every year!

Wycliffe Global Alliance, of which Wycliffe Bible Translators Canada is apart, is comprised of about 100 organizations from over 60 countries around the world. As a whole we are involved in more than 2,100 of the current 2,600 languages being worked on today.

And yet, there are still 114 million people with no portion of the Bible; zip, zilch, nada.

Imagine not having:

Your favourite book in the Bible to sit down to read
Your favourite passage to encourage and teach you
Your favourite verse to comfort or guide you
Any portion of scripture to read or listen to.

Further, those who have the Bible, the whole Bible, know that we need all of it. The New Testament is best understood in light of the Old Testament. That 652 million people have the NT is great, but those same 652 million are missing more than half of God’s word. The work is not done.

So let’s celebrate (notice the new logo with fireworks!), but let’s also press on.