The Higby Herald - December 2011

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. --Titus 2:11

Give thanks to God with us for His outpouring
of grace to us in Christ Jesus.
Labor with us in making Christ known,
so that people from all nations may know His saving grace.

Merry Christmas from our home to yours! We are thrilled to have the opportunity to celebrate Christ's birth together as a family and with our extended church family.

Kevin, freshman at John Brown University, arrived safely to us in Michigan last Friday evening after driving approximately 1000 miles in two days by himself. Needless to say, we have been thankful for the lack of snow. Henry, sophomore at Calvin College, moved in the following day. I (Doug) also arrived home the same day from my meetings in North Carolina and Texas, so we have the whole family together for about two weeks. There was just enough snow that fell last night for a snowball fight, but not enough for a snowman. We still all get a bit giddy when the snow falls and act like little children, not having seen any for years.

It took a while for our church speaking schedule to get started due to my rather full conference and meeting schedule in the fall, but in 2012 things are lining up quickly. You can find our schedule on our website. Because Roger attends school locally, most of those trips will be on weekends, requiring a lot of road trips from Grand Rapids and back. We enjoy sharing the positive things that God is doing, but both the schedule and expense of all the travel will be taxing on us in numerous ways and we would appreciate your prayers.

God has opened the door for a special opportunity in Ghana in January and February. Several SIL colleagues and I have an opportunity to facilitate a Rapid Word Collection workshop for the Bulsa people who speak the Buli language. They have an active whole Bible translation project and are excited about promoting their language in the hope of seeing it taught in the classroom. One of the requirements for the language to be officially recognized by the government is for it to have a dictionary. My colleagues and I are going to northern Ghana on January 16 to get the workshop started and to ensure that the specific procedures we have established are followed. In addition, there will be a professional video crew to capture what is accomplished and create a promotional video to drive more languages groups to do the same. However, all these plans came about last-minute and we covet your prayers for smooth operation, including Ghanaian visas for the five members of our team.  Please also be praying for advance preparations on the ground in Ghana, that the team will arrive to find the participants ready and prepared.  Our minimum goal is to collect 15,000 words and put them up on the internet with English translations, but who knows, maybe we'll beat the world record?

We wish you God's blessings in the coming year as you serve Him where He has placed you. We look forward to see how God will lead us in the year 2012 as we work out our next assignment location and remain open to His leading.  We hope to see many of you, and hope also that you will be encouraged by the good reports we bring of God's faithfulness.  May you experience that same faithfulness in your own lives, and as our...

Partners in the Gospel,      (Phil 1:5)

Doug & Priscilla Higby