Dear Friends,
How do you get an elephant to change direction? As the rider on the elephant, you can kick and shout, but you aren’t going to get that elephant to budge unless you find some other way to motivate it. The wisdom about elephants comes from a book that I (Doug) read last year: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. The book gives lots of insight into ways to motivate both the elephants (emotional side) and the riders (rational side) to change direction. To better understand this, let me use a real problem. I’ve explained before that there is a method of collecting 15,000 words or more from a language inside of two-weeks. We are now calling it “Rapid Word Collection.” Traditionally, language workers develop a database of 5,000 or more words over a period of many years. If they are native speakers and participating in a Bible translation project, they don’t have time to “waste” on developing a dictionary, even though it would help the translation in the long run. The status quo is the elephant, just plodding along and going in the direction he has always gone in. The riders, on the other hand, are the people who supervise these language projects. They help the teams plan what linguistic work needs to be done and decide when they are ready to start work on Bible translation. These riders have heard about the fast method of collecting words, but may be skeptical about it, or may feel powerless to change the direction of their elephant.
On January 12-14, we held a workshop composed of elephants and riders, of both language team members and supervisors from several countries. Our goal was to kick start the use of Rapid Word Collection in West Africa, providing both the motivation (for the elephants) and the conviction (for the riders) to implement this new method in the languages in their area. To do this, we not only explained why this method was so effective, we actually did a mock word collection workshop on the last day. It was amazing: we had German speakers in one group, Lyele speakers in another group, and a third group collecting words from three languages at once. Two typists entered them all together in a single database as if it were a single language. After working hard for about 3 hours, we netted in over 800 words and predicted that had we continued at that pace we would have a database of 15,000 words in two weeks! There was not a single person at the end of the workshop who preferred doing it the “old way”, and we are confident that as they share their experience, more teams will adopt the new method. | 
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But that’s not all! As a result of the workshop, the Puguli language team is heading out in just a week to do rapid word collection in their village. It will take place from Jan 24 – Feb 4 in Bonzan, Burkina Faso. Please pray that they will be able to successfully implement the methods they learned, and pray for a success story that will motivate many other language groups to do the same.
With Priscilla’s assignment to the SIL Africa Area department, we will be traveling together to meetings in Kenya, and in Dallas, Texas from Jan. 27 – Feb 20. Friends of ours will supervise Kevin and Roger in Ouagadougou during our three-week absence, and we would appreciate your prayers for them and for our travels. Our itinerary is posted on our website.
Our son Kevin continues the college search. We’d love to know where he will be so that we can plan our furlough accordingly, but need to wait to see what scholarships he is offered from his top choices. Please pray for the Lord’s leading, and for scholarships that will make tuition possible. Roger is doing well on his trumpet and played during recent concerts. We want to see him in a Christian school with a challenging band program during our furlough. Sigh… one more factor to consider. We are thankful for Jesus’ teaching to “Consider the birds…” (Mat. 6:26). God provides for them and will continue to provide for us, no matter what our worries may be. We pray the same for you, as you enter the new year with unknowns of your own. God does promise us everything we need (v.33)!
Partners in the Gospel, (Phil 1:5)
Doug & Priscilla Higby
Prayer & Praise
- We praise God for the Rapid Word Collection workshop that inspired many to go out and use the new method for collecting words. Pray that there will be an increase in the number of teams that organize such a workshop.
- Pray for the Puguli translation team’s word collection workshop Jan 24-Feb 4. There is a technical glitch that needs to be resolved before the workshop. Pray that not only will it result in a useful body of words to help speed along the Bible translation, but that it will be a testimony to the success of the new method for even our skeptics to see!
- Pray for Kevin in his search for a college to study environmental science and biology. Pray for the Lord’s direction and provision.
- Praise God for safe travels during our Christmas road trip to Ghana. Despite a breakdown, Doug was able to do a roadside repair that held until we got back home.
- Pray for the Language Technology Specialist workshop being held in Nairobi the middle two weeks of January. It is where trainers are being brought up to date on new software so they may train Bible translators how to use it.
- Pray for the political situation in Ivory Coast. One of invitees to the word collection workshop was not able to attend due to the political unrest there that made it unsafe to travel. Pray that the election dispute would be resolved, and that a civil war be avoided.
Higby_January_2011.pdf
