The Higby Herald - April 2011

Dear Friends,

Look around the next time you are sitting in church and take note of how many people are reading Scripture on electronic devices, whether it be a Kindle, a PDA, or a cellphone.  If you are not one of those, don’t worry, Bibles will continue to be printed for many years to come and you can continue to use your highlighter and pen to scribble notes in the margin.  What we want to draw your attention to is the fact that what you see changing gradually around you is happening at a much more dizzying pace in third world countries.  The United Nations just released a report saying that 57% of the people in the developing world are cell phone users!  In real life terms, this means that you would probably own a cell phone before you owned a car, motorcycle or even a bicycle. In the past eight years, the global use of cell phones has increased from 1 billion to 4.6 billion users, making this the fastest growing technology of all time.  It works especially well in developing nations because it can grow with very little infrastructure to support it.

So what does this mean for Bible translation?  This question was one of the focuses of the International Language Programs conference that P.J. and I (Doug) attended in February. How will people access God’s Word in the future? Most likely on their cell phones!  We need to be harnessing this new technology for the Kingdom of God. In early March, I participated in a publishing summit in Thailand where we discussed specific ways to adapt from our text-only, print-centric Scripture and dictionary publishing processes in order to publish on cell phones and the Internet. Today, we can export directly from our Bible translation software to an electronic format that can be displayed on the majority of cell phones in production today.  There are even ways to include audio Scriptures being done by partners like YouVersion and others who are willing to put our Bible texts and audio in their freely available cell phone application.

After the publishing summit and a head full of new ideas, I landed back in Ouagadougou, smack in the middle of the Language Technology Specialist training course.  After all, this is where the rubber hits the road -- training the trainers who will bring this to translation projects all across Africa. Olivia was one of the first participants to succeed in exporting a Bible to her cell phone, complete with all the special characters and accents.  You should have seen the smile on her face!  Now she knows how and can help the teams in Congo learn how to distribute God’s Word in this new way.  We are thankful for the success of the 5th annual Outilingua [oo-tee-lingua] training course, attended by 20 participants from 14 countries.  The French slogan on the back of the pictured T-shirt means: "Harnessing technology to accelerate the translation of God's Word."

Yikes! With furlough beginning in less than three months, we have a lot on our plates.  The status quo was working quite well for us after six years in the same location and it would be much easier for us to just stay right here and soldier on. But we are blessed with P.J.’s keen organizational ability and are spending our evenings and weekends preparing to sell off our possessions and pack away the best of 17 years’ worth of stuff. We have not yet figured out where we will be staying for our year in the US, and if you have any ideas, we are listening! Kevin and Henry will be in college (Kevin is still deciding where); we need to be in a place where Roger can attend a Christian high school, and where someone can host him a couple times during the year when P.J. and I need to travel.  Strangely (for us) we aren’t worried.  God has been so good to us in the past that we are confident to patiently follow His leading, wherever that takes us.

On the political front, our fair city of Ouagadougou has been experiencing some unrest, with disgruntled military personnel rebelling and roughing up politicians, and even looting in the market.  Gunfire was heard throughout the night this past Tuesday, resulting in another SNOW day for the boys, as we have fondly termed it (Sudden Nocturnal Ovations of War) -- their first being in December 2006.  A general curfew has been imposed and we are keeping low until the situation becomes normal.  We expect this to blow over in a week's time.  Burkina Faso has typically been very stable.

Prayer & Praise

• Praise God for the amazing new ways for people to access Scripture on cell phones – even for those in developing countries who can’t read!
• Praise God for the mission that will be taking over our house here in Ouagadougou in July.  They have agreed to purchase most of our furniture, enabling us to stay until we leave in mid-June.
• Praise God for the successful Puguli word collection workshop.  13,534 words were collected in two weeks!
• Pray for Ouagadougou due to the military unrest, that the political situation would soon be calmed.
• Pray for Kevin as he will be making a college decision soon, as we wait for the last financial aid packages to come in.
• Pray for our furlough location.  We need to figure out where to call home base where we can plan visits to update all of you and our supporting churches.