The Collins Family

Join Wes Collins at Parkside Church for a three-week LIFE group focused on the book of Mark. Class begins July 7 at 9:45 am in Room 227 and will also meet July 14 and July 21.

We hope you will take advantage this opportunity to meet or catch-up with Wes and Nancy while they are here.

1. Our son, Isaac, is engaged to his sweetheart, Elizabeth. May God bless them in their preparations and their desire to honor God in their wedding and in their lives.

2. Wes has completed a good (?!) draft of his book on the Maya-Mam. There are many details to tend to still. Please pray this through to completion, and hopefully publication, later this year.

1.We are working to evaluate the two Latin American ministries we are involved in, one to Latino missionary candidates and the other to speakers of indigenous languages, looking for ways to contain costs, focus the content on our unique audiences and blend the training with internet technology. This is pretty new to me.

Dear and good friends,

The founding linguist of Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL, Dr. Ken Pike, considered members of Wycliffe to be hybrids--both real missionaries and real linguists--doing things that both missionaries and linguists do. One of the things linguists do is write and present papers. I have two major papers that I'm working on. Now that we're back from Latin America for a while, I am trying to finish the rewrite of my dissertation for a wider audience. I'm a good way through this project, in fact, I have only one chapter to go, but it's the hard chapter, of course. The easier stuff is pretty much done. My task is to take a book that I wrote eight years ago for a committee of four experts, and to rewrite it for an interested, but uninitiated crowd of (hopefully) thousands. If you don't mind praying for something as mundane as the completion of an anthropological book (actually an ethnography), I would appreciate it.

Greetings from Ashland, where we awoke to a 6-inch blanket of snow. It's quite a switch from the Venezuelan jungle.

1. Pray for Nancy's family at the home-going of Nancy's father, Dale. He was 86 years old. Although suffering for some six months from Alzheimer's, his death was quick and unexpected. We consider it a "severe mercy" from God that he didn't linger long.

Friends,

Thanks for your prayers and interest.

1. Nancy's father is rapidly declining with Alzheimer's. Nan is the firstborn, the nurse and one who can deal competently with mountains of paperwork. Pray for her and her sisters as they try to help their parents deal with this dreadful disease.

Download a PDF of the Collins' 2012 in Retrospect with photos here.

Good friends,

Greetings from rural Venezuela.  Here is our latest retrospective.  Thanks for your interest and concern.

Blessings to all.

Wes and Nancy

Greetings to our good Parkside friends.

Early March marks the end of our training program in rural Venezuela. We are working with 21 indigenous students and a dozen staff to help Indians produce materials and develop strategies to promote reading in their native languages. When people believe that their language has value and respect they are far more likely to produce literature in their language and enjoy reading it. We believe that this writing and reading adventure equips them to read well, and to read the Scriptures in particular.

Friends,

Greetings from West Virginia. Nan and I are headed home after a stint in Venezuela. We'll both be going back, Lord enabling, in two weeks. So this is just a very quick trip.

Second semester of CLAVE powers up on Jan. 7. We have 21 students speaking 14 different languages who are studying how their languages work linguistically and how they can parlay that knowledge into programs that promote the use and value of their native languages. Students created almost 100 booklets that we pray will promote the reading of native languages in general and in particular, the translation and reading native-language Scriptures.

Friends,

Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving.

Here are a few requests from us.

We are in the middle of training 22 speakers of indigenous languages in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela. There are 15 languages represented and students are learning techniques and strategies to help promote reading in general in their native languages, and reading the Scriptures in particular. First semester ends on December 14 and we start up again in early January.