The Collins Family

Friends,

I just got word that the CLAVE project is being featured on the SIL website. You can see it at: http://www.sil.org/sil/news/2012/clave-2nd-session-2012.htm

God's best to you all.

Wes

Dear and good friends,

Greetings from central Colombia. It is a warm and very rainy day, like most of the other 25 days that we have been here. It’s not so bad. The students are supposed to be studying and I’m supposed to be preparing, so the rain puts quite a damper on activities other than what we’re supposed to be doing anyway.

If you wonder where we are, we’re near the town of Villavicencio in the Colombian llanos (plains), about a four-hour bus ride southeast of Bogota, the Capital city. We are situated at 4 degrees, 13.398 minutes north latitude and 73 degrees, 37.790 minutes west longitude. That will get you to within ten feet of us—unless I’m in class, in which case you’ll be within 200 feet of us, which is still pretty close.

I wouldn’t normally know my exact latitude and longitude on the earth’s surface, but a professor colleague brought a GPS receiver down with him. He likes to know where he’s at, whereas Nan and I tend to simply go with the flow. I usually am aware of whether I’m north or south of the equator, and that’s about all the detail I can keep current on as far as my personal geo-positioning is concerned.

Dear and good friends,

Greetings from lovely, autumnal Ohio. Now that it's about to get cold, Nan and I will leave you to your devices, rakes and snow shovels and head south. We hope to be in Colombia on Wednesday evening and on to Villavicencio a day later. We have a few days of preparation and meetings and classes kick off on Monday. We have around 27 students signed up to join us for the next four months. The classes center on helping students see the value and importance of their native languages as these go mano a mano with the "monster language," Spanish.

In terms of majority and minority languages, we promote bilingualism. It's important for indigenous people to speak the language of greater communication (for them this means Spanish), but it is also important for them to keep their own language for many reasons which i've often talked about in these updates. The main reason is that their native language is what they understand best. One's native language is like comfort food for the mind--times ten. And when what one wants to understand is the Scriptures, these teachings are clearest and most compelling in a person's first language.

So the courses we teach over the next four months are aimed at helping indigenous students to get excited about their language, to create stuff to read--from poetry to drama--to photo-novels (the good kind). As there is more stuff to read, there is greater enthusiasm for reading and for the skills required to read well. And when people read well, they can read the Bible which can make a huge difference in their lives.

Dear and good friends,

Greetings from Ashland.

Nan and I are gearing up to leave for Colombia in less than a month. People have asked me what I’ve been doing all summer. It seems like I’ve spent much of the time looking for my keys. Actually, we’ve been busy and pretty happy. We’ve been able to see the kids and grandbabies several times. In reality, they are no longer babies—toddlers would be more correct. And we’ve done some work around the house that needed to be done including painting the exterior and building a deck with the competent help of my college room mate, Tim. Nan has largely been involved inside organizing stuff and keeping our home happy and livable.

We have visited our “northern churches” that support us in our work. We also have several partner churches in Florida that we did not visit this time home (We like seeing them in the winter anyhow!). We spent several Sundays at Parkside and at Grace, our home church in Ashland, where I’ve been teaching a weekly class on Paul’s letter to the Colossians.

Dear and good friends,

Greetings from Ashland, America's best kept secret. I returned home this past Tuesday from a week-long trip to Colombia to scout out details related to the training program that we plan to lead there from October to March. I was impressed by the quality of the site, but even more so, by the creativity in which Colombians are involved in Christian mission to the world.

Here are two examples. A local church in Bogota opened a small restaurant / coffee shop in the food court of an area mall. It is called "Geo" (photo left). The restaurant serves fish and chicken with seven different international sauces: Thai, Ghanian, Peruvian, Mexican, etc. The restaurant sports photos taken by missionaries serving around the world (not pictures of the missionaries themselves!) and a very cosmopolitan look. Customers can and often do donate to humanitarian projects and the earnings from the business of the restaurant go to help support the church's missionaries. In addition, the church plans to make Geo available as a business model for missionaries working in other countries around the world. The Bogota "mother business" will handle recipes, graphics and training of staff, and the business can be exported to places where it might be difficult for a missionary to get a visa as a religious worker.

A second project included 20 Bogota churches that competed in a soccer tournament. Each team had a country assigned, as if it were World Cup soccer, and the pairings and games were all according to World Cup protocol. Before each game, there was a short talk about the nations that the teams represented and prayers were offered to God for the expansion of God's Kingdom in and from those countries and elsewhere. The games were played on a short field, and I got to be there for the championship game and to give medals to the winners and runners up. If you're wondering, the red team (Portugal) won, 3-2 (photo above).

Parkside missionary Dr. Wes Collins will teach a 2-week LIFE group on Sunday, September 4 and Sunday, September 11. The group will meet in Room 223 (above the Commons) at 9:45am.  Come greet Wes and Nancy in person and hear what God is doing in Latin America.

Dear ones,

Greetings from lovely Ashland, Ohio’s best-kept secret.

We’ve been back here a bit over six weeks, after finishing our first semester teaching in Lima, Peru.

We had 25 students this year, the most ever. These young people are preparing to work in some form of cross-cultural ministry─or they already are. Nan and I talk often of how the commitment and dedication of these (mostly) young Latin Americans is such an encouragement and delight to us.

Mayra, a 50-something student from Mexico, came to me on the first day of class and quietly told me that she had trouble hearing. “What?” I asked. “I don’t hear well,” she repeated. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I can’t hear you.” Then she went into pantomime mode and pointed to her ears and raised her voice, “I can’t hear.” It was sort of a comedy of maladies. I told her that I wore hearing aids myself and that her class with me might turn out to be quite an adventure in gestures. We communicated pretty well and she has ended up being a fine student.

We’re home in Ohio for the summer. Our next planned trip is to Colombia for four months starting in October. This is where we plan to hold our next CLAVE course. That’s the course aimed at speakers of indigenous languages, where we try to help them plan for a future for their languages and cultures which are under so much pressure in our globalizing world. Sometimes we feel like we’re attempting to ward off a charging rhino with a pea-shooter, but we continue to think it the right thing to do.