About the Collins Family

Since the time of William Carey and other patriarchs of modern cross-cultural missions, the work has in large part been financed and carried out by believers in the West--Britain and western Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Today many countries that historically have "received" missionaries, are now "sending" missionaries--especially countries like India, Nigeria, Korea, and many Latin American countries. This appears to be an irreversible trend as a greater and greater percentage of cross-cultural missionaries now hail from the "third world." This is an exciting and noteworthy occurrence, one fraught with new challenges and issues.

The training and equipping of these missionaries has often taken place in the West with English as the medium of instruction, since the West is where the support and vision for mission has historically arisen. But this is changing. Today mission leaders and missionary young people are asking that training occur more locally and in languages other than English.

Wycliffe has tried to help answer this call by offering training at sites around the world in languages such as French, German, Portuguese, Indonesian and Spanish. The center for Wycliffe's Spanish training is Ricardo Palma University in Lima, Perú, where a year-long program called CILTA (Intensive course for linguistics, translation and literacy) is offered. They presently have 17 students from four countries studying topics that will be beneficial to them in their lives and ministries. For a closer look at the program, go to www.sil.org. 2006 marks the fourth year for the course, which has trained, thus far, over 40 students now working in languages and countries around the world.

Wes & Nancy are receiving partial financial support from Parkside.