Collins' April 2011 Prayer Update

Greetings from back in Lima. Classes fire up today. Here are a few prayer requests:

CILTA is committed to training Latino missionary candidates in the linguistics skills needed to learn minority languages and engage in cross-cultural ministry. Classes started in Lima Peru on March 21 with 25 students and five profs from seven different countries. This is our largest class ever. Half of the students are already working in some kind of ministry and all hope to become more effective in language-related ministry.

Pray for our adult children. Elisa and Yury have twin boys almost two years old; Molly and Eden (almost one year) are visiting California soon to scout out opportunities there--we hope she stays back east near family; and Isaac has been hired by Elisa's husband (Yury) to open a second location of their leather repair business in Atlanta. The kids and grandkids all need God's strength and wisdom.

Thanks much.

Wes

Collins' March 2011 Prayer Letter

Dear and good friends,

Greetings from the Ucayali valley. I've run into a few animals lately, including a young fer-de-lance, one of the most venomous snakes in the world. I was talking to a student and she saw it in the road--It was young--only a foot or so long, and it may have been injured. We didn't make positive identification (a yellow throat), nor did I check the extent of any injuries. Having heard stories of fer-de-lances in Guatemala, I wasn't going to do much checking while the snake was still alive.

As I sit here a little after 8 PM, I'm listening to the mating call of the three-toed sloth that inhabits a tree near here. Two nights ago, I heard a pair of owls within twenty feet of the house. I was able to go out and shine a flashlight on them and see them. They were white owls each about the size of a small chicken. They aren't poisonous, so I looked as closely as I could. There's also a lot of other birds, insects and varmints around, so the night sounds are delightful.

Collins' 2010 in Retrospect

Download this letter as a PDF with photos here.

2010 was a year where Spanish-speaking countries were much in the news. The year was bookended with news from Chile, from the unimaginable 8.8 magnitude earthquake in February to the rescue in October of 33 Chilean miners after 69 days of being trapped almost a half-mile deep in the ground. Spain won the World Cup in soccer, and Spaniards won both the Tour de France and Wimbledon. It was clearly a good year to be un hispano-hablante.

There were lots of other happenings: the ongoing horror of Haiti’s January earthquake, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which, despite occasional reports to the contrary, will continue to be a big mess for a long time. The Vancouver Winter Olympics passed without much fanfare, or so it seemed to me far away from the action. I heard a lot more about US mid-term elections, but it seems like perhaps another pendulum swing in our weather-vane approach to politics (not to overly mix metaphors (or split an infinitive)).

Collins' February 2011 Prayer Update

We're in full swing of second semester for CLAVE, a training program for promoting literacy and linguistic skills among speakers of indigenous languages. We have 17 students that speak ten different languages. They've got six weeks left of class and are very encouraged. Pray that they take their enthusiasm and new skills with them back to their homes and villages.

Collins' January 2011 Prayer Update

Greetings from the Amazon.

I leave in two hours for Lima and then Ohio (via NYC and Chicago). I hope to be home in Ashland by 6:00 tomorrow night.

A few items for prayer: We just finished the first 8-week training program for indigenous students. Every student produced booklets and other reading materials in their native languages. They are extremely excited to see their languages written. Our hope is that these and many other written materials will encourage minority language speakers to read and value their own languages so that they could read the Scriptures with relish and understanding.

Collins' Update December 2010

Dear friends,

Greetings from the lovely Amazon Basin. I’m sitting here at the keyboard overlooking the Ucayali River and listening to streaming classical Christmas music on the Internet. It’s 80 degrees at 7:00 AM. I’m a morning person. It just doesn’t get much better than this. I’m thinking of Nancy in Ashland where it’s 32 degrees with a winter mix. I’ll see her, Lord enabling, in just a week. But for now, we’re nearing the first day of summer here in the southern hemisphere. Yesterday I saw a four-foot long iguana and a coatimundi (sort of a cross between a racoon and an anteater).

A friend of mine had a buddy in college that everyone called “That’s nothin’” because no matter how outrageous an experience you may have had, he always responded with “That’s nothin,’” and he would then proceed to tell an even more outrageous saga.

Collins' December 2010 Prayer Letter

Dear and good friends,

Greetings from the Amazon basin. It’s still 81 degrees and 80% humidity at 10:00 at night. I’m hoping it will rain later to cool things down, and it might. I heard thunder earlier today.

Thanksgiving is coming up, which starts the holidays in my book. I will start listening to streaming Christmas carols, and I might string some green and red streamers or something from my yellow and tan walls. Actually, we get lots of color from the local vegetation. There are all kinds of tropical plants and orchids (actually bromeliads) around that you pay big bucks for at home, but here they just shoot up by themselves. I’m staying in a small house just a few hundred feet from an oxbow lake on the Ucayali River, the main tributary to the Amazon, which is born about 400 miles downstream from my perch. Small fishing boats drift along and others, powered by small peque-peque engines putter by at all hours of the day and night.

Collins' November 2010 Prayer Update

Greetings from Peru. We have no electricity or water where CLAVE is supposed to kick off on Monday. We hear that things will be ready on Saturday.

Classes start on Monday (Oct. 25). We are planning for twenty students speaking 10 different indigenous languages. Pray that students would get a long well in very hot and humid circumstances and in intense classes. They will spend about 7 hours a day in classes.

Many of this year's students do not claim to be Christians. Pray that our faculty of ten would be a blessing to all of our students, both academically and spiritually.

Thanks much.

Wes

Collins' October 2010 Prayer Letter

Dear and good friends,

Greetings from lovely Ashland on warm fall evening.

They say not to start a letter with an apology, so I won't apologize for not letting you know about our Colombian friend, Ismael, and his challenges back home "on the reservation." The fact is, I thought I had already brought you up to date on his situation and I see now that I haven't. But don't take that as an apology--a confession maybe--but not an apology.

I had written about the politics of his group, the leaders of which are well served by indigenous solidarity. But Ismael had become a Christian and, while still holding tightly to his language and culture, he is now firmly pursuing life in Christ. This goes against tribal rules and tradition.

Meet Wes and Nancy Collins this Sunday!

This Sunday, September 12, Wes and Nancy Collins will be at Parkside Church. Please come greet them and hear an update on their ministry with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Peru and Guatemala at 11:15 am in the Fellowship Hall. They will also be at the Missions Table in the Commons throughout the morning.