I spent most of last week in Lancaster Pennsylvania at the regional center for Wycliffe International. Yes, this is the Wycliffe Bible Translation organization (the largest missionary organization in the world.) I am very interested in linguistics and language learning, and intend to pursue linguistics as my undergraduate academic focus. Sometime in October I was poking around Wycliffe’s website (www.wycliffe.org) and stumbled across this Total It Up! thing. I read some more and became very excited.
The TOTAL in Total It Up! stands for Taste Of Translation And Linguistics. This progam is a five-day seminar that Wycliffe hosts a few times a year all over the U.S. The course is designed to give participants an idea of what applied linguistics, Bible translation, and Wycliffe missions is all about. They say that the instruction is comparable to introductory graduate-level stuff.
I attended this course in hopes that I would have a better idea of what linguistic studies were like (before I start down that road in college) and to gain a better understanding of the missionary work that Wycliffe does world-wide. Boy, did I get what I was looking for! Last week was one of the greatest weeks of my life.
Another factor that played into my attending this seminar was that I was softening to the idea of “missionary work” and overseas Bible translation. “Softening,” describes my state last October when I registered. Now I would describe myself as “quite inclined”. Yes, now I’ll be bending my schooling and college studies toward joining Wycliffe’s work. And now I am waiting upon the Lord for further direction. I’ve gone from a place of saying, “Lord, I submit my all to thee (but don’t make me be an overseas missionary)” to crying out, “Lord, I submit my all to thee (even my interest in linguistics; I’ll go wherever thou dost lead.)”
Anyways, instead of trying to describe this course in one colossal post, I’ll write posts on the various components of this course, Phonetics, Grammar, Literacy, Translation, Language Learning, Phonolgy, and perhaps some more about Wycliffe in general. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more pictures up, too.
“Last week was one of the greatest weeks of my life.”
–Same here (assuming I’m faithful in application), and I didn’t even go to Wycliffe. So if you say that just from going to Wycliffe…
Wycliffe + The Quest = ?
You know, blogs are interesting. Different things come out in blogging than in conversation. Even though I talked with you some about your week at Wycliffe, I learned some things from this post.
Yes, I was figuring the Quest into that statement. Even without the men’s conference, however, my cup was overflowing. Wycliffe answered a lot of questions for me: Will I really enjoy studying linguistics? Is Bible translation for me? Is God leading me towards missions? Can one raise a strong (potentially large) family and still be a missionary? If I am headed towards Bible translation, what schooling do I need? Et cetra, et cetra, et cetra.
While not all of these questions were answered emphatically, God has granted me assurance that this is the direction in which I should progress. Moreover, he has given me an excitement and zeal for Bible translation. Much of this assurance and enthusiasm was wrought through our instructors’ amazing life-stories.
Yes, blogs do give you a unique perspective into peoples’ lives.