It’s Official! Short-term teams make a difference!
“You have left behind two very solid contributions to the work.”
Jon Blackwell, literacy facilitator for the Ndop Language Cluster in NW Cameroon, hosted a Transform team in August this year. Afterwards he wrote to the team members about the impact of their stay in his village in August 2006.
“Sometimes short term teams come and go and one wonders what the impact has been, but in this case, you have left behind two very solid contributions to the work which are of practical value.”
The team of eleven, aged between 18 and 55, came from the UK and Holland.
Jon was very positive about the team’s programme: “It was based on the philosophy of getting stuck into a local community at village level. Getting to know your way around, meeting the local characters and the Chief, learning the language and interacting. This minimises the missionary tourism element and maximises the vision catching as well as the practical contribution.”
The first phase focussed on big book production and exploring the village environment.
“The stock of big books will very soon come into its own. As you know, they are already being used in Baba as demonstrations of the alphabet. In the second part of October we will begin to use some of the big books as the first literature in the Bamunka language. The Bamunkumbit team are at a similar stage and will take and use some of them also. That will be the third language to have its first literature using your work as its basis.”
In phase two, the team also ran a Bible Club for the local children. On the first day only nine turned up but by Friday the number had risen to seventy! One of the church elders made an appeal on the final day and thirty children made a commitment to follow Jesus. But how is this work going now that the Transform team is back home?
“Vandolene, Pastor Martin’s wife, is continuing this club twice a week and using the materials which you brought and left. Some children continue to come that were not previously involved in the church, so that is very positive and Vandolene feels that the programme is much more child friendly because of the materials she now has. We sometimes sit in the house and listen to the children going past singing choruses that they learnt during your time here!”
Jon then challenged the team to achieve more by “getting the message out to the churches regarding mother tongue literacy and Bible translation.” He also sees the “possibility of some of you considering whether God is calling you to do work associated with Bible translation, literacy or an associated support role, for a year or two or even longer.”
Two of the Cameroon team have applied to join Wycliffe!
Several local folk in Jon's village have already asked if there will be another team coming next year, so there is plenty of opportunity for others to get involved in making a difference.
