Merry Christmas
and have a very
Blessed New Year!
Praising the Lord!
· The Lord provided housing for me with another missionary family in Bamenda! And it’s just down the street from the BRO (Bamenda Regional Office). This housing is temporary, 3-6 months, but the perfect amount of time to get used to living in Bamenda again.
· Many have responded with encouragement and prayer support. Thank you for all your encouraging emails!
· As of two weeks ago Wycliffe reduced my monthly support level to $1400 due to the amazing housing in the Northwestern part of Cameroon. So now I currently have around 30% of my monthly support.
· Renewed my passport at the end of November. Got it back within two weeks. Crazy!
About two weeks ago, I realized that once I have 100% of the monthly support, Wycliffe would like for me to maintain it for 1-2 months. This was a little disappointing at first, but the Lord has His plan and it will always trump mine...thankfully. :) So as long as I have 100% by mid-end January I will be able to leave in March! Until then I will continue to work at the hospital and get things prepared in order to leave.
Many Blessings!
Janelle
This second letter is from Cam & Valerie Hamm, my good friends in Cameroon. I pray that they will be able to show you even better the wonderful work that is and will be going on in Cameroon.
January 5, 2011
Bamenda, Cameroon
Dear friends of Janelle,
You have been hearing from Janelle about her desire to come to Cameroon, Central Africa and help with Bible translation both from the language side and the administrative side. We thought it might be helpful for you to hear from the team of missionaries already on the field, to get a better understanding of the needs that she will be filling. We are involved in the Ndop cluster, a group of ten related languages located in the North West Region of Cameroon, and we are specifically responsible for ensuring linguistic work is done to prepare for Bible translation in this cluster.
Janelle has enjoyed working in admissions at the hospital in Stayton, OR so much in the past few years, that we thought of her when our regional director, Ria Hedinger, was in desperate need of an assistant. This regional office supports active Bible translation projects in more than 40 languages with oversight of missionary personnel and supervision of training for nationals. Ria has had several assistants come over the past couple years, but they were only available for six to twelve months. Having Janelle come for two years will allow Ria the chance to share more of her administrative responsibilities. Her last assistant left in December, so she is definitely looking forward to Janelle’s imminent arrival.
But administrative work will only take part of Janelle’s time here. There is also a team of people working on translation in the ten languages of the Ndop Plain. In the past few years, a new alphabet has been established for each of these unwritten languages, and initial literacy materials created to help teach the people to read their own mother tongue. This has been the joint work of the long-term team, and many short term workers. The language group closest to the regional center is called Bamessing. It’s about a forty-minute drive on paved road. This is the language we have invited Janelle to come and help us with.
The next major hurdle on the road to translated Scriptures for Bamessing is to understand how their language works—its grammar! Many of you may shudder to think about studying grammar, but it is really quite interesting and revealing to see how people use language to create interest, highlight key points, or change emphasis (example: reorder the normal order of a noun phrase). Other phrases are used to link events, help the listener follow the main characters of a story, or understand if the story is true or fictional. This work is ongoing in five of the other languages, and Janelle is willing to help us in Bamessing. It seems to be great timing. We are praying that there will be a team of people ready for training in translation principles beginning in May of this year, so it’s important to get the grammar work going to keep up with the needs of the translation team.
We have a grammar workshop planned for the end of March which would include six languages. We are sincerely hoping that Janelle will be able to come in time to meet the Bamessing team that will join us there, and assist them in the process of discovering the working of their own language (grammar is something that each speaker knows implicitly, but gets easily lost in the process of translation if it is not understood explicitly).
Janelle had hoped to arrive in January, but she needs to have committed financial support in order for her to make final preparations to travel. It is likely that some people will not begin their financial support until she leaves for Cameroon, but she needs to have some way to know that she will have the support that she needs before she can go. This gets a bit tricky. Many of you have said that you want to support her, so let us just encourage you to let her know what you are intending, so that she can have a more accurate picture of her current support level. You can indicate your support by completing the attached form and returning it to Wycliffe Associates at the address shown on the form (you can also donate online – instructions are on the attached form as well). We are very grateful for your part in encouraging Janelle and supporting her in many ways. Know that you are helping the Bible translation work in Cameroon.
God bless you,
Cam and Valerie Hamm
Linguist/Translators in the Ndop Cluster, Cameroon