Hey everyone! Summer is fully upon us, and I hope you are all finding ways to enjoy it. Time feels like it is flying by over here. The other buildings in the development next to the base, where the apartment I moved into is, are rapidly being completed and being filled with people moving in. This has been nice as it no longer feels like we’re living on a construction site.
Following up on my last update, work is plowing ahead on the new website we are building for the base. I am so thankful for your prayers, they are working! We are pressing on, closer and closer to completion. I am still enjoying working with my small team. I have taught them how to do some basic HTML coding over the last month and we are now in full swing of building out all the pages. Once completed this site will be a real asset to all the various ministries of the base. The people here are extremely excited about its arrival, and I must say, so am I.
This last month, another unique opportunity popped up for our team. Several large bases have been working for several years to help accelerate global bible translation. An app has been developed that makes it easy to work with members of unreached people groups to begin oral translation of the Bible. By the latest estimates, there are still around 2000 languages without any kind of Bible whatsoever. In the next 5-years, the goal is to start translation in 1000 of them.
Alongside the technology, a 3-month course has been developed to train missionaries to go to these unreached people groups and begin the process of translation. This Oral Bible Translation School or “OBT” for short is being run in 6 locations for the first time later on this year. YWAM Lausanne is the pilot location in Europe.
The organizer of the whole program reached out to our media team for help with promotional materials for all the locations to use. I spearheaded the development of a logo and visual identity for the course while other members of our team took on making a promotional video and a series of social media posts. These materials will be passed on to all the other locations running the program to help with their promotion of the course.
This was a really neat project to take on. While I might not be able to go to a remote location to reach an unreached tribe, there was still a role for us to play in aiding the goal of seeing every language receive a Bible.
On another exciting note, in late July, I will be helping to organize a 3-day seminar on visual communication and photography for people working in creative media in YWAM. We have a photographer, named Susi Childers coming to teach. I got to hear her speak when I was in Mexico in 2018, and it was incredible! Jukka, the leader of our team, will be in Finland visiting his family during that time, so the task of organizing and facilitating the seminar has fallen to me. I will admit, this is not a small task and I find it somewhat intimidating. Luckily, I have a good team around me and some veteran event planners I can turn to for counsel. This situation was somewhat out of the blue for me but I am excited about the seminar and am trusting that it will turn out well.
On another exciting personal note, I am finally coming back to Montana for a month in September and October. I did the math and it will have been 21 months since I have been in the Mission Valley. When I left, none of us could have anticipated all that has happened since. I am beyond thrilled to be able to come back. So much has happened and I look forward to catching up and see many of you!
To finish off this month’s update, here are a few photos from a day trip I took to Zurich recently.
As always, thank you for coming along with me in this adventure of faith,
Ben