Dependency

What is dependency? I had to think about this. All the forms I fill in, they ask for dependents I have to mention my presently 3 year old son. He is dependent on us to supply all his needs. (all bar the need to cause trouble!). As a husband, inter-dependent with my wife.

David Ker wrote a provocative piece ..

Imagine for a minute some beautiful thing that you’d like to do to help the poor suffering people in Africa. Maybe you want to dig wells or hand out Bibles. Maybe you’d like to help protect small children or stop deforestation. Great stuff. Huge need. It’ll never work. In fact, in the process of solving these problems, I’ve seen again and again pie-in-the-sky optimists and goody two-shoes like myself crushed by the Aid Monster. The Aid Monster is this enormous demonic being that waits with its slavering mouth and grasping tentacles to divert aid from the needy and fatten its own belly.

The problem is we’re such easy prey. Idealists and change-the-world kinds of people are always blinded by their own self-righteousness to the human depravity that waits to divert their good intentions for personal gain.

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I am off to Togo in a couple weeks with a team of WYnet young people to visit a rather under-fund translation project that we've been involved in for the last 11 years. Three translators 1 office, a few churches, a guardian, a few computers, a server, electricity bills and soon The project set up is quite complex, or so I thought a partnership between a committee made up from a bunch of local churches, and the Bible Society Togo. Our involvement is to help with the committee's contributions to the costs. I foresee three problems.

1) There obviously isn't enough money
2) The translators wages are the 1st thing to be compromised.
3) The obvious answer is very root of the questions.

The easy solution is to throw money at it, but i am hesitant. I don't want to continue the dependency. When we were they 2 years ago, we did some travelling around to encourage some of the churches and youth in the language area to get involved in praying and fundraising. They did for a while, but then not seeing the progress made, no more bible yet :( Their interest has wained. There is talk of an income generation project, but a few people I have spoken too have said don't bother, they generally turn out to be unsustainable.

So what do we do? Knowing that greater buy in from the local churches will result in more ownership, and eventually better use of the translated word. However, the churches don't even have enough money to fix their own windows, how are they going to give more money to bible translation project?

I would LOVE a simple and quick answer, but i suspect there isn't one. Anyone else had to tackle this kinda thing?

Minehead so far

Well end of the second week of Spring Harvest at Minehead, the kind chap from Butlins has just offered to change our sheets ... we said yes.

I have been DOG sick the past 7 days, it all started with a sore throat that didn't go away popped to the doc on site and he was like, umm not much going on, come back if it doesn't clear up, which I did a couple days later to be diagnosed with summer flu and a throat infection. In bed for 3 days, taken FLIPPING ages to recover tried to get out for a couple hours each day, finally feeling better.

So we didn't get as many people, in fact it has taken us 2 weeks to get the same number of contacts as the 1st week of Skeg, BUT it is all good, lots of very cool people, plenty of wonderful conversations.

Embarrassing moment of the week, probably Steph falling on her bum at breakfast.
Frustration of the week has got to be all the publicity of the other organisation. I have to admit i am a little frustrated by how things are playing out, but my high light of the week has got to be with out any doubt at all, Steph popping along to " An audience with Steve Chalke". An opportunity to ask him any thing you like. We had planned a deep challenging question about soem of his Heaven on earth comments, we are going UP to heaven cos heaven is on earth. I know i don't get where he was coming from, but in a moment of all i can describe as pure brilliance, steph asked this.

" I am really pleased the collection is going to Bible Translation and distribution this year, but do you know the name of the organisation that is involved in translation for most of the featured projects along with 85% of the projects world wide?"

His response was " Umm, No but i think you might be able to tell me"

Steph in an over excited manner that only Steph can encapsulate "WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS!!!"

The whole thing invoked a round of applause and a lot of laughs and a rather sheepish Steve swiftly moved on to ranting about another book he has written. Surprising numbers of people popped by the stand to say hi the next day!

Oh yeah, and the winner of this weeks Wii competition, scored 92, yes you read that correctly, 92. Mental.

High on Mount Sinai?

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0444950920080304?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

I could NOT believe it when I read this. Apparently the Israelites were on drugs whilst Moses was up getting the 10 commandments.

Why do we find it soo hard to believe what the bible says is historical truth? why does the world spend so much time trying to disprove it the Bible? Why don't people try to disprove the Koran? My only conclusion so far, is that cos we believe the Bible is the only truth (please excuse me sounds like a fundamentalist) The devil don't like it, i mean us understanding the Bible, because when we engage with the Bible instead of simply reading it, it is a life changing experience every time. People describe the Bible as a living book, sounds a bit weird, but that is because each time you read it, God can reveal something new to you, even if it is a passage you have read 100 times before, he can still reveal something new! WOW. Pretty sure Harry Potter can't do that. LOL

I guess that is why i love being part of a MASSIVE global team getting God's work to people who don't have it in a language they can understand!