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Jude Raphael Roberts
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Josh and Heather, Wynnie and Aurélie are doing well, too. Wynnie, four, is taking ballet again and is full of creative ideas and energy. Aurélie, almost one-and-a-half, is full of smiles and has a twinkle of mischief in her eyes as she trails after her big sister. We are grateful for Skype for staying in touch with both families as we don’t get to visit them as often as we’d like!
Here on the homefront, we are in high gear to get moving…literally. After more than 10 years in Waxahachie, Texas, we are ready to relocate. Our work with the Wycliffe Global Alliance allows us to work from anywhere with internet and an airport, so now that we no longer have family in the area, we are ready to move! Over the past ten years we’ve had Josh and Heather living with us (mostly while we were away, traveling for two years), Kate lived with us while she finished college and made her various forays to Brazil and New York. Tom’s dad and Vivian lived near us in Duncanville during most of our Texas years. And my parents lived with us for three months and then in their own Waxahachie home for four years before moving back to Tennessee in 2014. We’ve had good years here, lots of great times with family and guests and we’ve loved our house, but we never envisioned staying in Texas! We’d like to be closer to at least part of the family, closer to water and further from allergies.At this point we are pushing hard to get our house ready to sell. That, plus work is keeping us super busy! We hope to have the house up for sale by April and are seeking the Lord’s will and wisdom for where to next! Our primary region of focus is the Hampton/Newport News area in Virginia. Totally new territory for us, but a decent day’s drive to both Kate and family and to my parents, not tooo cold for too long in the winter, near water and, we hope, affordable! It’s further from Josh and Heather in Colorado and from the California family members, but we hope to have a large enough home for stay-awhile company! Please pray with us as we contemplate and work towards this major change!
Tom has been working on various web tools and fixes on wycliffe.net Major items: we are doing an update to the topic categories, He found a new partner to work with to collect better data on online Scripture to list and this week he just learned that Google is making major changes to the PicasaWeb service that we use for all our image handling. We are grateful for more colleagues getting involved with the content of the Wycliffe.net site and are also encouraged when we hear how the resources and stories on the site are being used by Wycliffe organizations, churches and others all around the world! Please continue to pray that we can find someone to work alongside Tom on the technical aspects of the site.
You may recall we asked for prayer for Phil Prior and his family as they were raising their support and planning to join our communication team. Thanks for praying! Phil is officially joining the team in April. This is a huge answer to prayer! He will be taking the leadership of the “public face” of Wycliffe Global Alliance communication. That means oversight of all the online resources, branding and lots of other facets of the work that I’ve been handling or that just weren’t being handled at all! Do continue to pray for the Priors.
In January I traveled to Amsterdam and Manila for meetings with some of our leadership team, with a newly forming video team, and with communication colleagues from Asia. There is tremendous potential for sharing so many more stories of what God is through His Word and His people and to encourage all of His Church to participate with Him.
Paul is convinced that the Church in Kenya is now completely able to support Bible translation and other aspects of God’s mission, but they have not yet fully responded. He and his colleagues have taken this as a challenge, passionately sharing this vision with universities, primary and secondary schools, churches and corporations.
“[We] go out there and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Christianity, when it came to Africa, came to Kenya through missionaries from Europe. Why are we still depending on their great, great, great grandchildren to fund missionary activities in Africa, in Kenya, at a time such as this? Isn’t it time that we rose up and took charge of mission work?’”
They build awareness about Scripture translation needs and seek support for *BTL’s Bible translation efforts. What really excites them is that they are seeing Kenyan believers and churches become increasingly inspired to participate in God’s mission.
*BTL is a Wycliffe Alliance organization in Kenya
Financial Update
As we are getting into
2016, we thought it would be good to share our financial update with you. Over
the past five years we’ve been blessed with installments of a legacy gift from
Tom’s Aunt Martha. These extra funds helped us with everything from Kate’s
wedding to our car to day-to-day grocery bills and life. We felt especially
blessed to be able to give some help to our kids during this time. But this
bonus blessing has come to an end…and our regular support doesn’t even quite
get us to the quota level Wycliffe recommends for our day-to-day life. We have
wonderful, faithful partners in prayer, giving and encouragement. We are
grateful for each one of you! Some of our ministry partners have joined us in
recent years, but most have been with us for many years… and a number have gone
to be with the Lord. Will you pray with us about finding some additional prayer
and financial supporters? As we participate in God’s mission together we are
trusting Him to provide!
Thank you for your faithful prayers and support!
