Church Planting
Our overall job description is church planting. That is, we go to an area where there is no church, we evangelize, we organize the new believers into a church, we help them choose their own leadership, and once they are functioning as an independent church we leave them on their own. But perhaps that is an oversimplification of what we do. Achieving the above goal in the particular situation in which we work (cross-culturally and cross-language) involves many interrelated tasks.
Culture and Language Acquisition
Our first task after moving into the Landuma tribe was to learn the Landuma culture and language. Understanding an important message in a language that is not your own is difficult at best. And the message we are bringing is the most important one in the world. (a brief summary) We feel it is vital that we speak our message in a way that is easy to understand. (I Corinthians 14:9) So we have invested the years necessary to learn the Landuma language in order to speak to the people in their mother tongue.
But just knowing the language is not enough. Every group of people, and indeed every individual person to a lesser extent, perceives the world in a unique way— filtering all information though a cultural grid made up of his/her/their existing knowledge and the sum of life's experiences up to that point. And simply put, language is merely a method of communicating those experiences and that resulting knowledge. A language, really, is a subset of a given culture. Therefore, to learn a language well enough to communicate with an audience effectively, a speaker must not only learn the words to use, but also the cultural filter through which those words must pass before reaching the audience—that is the values, traditions, practices, and shared experiences of the audience. In short, a speaker must get to know his audience in order to communicate with them effectively.
So our first task, which was to learn the Landuma culture and language, took years to complete. And indeed, we can never say that we are finished with it as we are always learning more. [home]
Linguistics
A very important tool in our ministry is linguistics. Studying how a language is put together helps us in several ways. First of all it helps us to understand the language that we are learning. Also, understanding the structure of the language helps with several of our other tasks, such as orthography, literacy, and Bible translation. Kirk Rogers is the member of our team who has done most of the linguistic analysis.
Orthography
When our team first entered the Landuma tribe their language had never been
written down. There was no alphabet. So, using the science of
phonemics the sounds
of the language had to be mapped out.
Then each meaningful sound could be assigned
a letter to represent it. (Not every sound in a language needs to be written. For
instance, say the word "little." That word contains two different "L" sounds—yet
in English we only need one letter to represent both. The context always tells us
which sound to say.) Once each meaningful sound was assigned a letter, the sum of
those letters became the new Landuma alphabet. Kirk Rogers was in the process of
finalizing the Landuma alphabet when the Sheffields joined the team in 1994.
Literacy
Once an alphabet had been developed so the Landuma could write their own language, they had to be taught how to use it. So Jim developed a literacy course to teach them to read and write their own language. The main purpose, of course, for writing the language and teaching literacy was so that Landuma Christians will be able to read God's Word once it has been translated into their language. [home]
Bible Translation
We believe that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. (Romans 10:17) The Bible is the foundation of our belief and our teaching. For any church to function without constant outside assistance, they must possess the Word of God in a language that they understand and in a form that does not change. So we have undertaken a Bible translation project with the objective to translate many key portions of the Old Testament and the entire New Testament. Kirk Rogers and our first Landuma convert, Masalu, are doing a wonderful job on the Bible translation. There is a translation fund to which you can donate if you'd like to help with printing the Landuma scriptures.
Bible Teaching
God chose to communicate his message to man by using people to "preach" or speak it. (I Corinthians 1:21) And of course the public and verbal teaching of God's Word is a very important aspect of our ministry to the Landuma. Jim Sheffield is spearheading this task by developing curriculum and doing the majority of the Bible teaching. Bible lessons are also being recorded on cassette tape and loaned—sometimes along with tape players—to Landuma individuals without cost. (There is a cost, of course, which is being absorbed by the missionary team and their financial supporters. If you wish you may make a donation to help defray that cost.) [home]
Community Aid Projects
The Landuma people are, by and large, an underprivileged group. They live in a depressed economy and an underdeveloped country. Many basic needs, such as food, clean water, health care, and education are difficult for them to obtain. So the missionary team has undertaken a number of community aid projects in addition to the ministries outlined above. As a result we have seen a reduction in the frequency of deaths in our area - including a lowering of the infant mortality rate.
Some of the projects we have undertaken in the past have included financing village wells, feeding malnourished children, providing basic medical assistance, providing ambulance service to the nearest hospital, assisting in the building and staffing of a local health post, assisting in the construction and equipping of a local school, construction of a building for a grain hulling machine and a telecommunications office, and after one particularly poor farming year we provided a bag of seed grain for every household in the area.
There are always ongoing community aid projects and we would be grateful for assistance with any in which you might take an interest. Our current projects include:
Rebuilding a collapsed school building
Donating fencing to keep cows out of farmers' fields
Maintenance and operation of an ambulance
Financial assistance for villagers with medical needs