Opportunity: STUDENT.GO

Student.Go, the student missions program of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), provides opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students to serve in the United States and around this world with our field personnel (missionaries) and ministry partners as they live out CBF Global Missions’ commitments—cultivating beloved community, bearing witness to Jesus Christ and seeking transformational development. By the way, as a bonus to serving around this world, students also get paid a stipend ($1200 for summer assignments and $1700 for semester assignments), and some students can even receive class credit for their term of service!

Whether it’s for a summer or a semester, students provide crucial assistance to the ministries of CBF field personnel and engagement partners. By serving with Student.Go, students also have the opportunity to discover their place within God’s mission to change the world.  Undergraduate students completing their first year of college and at least 18 years of age, as well as graduate students of any age, may apply. Furthermore, Student.Go is not just for Baptist students, but is open to all Christians looking to serve.

Not only do you get a stipend for your term of service, your housing, local transportation and food are typically covered as well! And as a bonus, you can even get class credit for it! If you are interested in finding out more, please check out https://cbf.net/studentdotgo where you can view the current Student.Go opportunities, as well as apply online.

Now is Not the Time

Beauty and political opinion--everywhere in Barcelona

There is a time and season for everything. For example, there is a time to do a recording project in Barcelona and there is a time not to do a recording project in Barcelona.

After prayerful consideration, three trips to Barcelona, and lots of conversations with Catalan Christians there, it has become apparent that this is not the time to record the New Testament in Catalan. Here are some photos from our recent trips to Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. Note the many yellow ribbons (in support of Catalan leaders imprisoned by the national government).

The political situation is just one of many factors involved in this decision. Sometimes it is just not the right time.

We trust that God will prepare the way when it is the right time and season to record the Catalan New Testament.

More to Translation than Meets the Ear . . .

A Bible memory verse here, a parable there . . . for years Christians in Moldova have been helping us translate bits and pieces of Scripture into their own Ursari Romani* language.

For the past several years, some of them have wanted to begin translating more. The brother to our left started Ephesians; the brother below started Titus. 

But there is more to translation than meets the eye--or the ear. What did the original text actually mean? Not the Romanian or Russian (or English) translation you are used to, but the text originally written in some form of Greek?

And what kind of translation are you aiming for? A scholarly version? A literary version (King James comes to mind)? A contemporary version?

And do you plan to write it down or use story-telling and audio recordings? And if you plan to write it down, and your language is generally unwritten, how do you plan to represent the sounds of your language in print? Will you use the spelling conventions of the national language? What if your language uses sounds which the national language does not? How will those sounds be written? And what if the national language has a wacky spelling system (English comes to mind!)?

The most of the other people you see in these photos are members of SIL's Rroma Service Group. They have studied and wrestled with all of these questions--and more which I am not aware of. We are very glad that they are willing to partner with us and with our Romany brothers & sisters in the Republic of Moldova!

*Romany call their language "Romani" or "Romanes."

Romany = Rroma/Roma and Sinti.