Hello friends and family!  Just a quick note of updates and prayer requests this week. We have a lot going on!  We leave early tomorrow morning for a 12-ish hour drive to a village in the northwest of Côte d’Ivoire. Jack, along with his team of linguists, will be working with a group of national translators to work out some difficulties they’re having with marking tone in their written language. (It’s significantly more complicated than what I’m able to describe!) The kids an

A common theme for me throughout this past month has been presence . With Christmas having just passed, we’ve been meditating on the beauty of Immanuel, God WITH us. How incredible that He stepped down in humility to rescue us. And, through His Spirit, He is just as present with us now.  We’ve felt the blessing of presence through my parents - they planned at the last minute to fly across the ocean and spend Christmas with our family! Jack and I had two weeks’ notice, but t

Every year, our English-speaking community gets together for an annual Christmas Carol Sing! This is special because we don't really sing Christmas carols as we know them in the Ivorian culture. So we take a couple hours during the holiday season to sing out these familiar songs and enjoy some cookies together. It feels just like home...but about 80 degrees warmer. This year, the song "Angels from the Realms of Glory" stood out to me as we sang. Of course it sings of Jesus an

As the weather cools off in the states and I see people’s pictures of SNOW already, we’re enjoying our rising temperatures and sunnier days!  We had our annual expat Thanksgiving and invited friends from all over the place - these expats are all living away from their passport countries as they work as missionaries, international school teachers, and business men and women. We had families from the States, the UK, France, Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Portugal, Korea, the Ne

If you were to visit us here in Côte d’Ivoire, you would immediately notice the bright yellow taxis that seem to be everywhere in our part of Abidjan. They're a practical, affordable, and distinctly Ivorian mode of transport. They're called “Wôro-Wôros” and they can tell us a lot about how we think, how we calculate value, and why having the Bible in your truest, most natural language is non-negotiable. Some have said, "If you want to know someone's mother tongue, ask them t

Hello friends and family!  Thank you so much for keeping up with us, for reading our blogs, and for supporting us financially and through prayer. We are humbled by the faithful team of partners we have standing with us in this work of getting Scripture into the heart languages of people in Côte d'Ivoire!  Our schedule has been light these past few weeks, as we weren’t sure how the elections would go. Thank you so much for praying for peace during elections and for your prayer

Sounds a little funny doesn't it? But why? As Bible translators, we are constantly grappling with the delicate balance between conveying the original meaning of a text and ensuring its resonance with a contemporary audience. It's a fascinating challenge, and sometimes, the most seemingly straightforward words carry the deepest complexities. For example, "Alpha and Omega". Why does that sound fine to us, but "A and Z" (a practical translation) sounds weird? In the New Testamen

Many things have felt out of our control lately.  We’ve received news of friends who have had medical emergencies and car accidents in the States. We’ve had another rejection from the ministry of foreign affairs; this time it was our applications to renew our ID cards. We got a taste of what’s to come in the election season over the past weekend when a protest not far from our neighborhood caused us to stay home and cancel all our plans. We sat for days in the US embassy and

This weekend Titus completed a two-hour run to raise money for our adoption. This run has been over 7 weeks in the making! As we were...

Hello friend! I'm curious if you'd be interested in getting together for a coffee date here in the blog? I'll make a latte and you can...

As many of you know, we're adopting! First thing I need to say is a huge "Thank You" to all of you that have shown support for us in this...

We can feel the season shifting here… not the weather, of course, but the schedule picking back up and the excitement for a new school...

What a summer it has been! I think there has been enough going on to write a whole book, but I'll do my best to share the key events...

We’re thrilled to announce that… We’re adopting! We’re pursuing the adoption of a sibling group in Liberia , the country bordering Côte...

How Living Abroad Has Deepened my View of my True Citizenship Before moving to West Africa, Jack and I spent decades of life steeping in...

I remember reading stories of spiritual warfare in overseas missions before moving to West Africa. The stories were crazy and almost...

Languages do not live in a vacuum. They are born from other languages, they border other languages, and they mix in with other languages....

This week, I'd like to share a video with you that tells the story of missionaries that gave their whole lives to reach the unreached and...

I’ve asked the kids to each write a little update of their own, telling whatever they’d like to share. Enjoy these updates from our sweet...

When you work in a small office (like SIL Côte d'Ivoire), you often get to wear many figurative hats and play several different roles....