Merry Christmas from Wylciffe

The following message and short video was recently posted on the Wycliffe USA web site (www.wycliffe.org), and we thought that we would post it here too. Please remember in your prayers this season all those who are separated from friends and family as they labor around the world to bring God's Word to every tribe, nation and tongue.

Merry Christmas from the Chiltons!

Merry Christmas from Wycliffe What a joy and a privilege to be involved in bringing God’s translated Word to those who don’t yet have it! As you meditate on the significance of the birth of Jesus, remember those for whom Jesus remains a foreigner because they’ve never heard the good news in the language they understand best. Your partnership in the work of Bible translation brings them closer to the God who loves them, providing access to the hope and salvation offered in God’s Word.

PS. If you have trouble viewing the video here, the direct link to it is:

http://www.wycliffe.org/Give/ChristmasGreeting.aspx

The Continued Adventures of Spell Read

Lori has officially begun working as a tutor for Spell Read; she and her first student are zipping right along in their lessons. The program emphasizes phonics in new and unique ways, using repetition to help the brain re-learn the connections between sounds and letters, so those connections can be more firmly established, which makes reading much easier.

Lori and her first student, Gordon

As she was being introduced to the program, which involved having our English phonetic sounds broken down and separated into distinct letter combinations, she discovered that her years in Cameroon being exposed (even rather slightly) to French had impacted her more than she realized. As she puts it:

You see, when I print a "j" alone and ask you for the sound it makes, you'll

probably say something like "jump for joy" or "Jesus is born!" (well, maybe not

all that, but you get the point). However, the "j" that I see printed makes a

much longer, flowing sound, more like "sh", because that is often the

sound it makes in French. When I realized this, I was surprised, but thought,

"That's okay; I can switch back to the English sounds. No problem." But

then more of these non-English, French influenced sounds began to reveal

themselves, and I realized that "switching back" might be more complicated

than I first imagined that it would  be.

As Lori drove to her final training session, it occurred to her that if her minimal exposure to French over the years in Cameroon had "messed up" her recognition of English sounds that much, how much more does our exposure to the world mess up our lives as Christians. We are called to be holy, set apart, unique and pure, fellowshiping with God and listening to His direction in our lives. But as we expose ourselves to the things of this world, we start to loose our ability to hear Him clearly.

Of course, we have to live in the world during this life, doing all the normal things that we need to do to survive and influence others for Christ, just like we had to learn some French to be able to function effectively in Cameroon. The process of learning French has changed the way we speak English in ways we never imagined or intended; we have to be careful that our necessary interactions with the world do not muddy our walk with our Savior. We must stay guarded and choose wisely what we allow ourselves to become involved in, lest we become entangled and allow our mother tongue to get mixed up with the foreign language of the world.

Mommy Learns to Read (again)

After completing high school, college, homeschooling for nine years and teaching a few second graders several years back, you'd think that Lori would have mastered reading quite some time ago. But as we watched Channah develop, Lori noticed her developing some difficulties that had been absent or less evident in our other kids. Though she is very bright and extremely creative, she has struggled with learning to read and her reading ability is below what it should be for her age. Channah's wonderful teacher at Liberty Christian School agreed with our suspicions and requested that she be tested for reading challenges.

Lori and local Spell Read director, Joan Collins

It turns out that mild dyslexia is more common than you might think, and apparently Channah struggles with this in her reading. The good news is that help is on the way! LCS encourages their students who are struggling with reading to enroll in a program called Spell Read, which focuses on retraining the brain to better interpret the phonics used in reading. They have a tremendous success rate with very positive results, boasting of many success stories. If you're interested in the details of the program, you can read more about it on their web site: http://www.pcieducation.com/spellread/default.aspx .

Lori preparing for her first tutoring session

What this all means for us is that Lori is learning the program to become a tutor for Channah and for other students at LCS who need this program. We hope that after this school year when we return to Cameroon, Lori will be ready and able to take the program with us back to Yaounde so that she can help lots of other students who struggle with these kinds of issues.


Please pray for Lori as she finishes up her training and begins tutoring students. And, please pray that we would be able to find the best way to incorporate this training that she has received into the programs that are already in place at the schools in Cameroon, so that this training can be a blessing to our students over there as well as to those that she will be able to tutor here before we return!