The two of us have a deep love of God and his Word. We are committed to seeing others trained, resourced and working cross-culturally to ensure that people around the world have access to God’s Word and the good news of Jesus Christ. We joined Wycliffe in 2000 and since then God has led us on an incredible cross-cultural journey – in the US, Australia, and then Indonesia.
In 2018, we started a new chapter in our service with Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia as Graham became the CEO of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Australia (SILA), which includes the role of Principal of its training program in Kangaroo Ground, Victoria. SILA is Wycliffe’s training and academic partner, and serves minority language communities worldwide by delivering effective training and consulting in linguistics, literacy, translation and cross-cultural communication for the development of locally owned sustainable language programs.
As experienced educators, we love seeing people well trained to work alongside minority language communities worldwide through language development activities including Bible translation. Being based in Kangaroo Ground enables us to encourage and connect with students, staff, and other personnel travelling through from various parts of the world. We enjoy hearing their stories, finding out what training would further benefit them, and how God has used the training they received at SILA.
Graham: In my role, I also enjoy contributing ideas and participating in various conferences and meetings around the world. This enables me to connect with other training and field organisations to share vision and strategic direction, assess training needs, and encourage others leading translation and language development work throughout the Asia-Pacific area.
Partnership is both a joy and a challenge we face in ministry. Working in partnership requires commitment to the relationship and being open to see what God can accomplish when organisations work together. Another challenge faced by SILA is finding accreditation pathways for our courses. This reflects the realities of the tertiary education sector in Australia, and SILA being a specialist niche institution. The commitment remains to providing excellent training facilitated by qualified field-experienced practitioners, so that students are able to exit with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes which will allow for effective engagement with communities and colleagues. A further challenge in a small organisation is the busyness that comes with high motivation to serve and care; maintaining a work-life balance is a very real pressure.
SILA is a volunteer-run orgnaisation, with its volunteers living by faith from the gifts God provides through donors. We regularly see the goodness of God as he surprises us with his provision.
We became members of St Andrew’s Anglican Church South Brisbane when we lived in Brisbane in 2001, before moving to Indonesia for our work with Wycliffe in 2006. We were part of the 10:30 am congregation as service leaders, in music ministry, small group ministry, and I (Ellie) volunteered in the office for a time. In Melbourne, we are now active members of a small Anglican church in Warrandyte, St Stephen’s.
