Expanding our Reach - Robinson Ministry Update - January 2026

Ali Robinson
1 day ago
2 min read

Greetings as we launch into a new year!

Looking back, last year was a challenging one, but also one where we have seen God’s faithfulness and love.

Tim and I (Ali) both started new roles, which have brought joys and challenges. SIL got a new Executive Director who made some substantial changes to SIL’s structure, which impacted Tim’s new role in EurAsia Security and Risk Management, quite significantly increasing his remit to include new areas of the world. Ali became the first non-American editor of Ethnologue and did a TV interview in Basque, which you can watch here.

Dan spent a fair bit of the year rebuilding after a difficult first year at Uni. He volunteered for a time at the Lancaster Central Library and was accepted back onto his degree course and restarted at Newcastle in September. Despite several weeks of illness, he pushed through and completed his first term and is now into his seond semster await exam results from the first.

Tim joined the leadership team at Father’s House, our church and he and I both got involved in launching the new youth club at the church.

We helped Tim’s sister celebrate her wedding to Martin in Dundee in August. We also said goodbye to two legends of the work in Nigeria, Dr. Katy Barnwell and Dr. David Crozier.

In December, we hosted Christmas with twelve sitting down to lunch and ten on Boxing Day. It was a mix of my (Ali’s) family and Tim’s, and it was lovely to see people connecting and getting to know each other better.

It was also great to have Dan home for a couple of weeks. We took him back across to Newcastle and had a couple of days with Ali’s family just after New Year. Having been ill for a couple of days, we moved our plans later.

And then January . . .

Dan had exams through early January; some went better than others, but overall, he is reasonably positive about them. He restarted lectures on the 26th of January. Please pray for him that this semester would be a time of digging in and thriving.

Tim had a short trip to Europe to work with a small team on a process for selecting communication tools to deploy across EurAsia Area. The opportunity to work face-to-face for a change was a real blessing!

Ali has been pushing to get through her backlog of data contributions for Ethnologue before the publication deadline in early February.

We had a wonderful opportunity this last Sunday to share with our church, Father’s House Lancaster, about missions in general and also some specifics about our roles as missionaries. Marty Davison, the Elim International Missions Director and Paul Moores, Wycliffe’s Partnerships Manager, came and spoke. It was so encouraging to feel truly embraced as missionaries by our church.

As we look further ahead into 2026 there are a number of areas where we would appreciate prayer: