Hello from Lancaster!
Apparently spring has sprung, although the evidence in terms of temperature seems to be lacking at least. I am enjoying seeing new life bravely pushing onward however!
Tim’s trip to East Africa for the Innovations Confab was encouraging and interesting. This is a group that he has been part of for about 6 years, starting when we were still based in Nigeria. They had some interesting conversations around AI, among other things, during these meetings. One person commented that it isn’t really Artificial (programmed by a person) and it isn’t really Intelligent, it is just following a set of rules to produce an output. Have you ever seen the red squiggly line when you use Microsoft Word or Google docs? It indicates that you might have misspelt a word, it could be considered as a very early form of AI! If you take that principle and apply it to bigger more complex problems, that is one way where AI is helping us.
One big takeaway for Tim from the Confab was the encouragement to problem solve with a wider group of people, not only subject matter experts. It allows questions to be asked and extra perspectives gained that might not otherwise be highlighted.
Ethnologue - the language publication that I (Ali) works with, published its 27th edition in mid-February, on International Mother Language Day. There were a number of challenges leading up to publication. We have a new web developer who was very much having to learn on the job but he only works part time and got ill in the last couple of days. Despite these issues, he did a great job and by God’s grace we managed to launch in time!
Here are some Ethnologue numbers, which I think are quite impressive. Ethnologue provides information about 7,164 living languages across the world. Of those languages, 2,456 had some of their information updated since the last edition was published a year ago. That is more than 30% of the languages listed! There were more than 15,000 updates and improvements to the language data in the last year. I challenge you to take a look using the link above and search for a random language of your choice. See what you can find out!
Tim is gearing up for his next trip to a different part of mainland Europe. This trip is to participate in training for Global Partnership’s Field Coordinators. Although Tim is not serving in this particular role, gaining a deeper understanding of how one of our major funding partners works, what their expectations are and who to relate to while working things out will be extremely helpful in both parts of Tims job. He is also looking forward to a day face to face with his Eurasia area supervisor, reviewing the past 3 months of work and learnings. However, he has just learnt that his original flight has been cancelled and needs to be re-booked. Pray for wisdom and availability!
We are still not reaching our monthly support goal. If you want to be part of what we are doing by helping to support us financially and can spare £10, £20, or maybe even £50 a month, we would love to hear from you or you can use any of the options on this page of our website.
Praise
Safe travels for Tim to East Africa for an interesting Innovations Confab
Successful launching of the 27th edition of Ethnologue despite a number of challenges
Dan continuing to do well at University
Prayer
Tim’s Field Coordinator training in mainland Europe next week, especially for the travel arrangements
That our roots will grow down into God’s love and keep us strong (Eph 3:17b)
For God’s provision of the finances we need to continue serving
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