St Andrew’s supports three missionary partners in prayer and through regular financial support through the Mission Fund. Please remember then in your own prayers, and if you would like to contribute to supporting their work, the treasurer|Treasurer will be happy to hear from you.

Our current partners are:

• Bibi Nédellec with Wycliffe Bible Translators
• The Cools family with Mission Aviation Fellowship
• Sutton Schoolswork

Bibi Nédellec with Wycliffe Bible Translators

Some news from Bibi at last! I hope this will find you well! Blessings, Bibi

April 2021   Bibi’s News Dear friends! You will not be surprised to hear that it is from France that I am writing to you! As most of us on this planet, I simply didn’t go anywhere since I last wrote you. Even though this past year has been challenging for some, and very difficult for others, I look back on it and I am grateful: I live in the countryside and the coast is not far at all, I am making new acquaintances in the village and good friends in a small church that I attend in Lannion (20km). Of course, I miss the face-to-face meetings I usually have with colleagues and the opportunities to meet up with Debbie (Hatfield), as we thought we would when we both moved away from Cameroon. Working virtually As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time talking to a good number of colleagues per Zoom, working intensively with various small teams. As bizarre as it may sound, those regular virtual face-to-face work meetings keep me going. The projects I am involved in are very interesting and that helps! I am enjoying my job. There are days when I feel I have been talking with others all day, which is good for me! I lead quite a lot of those sessions myself, but sometimes I am just a participant, which is more relaxing of course!  International Conference (SIL International) During the month of April 2021, we as an organisation will have our large International Conference, virtually. That conference should have happened in April of 2020. At the time, we switched to Zoom with a reduced format and called it “Part one” with the conviction that we would be able to meet face to face in 2021, but of course that will not be possible. That event gathers many people, including some guests and partners, and the software Zoom will not be able to do all that is needed. I am even looking forward to learn another sophisticated way to meet others virtually! It is quite amazing what can be done that way. If I am not mistaken, we were close to 900 attendees online last year! Online Training Institute You may remember that I am responsible for the training department in SIL. Some of our activities happen around our Online Training Institute and all of the sudden our OTI became very popular! I am very pleased that colleagues around the world come to us with requests for our services. It can be a simple need for advice, or they have course content that need re-designing. Advice is indeed needed because there is more than one way to deliver training online. Forced by circumstances, people have learned to appreciate the various tools available, what to use in what situation or context. We all admit that it is not ideal, but it is amazing how much training has been delivered in spite of the disruption we have experienced. This type of communication has allowed the chain of learning to not be totally broken. Becoming a translation consultant Ursula Williams consulting with translation teams in Benin Competency-based certification You have heard me explain over the years the high priority we give to verifying every single translation before publishing it, what we call translation checking. This indispensable process takes time. It takes years. The work is done by consultants who visit translation teams and work with them each time a book has been completed. The training for such translation consultants is also a long and thorough process. I have been involved in the past 2 years in a project directly linked with the development of consultants, not only translation consultants but also consultants in other domains like literacy and education, linguistics, anthropology, vernacular media and more. I am in charge of a team working on this project. We have done a lot of research to make sure to serve our 8 world areas best, from the Americas all the way to the Pacific Islands. The system will be competency-based and this past February we found the right type of software to track those competencies. I was briefly interviewed by a partner organisation recently, you might find this reading helpful.  Learning about the new ‘French’ birds is still one of my favorite activities! Some of you have heard from me personally inbetween newsletters, but I want to re-iterate my thanks to you for your faithful support, especially since I moved back to France. It has been a smooth transition for me, I am extremely thankful to have a house over my head and the means to live well here. I hope and pray that this letter will find you and your family very well, in spite of these challenging times, Bibi Support Cheques payable to:   Wycliffe UK     PO BOX 1594, High Wycombe Bucks. HP11 9NA (Please add a note specifying that the gift is for me.)

Bibi asks that you do not circulate this information without her permission,
which she has kindly given for publication on this website.

Mission Aviation Fellowship - May 2021

The Cools Family with MAF
in Australia

 

Another term has passed here in Mareeba. Holidays have gone by and the flight training class that started in January has gained a couple of additions. The girls are back at school and Melissa is back in the full swing of things with her degree. Here is what has happened since we last sent out an update.

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At Christmas we had the current and some previous students over for a Christmas dinner. We played a couple of board games as well and had a great time laughing and in fellowship. All our students usually come to Mareeba away from their family. We have a few PNG students who haven't seen their family for over a year in person now. We also had Belgian backpacker over who we met at our church. We had a great time and it felt a little more like we had a family around for us as well.

 

At the end of January Olivia started Grade 2 and Ameiah started her Prep year as they call it here. Ameiah has the same teacher Olivia had in Prep which she is really enjoying. They both have made some great friends in school and they enjoy going to school. At the end of the last term they had a cross country run competition for which they did really well. We were both able to go and watch them and encourage them that day. They are growing so fast.

 

We had a new class of students start at the beginning of February. Hans hasn't been too involved in their training as he has been taking care of the older students. He was also able to go over to Arnhem Land to go help out for 2 weeks and get checked to line - this means that he is allowed to fly by himself in Arnhem Land and fill in when it is needed most.

"I really enjoyed Arnhem Land, being able to fly and not having to tell people what to do, or how to fly was very refreshing. It is very rewarding to think what an impact we have as MAF up there. The day after my line check, I was able to fly by myself. I flew around a teacher, food to a small community, and a medical flight for an elderly lady that was feeling unwell. The work that MAF does up there is definitely required and it is great to think that the work we do at the Flight Training Centre is directly supporting programs such as this worldwide"

 

This photo was taken the day of my Line Check in Arnhem Land. As you can see I am already sweating, which was just from pushing the trolley out to the plane. We flew 120kg of diesel and food to a very remote community. In the wet season, you aren't able to drive along the roads to many of these communities, so these things need to be flown in by plane.

 

 

Since Hans got back from Arnhem Land he's been doing a lot of night flying training and some Instrument refresher training with a couple of program pilots. One of them is going back to Arnhem Land when he is finished, the other one is on his way to South Sudan.

Prayer Points:

1. Please pray for Myanmar. The coup has stopped the building of the much needed airstrip that MAF is building there currently. Our hearts break daily thinking and praying of the people in Myanmar.
2. All of our students are separated from family and significant others, who they are unable to see due to border closures or interstate travel restrictions. Please pray for them. Pray that things can go back to normal soon.
3. Pray for Melissa as she continues to study, especially that she can find the energy to get everything done.
4. Covid is spreading in PNG, and the borders between PNG and Australia are now completely closed. We will be unable to start the next training class for PNG nationals. Please pray for the people waiting to come over for their training to find a suitable solution while they are waiting. Also pray for our current PNG students' families as they are affected by this as well.
5. Please pray for clarity and that we hear God's voice regarding direction for our future.
6. There's a lot of fear worldwide - pray that organisations like MAF can stand out as encouragements in these trying times.

 

Click to donate to Hans and Melissa

        

For more information please contact the team using the contact details provided.

MAF UK is a registered Charity in England & Wales (1064598) and in Scotland (SC039107)

Copyright © 2021 MAF UK, All rights reserved.

MAF UK,
Castle Hill Avenue,
Folkestone CT20 2TQ,
United Kingdom

w www.maf-uk.org
E staffsupport^maf-uk,org
T 01303 852 819

Sutton Schoolswork

Simon

Sutton Schoolswork (SSW) is a Christian charity that is passionate about supporting students in Sutton to understand and explore Christianity and to develop spiritually, morally and socially.

Within the London Borough of Sutton there are 45 primary schools and 15 secondary schools and SSW aims to support all those schools in a variety of ways.

The Director of SSW is Simon Ellingham, who has already visited us. Simon has previously acted in the SSW Easter Experience at North Cheam Baptist Church where he played Jesus, and is retired from the Metropolitan Police.

Sarah

Kate

SSW has two full-time schools workers—Sarah Skinner who works with primary schools, and Kate Canning who covers secondaries. The schools workers work with the support of volunteers and of Children’s, Youth and Family Workers from the many churches which support SSW.

SSW workers reach 27,000 children and include leading school assemblies, teaching in RE and PSHE classes, running Christian Unions in schools and organising parent prayer groups. SSW also puts on two dramatised presentations, Discover Christmas and Easter Experience, seen by hundreds of children every year.

The latest news and prayer requests from SSW is usually on the Our news page.