Summer 2013

Living in Community
Ive spent the summer living in even more of a community than I normally do! Our summer community is comprised of facilitators & staff from six different countries, plus participants from another seven different countries! We all came together in Ruiru, Kenya (just on the Northern outskirts of Nairobi) at a Christian Conference Centre to take part in the third year of a three-year training program. iDelta is an accredited study program, offered by SIL* right here in Africa, to equip our African colleagues to engage in Translation, Scripture Engagement and Literacy & Education work. iDelta brings us all together for 8 weeks out of each year, for three years. With staff and students from so many different countries, cultures, and languages, we have made quite the community! Most of the students and staff have been involved with iDelta for the past three years (though I was not involved in the first year), so you can imagine how well weve all gotten to know each other. What fun it has been to live and work and play amongst this diverse group of people who are all so committed to serving their language communities. Of course, with such a diverse community comes the need to give and accept an awful lot of grace, too! In our trainers days, before the students arrived, we spent some time discussing grace-filled teaching, and how to practically work that out in our lessons. While its important and necessary to achieve our educational outcomes and meet the objectives of our lessons, Id hazard a guess that it might even be equally as important to live as a community, learning to live under grace. So as weve been learning together, weve also been practicing how to communicate, crossing language barriers. Weve been practicing how to eat different foods. Weve been practicing how to worship in each others languages. Weve been practicing how to show love and kindness and grace to each other. It really has been refreshing and a privilege to be a part of this community. And the fact that weve all made it this far is a testimony to Gods grace, and to the wonderful diversity that He has created! Ive been challenged, Ive been awed, and Ive been humbled by the folks here, including the staff at the Conference Centre who have also become part of our community by joining in football games and making sure our practical needs are well taken care of. They even all allowed me, the sole Canadian, to teach while wearing a maple -leaf t-shirt on Canada Day!
* SIL is Wycliffes field work partner organization

SERVING WITH WYCLIFFE CANADAPARTNERS IN BIBLE TRANSLATION

Tanyas Times

The Newsletter of Tanya Spronk

A Few Points to Keep in Mind

Would you pray for: Peace and security in South Sudan. Thankfully, things have remained calm after the President reshuffled the national government. Pray that it continues to be so, as new Ministers are appointed in the coming weeks. Strength, health and wisdom for students and staff in the last month of the iDelta course. The nine literacy track students are continuing on for 4 more weeks with more courses. Im helping to teach two weeks of a Language Development and Planning course before attending a Pan Africa Reading For All conference where I will present a paper on the writing system of a language in South Sudan. Wisdom, creative ideas and good communication during the annual SIL South Sudan planning meetings in early September.

Wycliffe Bible Translators 4316 10th St. NE Calgary, AB T2K 6K3 Canada PO Box 628200 Orlando, FL 32862-8200 USA SIL PO Box 64 Juba, South Sudan +211 918 613 387 Home Address: 151 Valley Ridge Green NW Calgary, AB T3B 5L6 tanya_spronk@sil.org

MTB-MLE
One of the first lessons my co-teacher and I taught here at iDelta was What does the name of the course even mean? I was helping with the MTB-MLE course, which is part of the Literacy track of courses. Our students quickly learned that MTB-MLE stands for Mother Tongue Based Multi-Lingual Education - a mouthful, which is why we shortened it to MLE most of the time! The goal of the 4 week course was to help our literacy specialist students to see what it takes to implement a formal program in elementary schools which starts children learning in their own language, before transitioning to learning in a foreign language such as English. Seems like a pretty basic concept - allowing children to learn in a language that they actually know, doesnt it? But in this part of the world, its actually much more common for children to go to school and try to learn in a language that theyve never even heard before they walked into their classroom. In the course, we looked at theories of bilingualism, curriculum, materials Enjoying a meal with a Bible development, learning theories, teacher training, and reading assessment. translator for the BakaWe lanalso talked a lot about how children acquire a second language, and how guage at his home . can they be taught enough of a second language so they can start to learn content, such as math and science, through that second language in higher grades. They always say that the best way to learn something is to teach it, and this past month has proven them to be right! It really has been a privilege to have this time to do some research, to read and think about MLE, especially since this is exactly the sort of program weve been advocating for in my normal life back in South Sudan! Plus, the students in our course also have a lot of experience in literacy, come from several different countries, and are not afraid to speak out in class, ask questions and discuss. So it was a great time of learning together, and Ive got a whole list of ideas to try out once I get back to South Sudan!

www.wycliffe.ca www.sil.org

Back on the Homefront

Before travelling to Kenya in late June, I was busy trying to get a handle on what my role as Literacy & Education Coordinator really is! This entails going to quite a few meetings with people from the Ministry of General Education & Instruction (MoGEI). Several of these meetings resulted in the renewal of our Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government! This is an important document which is the basis for all of SILs work in South Sudan, including the Bible translation and Scripture Use work we also do. The MoU allows us to get the necessary immigration documents and organizations registration. We are thankful for the good relationships that we have with people in the government, and a quite a lot of my job is to maintain those relationships and ensure that SILs side of the MoU is fulfilled. It seems that some of those relationships are bearing fruit, as the Undersecretary from MoGEI asked me to co-chair a working group on language issues, as part of our membership in the National Education Forum! Working together with a Director from MoGEI, we put together some Terms of Reference for the group and held our first meeting with MoGEI personnel, as well as interested NGOs, including the British Council, UNESCO and Save the Children, among others. Its a great opportunity to start to put some action to all the advocacy that SIL has been doing over the past few years.

Students from Tanzania and South Sudan in the MLE course working on a group activity.

Whats Next?

As soon as I get back to Juba in mid-August, it will be time to get ready for our annual planning meetings with each of the language communities that we are involved with. Its a good time to look back at what weve all accomplished over the past year, and look ahead with the language teams to what activities theyd like to do over the coming year. But it can be a tiring time, too, as it means a lot of coordination, communication and planning plus, this will be my first time at the planning meetings in the Coordinator role! Once again, thank you so much for your continued commitment to praying for and supporting the translation and education work that is going on through SIL in South Sudan! Peace, Tanya

This picture is taken from the exact same corner, on the exact same street near my house the one above was taken in 2009. T he one below was taken in early 2013. My, what a difference a few years can make, eh?

In 2009, there was a small shelter where people played dominos all day. Today, there is a shop and a restaurant which serves amazing grilled chicken, just down the street from where I live.

Taking part in the Run for the Bible-less fundraising event for BTL in Nairobi. Of course, I did the 4 km walknot the 10km run!

The MTB-MLE class was great! As you can see from our small closing, we all had a lot of fun together! One of the joys of being in Nairobi is the chance to playboating with some students and seeing giraffes and elephants!

I continue to be involved with a Murle church based literacy class in Juba by helping them format, edit and print a book of folk tales.