Newsletter 42: Not in Nigeria!
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Here’s some news for June/July 2015 from the Nigeria branch of the Rowbory family (High Quality Printable Version)
With a whirlwind of final meetings, David wrapped up his solo month in Nigeria and returned to the heart of the family at the start of May. By then they had moved over from Northern Ireland to Glasgow and Rebekah had started at a local primary school.
David: “Such was the rush of activities before leaving Nigeria that I didn’t have much time to think about what we would be doing in the UK apart from waiting for the baby to arrive at the end of June. We are gradually working things out now, but one issue that popped up straight away was the need to do a bit of work on our flat (that we let out while in Nigeria) to prepare it for being re-let to new tenants. The previous tenants had not looked after it terribly well. We would appreciate if you could pray that we would soon find good new tenants who would care for the place well so it’s not a concern for us. It was good timing that we were able to help with it in person this time rather than having to go to the expense of getting contractors in for everything, and also very helpful to work with my dad and a friend on it all.”
Julie: “In May we popped over to Northern Ireland to visit my brother and wife and their son who was born a few weeks ago. At the same time we managed to meet up with representatives from Portstewart Baptist Church to talk about being more formally recognised as being supported by them in prayer. It was good to catch up a little more with relatives and friends in Northern Ireland even though time was short, fitting into school holidays.”
While we’re in the UK David’s going to be keeping on working on Bible translation matters, with a mixture of research and helping out the Gworog team (and possibly others) over email. Along the way we hope to visit our supporting churches and individual supporters to give a face-to-face update on our work and the situation in northern Nigeria.We also pray that God would open up opportunities to recruit more people to get involved in translating and engaging with the scriptures in Nigeria or elsewhere.
We’re planning for David to visit Nigeria in September and possibly also November to help with translation checking face-to-face with the Gworog Bible translation team, and to try to help them keep up their momentum. In the last month several members of the Gworog team have been in Jos at a workshop looking at ways to reflect meaningful ‘tone’ distinctions in written form. As much as everyone wants one there’s no easy answer, but if they want people to read fluently with understanding, they need to find some consistent solution. Kids spend years wrestling with the baffling English writing system with varying degrees of success and our hope would be that a common standard for writing Gworog would not only serve people understanding the Bible well, but also give people a love rather than a fear of reading and writing.
And finally, several folk have asked when we’ll be having a holiday. We have already been taking a bit of stay-cation style holiday, and plan to take a week or two of holiday here and there to give us a chance to unwind and catch up with friends and family around the country.
Stop press: We had a baby girl last Monday. Helen. 8lb14. Mum and baby all doing well. We thank God. The due date was some time this week. Maybe there was a time zone difference or something.
Thanks again for your prayers, practical and financial help.
Love from
David, Julie, Rebekah, Elizabeth, Abigail and Helen
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