Wycliffe Sweden reports on their progress

What do you do when you are a small organization in a relatively small country but called to do a large task? Our Wycliffe Member Organizations, of which there are about 45, do that each day. While Ken and I are members of one of the largest mission organizations worldwide (Wycliffe Bible Translators), and are sent out by the largest member organization (Wycliffe USA), many of the folks I work with come from smaller organizations.

Those who serve in the Nordic Region (Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark) have between 4 and 60 members that serve world-wide. Each of these organizations are called to serve the same task as our larger groups, mainly, raising “People, Prayer and Funds”.

Funding is the area that I work in. How can we promote the great work of Bible Translation among the citizens of these countries? Should we just speak in churches or should we promote our work in schools, clubs, local magazines?

Collaboration sounds like a good idea when you have a task that is large. And so the Nordic groups meet every 18 months to 2 years to see how they can work better together. If each organization writes a quarterly magazine, doesn’t it make sense to share articles and photos of the work of Wycliffe? If each group is raising money for field projects wouldn’t it be smart to combine their efforts together so that they don’t each have to do the monthly reporting?

These are some of the things that I worked on while in Tampere, Finland April 1-6, 2011. “Working Smarter, not Harder” is a comment we frequently hear. I’m praying we made good progress in this last week.

Thank you for praying for me as I traveled. Oh…you can’t visit Finland without having a cultural experience – the 175 or more degree sauna followed by an ice water plunge! Sauna was created in Finland. And so, I took the plunge, literally, along with our colleagues. Sauna, and then a dip in a lake and back again! Not once, not twice but three times!

It was a great bonding experience. Wish you were there! But, would you have taken the plunge…..?

Anne reluctantly climbs down the ice hole!