Bill & Norma Jean Jancewicz

Tentmakers

Northern Translation Brief 14Nov2014

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

Our Dear Partners,

You remember over the past few months our “briefs” have focused on our broadened vision and expanding activities in First Nations Bible Translation Capacity-Building across Canada. Starting from what God is doing with the Naskapi community in northern Quebec, He is leading us to other related language groups that also have a deep need to hear God speak to them in their languages as well. The Naskapi people are very closely related to people at a community in Labrador called “Natuashish”, where the Mushuau Innu language is spoken. We expected to be there during these weeks of November, but God had other plans for now. We may be able to be back there in February.

Our gathering with First Nations speakers and church stakeholders in Prince Albert in June identified several other priorities beyond our starting point with the Naskapi in northeast Canada, including the following:

The continued work on bringing the legacy (Mason) Plains Cree Bible to publication
The continued work on the contemporary (Cuthand) Plains Cree text through consultant checking and preparation for publication
The establishment of a Bible Translation / Language development project for Kingfisher Lake Oji-Cree (and the surrounding Oji-Cree communities)
The establishment of a “Pan-Cree” Bible Translation initiative that would result in a cluster of several dialects working on the translation of the same passage(s) at once. This Cree cluster would get its start with a series of Mother-Tongue Translator (MTT) training workshops, targeted at training speakers identified from each participating community. The workshops would include training in Cree syllabics, use of computers, Cree language and literacy (reading and writing), and have as their goal the translation of some short but worthy and useful passage of Scripture for each community. These workshops would also include participation of translators from First Nations across Canada, including Naskapi, Innu and Oji-Cree.

Besides these four, our work still continues on other priorities that are connected to the Capacity-Building initiative:

The continued work on Naskapi Old Testament translation, scripture engagement, and translator training.
The continued connection and relationship-building with the Mushuau Innu language community in Labrador.

Over our next few “Translation Briefs”, we would like to take you deeper into each one of these priorities; how God is at work in these areas and how you might continue to pray for these language groups. As we shared with our friends and supporters during our Partnership Development tour last month, that “multiplication” (not just “addition”) is one way these priorities will be met: So pray with us that the Lord of the Harvest will send additional team members to join us in this work. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “…There is a real opportunity here for great and worthwhile work…” (1 Corinthians 16:9).
So in the next few days, we’ll send out a Translation Brief about the Mason Plains Cree Bible.

Until then, thanks for your interest in our work and your prayers.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

Please also remember our daughter Elizabeth who is going to Labrador this week and making a visit to the Natuashish Mushuau-Innu community with the “Labrador Creative Arts Festival” (LCAF)
https://www.facebook.com/131612796945171/photos/a.594239127349200.1073741827.131612796945171/594248440681602/?type=1&fref=nf&pnref=story

Northern Translation Brief 01Nov2014

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

Home from our Fall 2014 tour! (but not for long!)

Our Dear Partners,

We just rolled into the driveway at our Aldergrove Cottage in British Columbia after 10 weeks of being “on the road” for our Fall 2014 development trip. We praise God and thank you for your prayers for protection and provision covering 12,694 road miles. In the past six days alone, we covered 3291 miles–52+ hours in the drivers seat.

Other statistics? We visited three First Nations communities: 5 days in Kingfisher Lake, Ontario (Oji-Cree), 10 days in Kawawachikamach (Naskapi) and 3 days at the Mohegan Tribal Territory, in Connecticut (Algonquian Conference).

We visited 8 churches–several of these have prayed and supported us for many years–and we had the opportunity to share our work and vision at many of them, and Bill preached at two of them. We were welcomed into the homes of at least a dozen of our friends and supporters who graciously shared their hospitality with us. We also visited with many friends and relatives along the way, it was so good to see some who we had not seen in many years. We made some new friends, too. Some of you who receive this letter are among them.

We slept in some 29 different beds! (including sleeping-bags in our tent-camper, many guest rooms, and some hotel rooms, too.) Tonight, we sleep in our own bed after 69 nights away from home.

But not for long! One of our priority First Nations language communities is Natuashish, the Mushuau Innu language that is so closely related to Naskapi–the community on the north coast of Labrador. It is very difficult (and expensive) to get to this community. But God has made a way for us to get there this month: While we were in Kawawachikamach with the Naskapi, the leaders of the Innu School Board in Labrador contacted us and asked us if we would come to Labrador to conduct a professional development workshop for the Innu-speaking language teachers and teaching assistants. We will be doing follow up workshops in both Innu communities in Labrador, which means we will be in Natuashish from November 9-14. So we leave British Columbia (by plane, this time) late at night this Tuesday, November 4 and fly back on November 23. The Innu School board is paying for the entire cost of the trip for both of us, which is a real blessing and a great opportunity to serve again in our language development roles in these communities.

We appreciate your prayers for us as we un-pack (and re-pack) and go back to the people in Natuashish who still do not have access to God’s word in their own language. Pray for open doors and open hearts.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

Northern Translation Brief 14Sep2014

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

Our Dear Partners,

It is so good to be back in the Naskapi community of Kawawachikamach. We are here for a week of literacy and teacher workshops, Scripture translation and engagement activities, and linguistics capacity-building for the team here. We start a full and busy week on Monday morning in the translation office, afternoons at the school with the Naskapi teachers, and taking part in activities in the evenings.

It was nice also to have the weekend to reconnect with our good friends around the community and to settle into the house here. We were invited to stay in the rectory attached to the Naskapi church and are enjoying the privilege of being just steps away from everything in the community. On Friday night, we even enjoyed the wonderful display of God’s creation in the northern lights (aurora borealis) overhead.

Thank you for your prayers as we re-connect here and help our Naskapi friends to have the joy of reading God’s Word in their own language. We will be here through September 22nd before traveling on to our many other appointments during this trip.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

Please take note, all our friends who connect with Norma Jean by Facebook: The office network that we share here is unable to use Facebook, but you can still send messages by our e-mail addresses:

normajean_jancewicz@sil.org
bill_jancewicz@sil.org

Eventually when we have full internet access again, you will be able to follow us through Norma Jean’s Facebook account, meanwhile, thanks for your patience and prayers.

Kingfisher Lake

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

Our Dear Partners,

Kingfisher Lake is one of a dozen Oji-Cree speaking First Nations communities in Northern Ontario. We spent the first week of September here meeting with church and community leadership, educators, elders, and other residents about the possibilities of helping them set up their own Bible translation program. They reminded us once again that for decades their church and people have had to get by with translations used by the surrounding languages (Moose Cree, Plains Cree, and Ojibwe) but they don’t yet have adequate access to the Scriptures in their own language. They were gracious, and we listened to them tell us about their desire to begin their own language project to address some of these needs.

On the last day of our visit, they met with us to say that they would be forming their own translation committee, and invited us to come back again to begin training them to start their own Bible translation project. We made plans to go back to see them in mid-winter.

We drove down through Thunder Bay and Michigan and we are now at the Bible Society offices in Kitchener, Ontario, where we will be meeting with them over the next few days to talk about progress with the Oji-Cree, Naskapi, Innu and Cree translation programs.

Thank you for your prayers for our travels and meetings. We went another 2000 miles by car since we last checked in with you all last week.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

Northern Translation Brief 22Aug2014

Posted on August 22, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

Our dear partners,

In just a day or so we are bound for Points North as we begin our fall development trip. We leave Sunday, August 24 driving eastward pulling our little camper trailer. We will be making our first visit to the middle of the Oji-Cree language area in northern Ontario, where we will be welcomed by Bishop Lydia Mamakwa. To get there, we drive to the small town of Sioux Lookout, Ontario, and then fly to Kingfisher Lake (ᑭᓑᑭᒪᓂᓯᐊᐧᐳᐠ) Giishkimanisiiwaaboong. We will be visiting the Oji-Cree speakers in that isolated Northern community, and discovering how we may be used to help them to have access to the Scriptures in their own language. You may remember that when we met with First Nations speakers and church leaders at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan last June, this is just one of the projects that they asked us to help them with.

Kingfisher Lake is just the first stop of many appointments we have on this 10,000 mile (by road–plus about 2500 miles by air) journey.

The second week of September we will be at the Canadian Bible Society offices in Kitchener, Ontario…

The third week of September we will be in the Naskapi First Nation community at Kawawachikamach, Quebec…

The fourth week of September we will be heading for southern New England…

The end of September and beginning of October we have scheduled several visits with friends, supporters, and sending churches where we will be reporting about our work supporting Bible Translation in Canada and sharing our vision for the where God is sending us now. and in the months to come.

At the end of October we will be attending the Algonquian linguistics Conference, and then turning west again to return to British Columbia where Norma Jean will be completing her graduate work at Trinity Western University.

Thank you for your prayers for God’s continued guidance, provision, protection, and direction, and especially this coming week (Sept 1-5) during our time at Kingfisher Lake.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

Summer 2014 Newsletter (Part 3)

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

In the previous post, we described a strategy for meeting the remaining translation needs in Canada by multiplying the work begun with Naskapi–building Bible translation capacity in the First Nations communities in Canada, and tells of our plans for a trip across the country to visit First Nations communities and work with the Naskapi team. This post completes our summer newsletter with personal notes and contact information.

Living on the “west coast”

While Norma Jean is completing her MA program course work in British Columbia, we expect to remain based here to be close to Trinity Western University through the first half of 2015. We are able to support the ongoing Naskapi work by e-mail and Skype, while deepening our linguistics and academics through networking with CanIL staff and students.

Family Matters

Our son Nick is continues his studies in social work, and continues his enrolment in the undergraduate program at Trinity Western University. He will again be living on-campus in the dorm here. This summer, he’s pleased to be working full-time as a technician at a local sporting-goods retail outlet. It has been great to have him nearby.
Elizabeth and Eric are living in Connecticut, pursuing their musical and artistic endeavors. We are so proud of their accomplishments. Elizabeth continues to be involved in First Nations work by beautifully illustrating some of our literacy books.
Ben and Tamika live with their two children in Baltimore, and have been out to BC several times this year to see us. It is great to connect with them and especially our grandchildren Nya and Arion.

Thank you for your prayers for our ongoing work and school, as we continue to serve and look with anticipation toward the expanded roles God has given us in First Nations Bible Translation across Canada.

Serving with you,
Bill and Norma Jean Jancewicz / 25133 0 Ave / Aldergrove, BC / V4W 2H4 CANADA
home phone 604-381-4440 (still no cell phone… yet!)
e-mail: bill_jancewicz@sil.org normajean_jancewicz@sil.org

If you are not yet receiving our newsletter by e-mail and you would like to, or if you would like to begin partnering with us with prayers or financial support, please contact us.
website: bill.jancewicz.com

You may connect with, pray for, and provide financial support to us directly through these Wycliffe websites (just point and click):

Wycliffe Canada: http://www.wycliffe.ca/m?Jancewicz

Wycliffe USA: https://www.wycliffe.org/partner/Jancewicz

Summer 2014 Newsletter (Part 2)

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

In the previous post, we told you about several priorities that came out of the Prince Albert meetings with First Nations language speakers and church leaders:

Acceleration and continuation of the Plains Cree Bible Translation project.
The establishment of a Bible Translation and language development project for Kingfisher Lake Oji-Cree and the surrounding Oji-Cree communities.
The establishment of a Bible translation initiative that would result in a cluster of several Cree dialects working on the translation of the same books. This cluster could get its start with a series of workshops to train Cree speakers from each participating community in Bible translation and literacy (reading and writing) which would also include Naskapi from Quebec, Oji-Cree from Ontario and Innu from Labrador.

Multiplication as a sustainable strategy
This brings us back to Jesus’ story that we referred to in the previous post. God has been using us primarily in the Naskapi community–and He is still doing a great work there. Now, we are being invited to grow from there, and use our Naskapi project experience as a model and training opportunity for other communities. To fulfill this vision, we are asking God to send us six to eight new workers (that is, three or more new teams) who are willing to be trained and mentored to serve alongside the mother-tongue speakers of these languages in these new priority areas in Bible translation and language development.
While we are here in Langley BC, we are also connecting with CanIL, the Canadian Institute of Linguistics at Trinity Western University. CanIL is the Wycliffe and SIL International training partner in Canada. It is a good opportunity for us to present the language program needs to students that God has already been calling into this kind of ministry.
We will also be developing and deepening relationships with other First Nations language speakers and their communities that have been waiting for adequate access to the Scriptures in their mother tongue. At the same time, we will work on establishing learning opportunities so that more First Nations mother tongue speakers can become translators for their own languages, building their capacity for literacy and material development, while recruiting, guiding and mentoring the new language program workers God brings into these priority projects.

Fall development trip
This September-October we will be traveling to Cree, Oji-Cree and Naskapi communities to continue developing these relationships and to provide language and literacy training to Naskapi teachers and mother-tongue translators. We will also be meeting with Canadian Bible Society and First Nations church leaders to coordinate and support each others’ work on this initiative. Along the way, we also plan to visit with many of you who support our work with prayers and gifts to share our new and expanded vision and responsibility.
–To Be Concluded in Part 3

Summer 2014 Newsletter (Part 1)

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

There is a story that Jesus tells in the Bible about a king who summoned his servants and entrusted them each with a sum of money as an investment (Luke 19:11-27). This story teaches about being faithful in serving God with the things he has given us, but what is interesting about this particular story are the rewards that the faithful servants receive: ‘Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’
The First Nations Bible Translation Capacity-Building Initiative

Our Dear Partners,

Our work in Naskapi territory has begun to bear fruit. We have spent many years focusing on Bible Translation and Mother-Tongue education in a single community where Naskapi is spoken, in northern Quebec. It has been our privilege to witness a gradual transformation where more and more people are engaging with God’s Word in Naskapi. This June, two Naskapi women, Cheyenne and Marianne, joined us at a gathering for First Nations Bible Translation capacity-building, We heard them share how having the Bible in Naskapi has helped them in their relationship to God:

While testimonies like these are very encouraging to us on many levels, it is very significant that this was shared with some of their fellow First-Nations people from related Cree and Oji-Cree language communities across Canada’s north. Our meetings this June with people from First Nations communities has opened doors for work in these languages. Our dialogue with them identified several priorities:

Acceleration and continuation of the Plains Cree Bible Translation project.
The establishment of a Bible Translation and language development project for Kingfisher Lake Oji-Cree and the surrounding Oji-Cree communities.
The establishment of a Bible translation initiative that would result in a cluster of several Cree dialects working on the translation of the same books. This cluster could get its start with a series of workshops to train Cree speakers from each participating community in Bible translation and literacy (reading and writing) which could also include Naskapi from Quebec, Oji-Cree from Ontario and Innu from Labrador.

—To Be Continued in Part 2

Northern Translation Brief: Redrawing the Map

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

Our dear partners and “followers” (*),

In the last post, I had a map with a plan of our meeting with some Cree language speakers and church leaders at Prince Albert for the “First Nations Bible Translation Capacity-Building Gathering“. God is clearly still at work in these northern communities, and it became clear that the speakers of these languages do indeed want help from Wycliffe and the Bible Society with their Bible translation projects.

Cheyenne and Marianne did come from the Naskapi community, and they shared effectively how God’s Word in their own language has deepened their relationship to Him. But one of the new things that we learned was the translation need in the “Severn Ojibwe” language. Look at the map where it says “Prince Albert”. Right under that sign are several isolated communities of Severn Ojibwe speakers, also known as “Oji-Cree”. Bishop Lydia Mamakwa, a speaker from the Kingfisher Lake Oji-Cree community, shared her heart’s desire to see the Scriptures made available in her mother-tongue. Her plea, along with the other priority projects put forth by the group, are the beginning of an initiative to answer all the remaining First Nations Bible Translation needs in Canada.

See if you can find the new locations on the map that were missing from the first one:

We meet again by Conference Call this week with the working group to plan our next steps towards these goals:

Acceleration and continuation of the Plains Cree Bible Translation project.
The establishment of a Bible Translation and language development project for Kingfisher Lake Oji-Cree and the surrounding Oji-Cree communities.
The establishment of a Bible translation initiative that would result in a cluster of several Cree dialects working on the translation of the same books. This cluster could get its start with a series of workshops to train Cree speakers from each participating community in Bible translation and literacy (reading and writing) which could also include Naskapi from Quebec, Oji-Cree from Ontario and Mushuau Innu from Labrador.

Also, be watching this space during the coming week for a serial version of our Summer Newsletter that was mailed out today.

Serving with you, Bill and Norma Jean

(*) I understand that people who do websites like this one, that some call “blogs”, also have “followers”. You may apply “partner” or “follower” to yourself as appropriate.

Northern Translation Brief 05May2014

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Bill Jancewicz

Our Dear Partners and Friends,

You prayed last week when we shared about our hopeful possibility that Naskapi church lay-readers Cheyenne and Marianne might be able to come to the First Nations Bible Translation Capacity Building Gathering to be held this June in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

God has been at work and there have been many steps of faith taken in the past week. The administrative director of the Naskapi Development Corporation, (where most of the Naskapi translation work takes place) has authorized the purchase of airfare for Cheyenne and Marianne. Their itinerary has them leaving Schefferville, in Northern Quebec on Sunday afternoon June 8, (the day after Cheyenne’s daughter Amanda’s wedding). They will overnight in Montreal and then go on from there to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, scheduled arrival Monday 12:30 PM. The reservations have been made and the tickets have been bought!

By the time Cheyenne and Marianne arrive in Saskatoon, the Gathering in Prince Albert will have already been going on since Monday Morning, with the National indigenous bishop, other Cree church leaders and speakers, the Bible Society (and us) in attendance. We will be listening to what the Cree think about language development and Bible translation in their own language.

We are adjusting the agenda so that when the Naskapi representatives arrive, they can share how God’s Word came to them, how many are learning to read now because of it, and how they are learning to participate in the Old Testament translation work, and how precious it is to them.

Our prayer is that God will continue to work out the details of this meeting in a way that all the other First Nations languages that still need His message in their mother tongues can begin to participate themselves for their communities as well, and that Norma Jean and I will see and respond to the opportunities we may have to work along side the Cree, Naskapi and Innu people in the languages that speak to their hearts.

Thank you for your prayers. God is hearing and answering!

We look forward to sharing more news of how God is at work in our lives and the lives of those we serve and will be serving in the months and years to come.

Love, Bill and Norma Jean