What We Do - A Guide For Mission Workers
We invite you to look at the various services that we offer and to consider whether you might be able to make use of any of them. If you see something that you think would be particularly useful, just click on the link that says, "I Would Like Some Help" at the end of the description of each service. This will take you to a web form where you can fill in your personal details, tell us a bit more about the detail of what you need, and submit your request straight away!
Click on any button for more details.
Airport Transportation
If you need to travel between one of the major London Airports and another location in the South-East of England, or if you need someone to meet you, contact our Airport Transport Service. We have a team of drivers in the London area ready to pick up and drop off people at the airports. We do ask you to pay reasonable running costs for this service, as well as the cost of parking at the airport. Please note as well that it is sometimes possible to arrange overnight accommodation if you are leaving the UK on an early morning flight or will be returning late at night.
Although this journey is being organised as a courtesy only, we are always grateful for any comments about any particularly notable aspects of your journey, good or bad. We are concerned for your comfort and safety so please do feed back to us any useful comments.
WA acts as an intermediary in arranging this transport as a courtesy only and the drivers are all volunteers. Whilst we take reasonable care to ensure that drivers and their vehicles are suitable for the task, we cannot accept responsibility for any injury, financial or otherwise, that passengers, their travelling companions, or the driver, may suffer during the course of, or in consequence of, the proposed journey.
[ Home Page ] [ Return to Index of Services ] [ Transport for Arrivals ] [ Transport for Departures ]
Small Projects
Each year we have a limited amount of money available to provide grants of up to £500 each to small projects that we believe deserve some encouragement and support. These projects have to fit within our objectives (as defined in our Trust Deed) but, to give you an idea of what that can encompass, recent applications have included requests for funding to print Old Testament books, to train Bible translation consultants and to help Bible college construction.
If you have a project that you think would fit within our criteria and would benefit from a one-off grant of this nature, please complete the form by clicking on [ I Would Like Some Help ] below.
Letter Distribution
If you need help with the production and distribution of your news and prayer letters, we have people ready to help you. We can maintain address lists and produce labels, photocopy and fold letters, stuff and stamp envelopes. Sorry, we can't write the letter for you! Our work is free but we do ask you to pay for the paper, envelopes and stamps, please.
Magazine Service
Do you like to relax and read a magazine in an evening? If there is no local TV, and little local information, you need to keep your brain cells ticking over. Wycliffe Associates volunteers are able to send out magazines for you and comics for your children. So if there is a magazine or comic that you would like to receive, please let us know. We may not be able to supply all titles but we will do our best. These is no charge for this service but please write and thank the person who sends you the magazine. If you need a professional journal which is unavailable where you are, we will order it and send it regularly at your expense.
Please note that this service is available only to mission workers from the UK.
Feedback
"My wife and I work in Côte d'Ivoire. Some friends told us of your supportive ministry and we immediately agreed it was a great idea. Many mission workers struggle with isolation. My wife would be particularly interested in receiving magazines. She enjoyed the women's magazine Prima. Thank you for your ministry. May God bless you."
Data Archiving
Wycliffe Associates (UK) has started a project called "Bible For The Future
" with the aim of
preserving all available computer files of Scripture on storage media and in file formats that will be available
in the future. For more information about this project, please follow the link below.
If you are a member of the board or a senior computer data specialist in a Bible organisation, you may want to consider sharing your resources with this project. We will provide you with a copy of your material that will make an excellent, standardised and readable archive for your own use. The amount of detail that we need to consider for this precludes us from using a simple web form but you may download from here an application form in Rich Text format (RTF) that you should complete and return to us by post or email, using the contact details provided.
Translation Services
Do you sometimes need help with translation? Is there a document or article you can't understand because it is in a foreign language? Our team of translators may be able to help you. We can also help with translating documents from English into other languages. We always ask the translation to be done by a native speaker of the target language. For example, if you needed translation from English into German, we would look for a native German speaker.
So, if you have material written in a European language that needs translating, please let us know. We are working in co-operation with other countries to be able to offer to-and-from English translations. This work does take some time, so please be patient. There is no charge for this service if it will help you in your missionary task or would help you to fulfil your missionary goals.
Feedback
"Thank you so much for the translated file you sent us. It is of an excellent quality and we are very satisfied. We'll prepare some more texts for translation into French, which we will need for the literacy consultant's training next June. Thanks a lot for this excellent and so much needed service."
EasyEnglish Materials
EasyEnglish is a new development by Wycliffe Associates (UK). Many people around the world now have some knowledge of English, but their vocabulary and grammar is limited, so they can't always read books written for native English speakers. Many pastors and church leaders could benefit if Christian books were written in easier English. We have developed specialised techniques for translating 'ordinary' English into EasyEnglish, using limited vocabulary and simple grammatical forms. We use these to produce reading materials that are easy to understand for people whose first language is not English. We are producing free EasyEnglish Bible Commentaries and studies suitable for church pastors who have had little training.
We also have an English Learner's Bible available for you to download that provides a very simple translation for those just learning English. Or, if you would like our team of translators to help by doing translations from ordinary English into EasyEnglish, please contact us.
IT Development
If you have a need for some specific computer task that is likely to require the use of a specialist piece of software, or the automation of some common task in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, do get in touch. We have a small army of programmers available and they may be able to produce exactly what you need but haven't been able to find anywhere else in the world (even on the internet!)
We also have quite a few website developers who could help you to construct an appropriate site for your mission or, perhaps, a dedicated project on which you are working. Please note that, whilst we will create the site for you for free, there is invariably a revenue cost attached to renting a domain name and web space through an internet service provider.
Internet Research
The internet has become one of the largest repositories of human knowledge on the planet. There is information available on almost every subject. However, the quality of that information varies enormously. There are some gems available but often hidden away under mountains of rubbish! We know that many overseas workers do not have the time or expertise to use this facility properly, nor yet the full internet access that is required.
We have a team of information searchers who are skilled and experienced in searching on the internet and may be able to help you. So, if you need information on a particular topic, please let us know and our team of researchers will get on the case for you. We have responded to requests for information on everything from digital cameras to the phases of the moon. Preferably, this service should be related in some way to your missionary work.
Feedback
"Thank you to everyone who helped in getting us the dates of the new moons so quickly and for the next five years. We are not used to such speedy service in this neck of the woods."
IT (Support)
Are you looking for advice on computer hardware or software? If you are like most computer users, you will have experienced the occasional crash or, possibly, frequent crashes! Perhaps you have other computer problems or questions that hold up your work. Overseas mission workers often do not have much local support available when they have computer problems. So Wycliffe Associates (UK) has set up a system where mission workers can contact us for help. Just let us know the problem through our online IT Support Centre, and our volunteers will try and give you the answer you need.
Email Forwarding
How can you send a quick email to your non-computerised friends, family or prayer group back home? Even if they don't have a computer, you can email us and we will print out and post the letters by first class mail to your friends.
Please note that this service is for individual letters, not for bulk mailing.
Please note too that this service is available only to mission workers from the UK.
For an occasional email there is no charge. Please contact us and, on the Subject line of your email write "EMAIL FORWARDING" and the destination country. Put the name and full postal address of your friend at the top left of your letter, using one line of the address per line.
However, if you plan to use this service frequently and to a number of people, please complete the form by clicking on [ I Would Like Some Help ] below. We ask for a deposit payment to cover the postage costs. There is no charge for the work involved, just for the envelope and stamps.
Typing Services
Do you have any materials that are vital to your work but which need putting on computer? We do a lot of this routine keyboarding work and there is no cost to you. If you have text material that needs keyboarding, please let us know. We can also deal with audio recordings that you wish to have typed into text files.
If we accept your project, we can return it to you in Unicode and Paratext formats (for Scripture work) or, if you prefer or it is more appropriate, formatted Word files or ASCII text format (which can be read by any word processing program). For all Scripture texts we use the current version of the Unified Standard Format Markers (USFM) in our files.
In the past we have keyboarded many Bibles and New Testaments in European and non-European languages. We can tackle older published translations of Scriptures that need putting on computer for the first time or translations "in progress" (manuscript or typescript) to give you an electronic draft from which you can revise and finalise. Other examples of our work include dictionaries; primers; texts of stories, theological teaching materials, Sunday School lessons; literacy aids; language learning books; reports; translation textbooks - in fact, just about any type of document. Let us know what you need.
We have a large team of volunteers who are now experienced in doing this kind of keyboarding. Much of the material is "double keyboarded" using different volunteers. The two versions are then merged and a team of editors do further checking against the original text to get a highly accurate output file.
Please give brief details of the language group and the reasons for keyboarding. Our volunteers will pray for you as they type.
Please note that currently we are ONLY able to handle scripts that are based on the Roman script (like you are reading now).
We can handle accented letters and any additional special letters and characters that you may have in your alphabet. We cannot normally keyboard Cyrillic, Arabic or Asian texts.
Feedback
"I have to say in the name of the Paraguayan Bible Society, a very special and big THANK YOU to all the people who were working and helping us to bring out this project. May the Lord bless you, and please let me say that in Guarani: Ñandejara tande rovasa ! (Our Lord (owner) pass His hands on your faces). That means: God Bless you!"
Purchasing Services
Are you a missionary living in a remote place? Perhaps there are items you need to buy that would be easy to find at home but that you can't find locally? Maybe you are looking for a special book, computer software or parts, things for your children, or even a large sized pair of shoes, or a bouquet of flowers for your Mum's birthday. Or perhaps you need a spare part for some equipment or a diesel generator?
Let us know if you would like us to go shopping for you. We will be glad to help. We do need to charge you for the items we buy for you and the shipping costs, but there is no charge for the work we do.
Feedback
"The spare part for our washing machine has arrived! Thank you! It was the right one and has been installed. I just wanted you to know that it has arrived and that we are very happy with all your help."
Educational Books
If your school on the mission field needs books, especially those that will prepare children for the British GCSE courses, then please contact us. We will be able to recommend and purchase the books you need and ship them to the school. We can also supply home schooling books. If we can help you in this way, please complete the form by clicking on the link below.
Library Research
Do you need access to a good university library? Are there technical or professional articles that you would like to read, which would help you in your missionary work? We can draw on the huge resources of the British Library, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) library, and other institutions to get photocopies. There is a cost of about £3 per article (sometimes less) that covers the cost of up to fifty pages of copying. Under copyright law, fair copying from books is considered to be a maximum of one chapter.
If this is your need, Wycliffe Associates (UK) may be able to help you. We have access to some of the best national libraries in the UK and the USA, which have massive collections. We can obtain photocopies of articles you may need. There is a small charge for this service for the photocopying and postage to the field. Many overseas mission workers have already been using the service and find it really helps them in their work.
Feedback
"Thank you for introducing me to the technical articles service that WA provides. I have already used it three times, and I have let the other language teams in Ghana know about it as well. It really is a tremendous help to us."
Literacy Materials
Wycliffe Associates (UK) has produced a large number of adult literacy booklets in four of the world's most widely used languages (English, French, Spanish and Portuguese). They cover a range of subjects from health, animal husbandry and small-scale farming to practical issues like simple construction techniques.
They are called Shell Books because you are provided with the shell of the book and simply pour in the text of the local language. Each booklet comes with a full document layout, suitable pictures (which can be modified to suit local cultural differences) and the full simplified text in your chosen language. You can then translate the text into the local language, retaining the same layout.
Each title is available in both Microsoft Word and Microsoft Publisher formats. You can find out more at our Shell Books website by clicking on [ I Would Like Some Help ] below. You may download and use all of the booklets without payment but we do ask that you respect the copyright conditions attaching to them.
Book Tracing and Purchase
Often mission workers need their own personal copies of books that are hard to find or out of print. Does that describe you? Maybe we can help you. Our Book Purchasing team searches for books in second-hand and antiquarian book shops, as well as in internet book stores. We have contacts with about one hundred second-hand book shops, including ones that specialise in such subjects as theology and African studies. There may be a delay, especially if the books are out of print, but we will keep on looking.
If you would like to use the service, please let us know. You will be expected to pay for the books and for shipping out to the mission field, but we will let you know the overall cost first so you can decide if you really want the book that much before ordering it! If you require more than one book, please send in the form and, on a separate email, list the details of the other books.
Feedback
"Many thanks for all your hard work tracing books for us. Looking forward to them coming with my parents in their luggage."
"We were delighted to find the book 'Under the Ancestor's Shadow' waiting for us. We now live in the town the book is about, so it will be extremely useful."
Hospitality
Wycliffe Associates has a network of people in Britain who are willing to let overseas mission workers stay for a short period with them. Sometimes this is overnight; sometimes it is for a few days.
We also have volunteers who have holiday accommodation and are willing to let mission workers use this either free or for a small charge. If you are a mission worker and would like to use our hospitality service in Britain, please click on the link, and complete the form with further details of what you require.
Please note that all our accommodation is subject to availability.