Exciting things have been happening, but I've been less than faithful in keeping you posted. Here's a very quick summary of the most recent news:

In September my supervisor, Verna Stutzman, facilitated a RWC workshop in Nepal where 22,900 were collected in fewer than 10 days' time. I found that astounding.

On October 5, Anita and I presented Rapid Word Collection at a Vespers service at JAARS. Many people who were there had never heard of RWC before. One of those people left within the next two weeks for an 8-month assignment in Vanuatu. After arriving there, "Rapid Word Collection" was mentioned by the Director's wife and the new arrival was able to put her and her husband in contact with me, so that about a week ago, I had a 2-hour conversation with them via Skype about the feasibility of doing RWC in multiple languages in Vanuatu. That was an energizing conversation that happened between 4:00 and 6:00AM EDT, due to the 15-hour time difference between here and there.

This past week, someone else contacted me about doing RWC in the country where he works. The situation there is sensitive (= "potentially hostile to Christians"), so I'll not mention details. He wanted to know if someone in our department could come in January to facilitate such a workshop for the language community where he is involved in Bible translation. I've been helping him assess the feasibility of that, and that's been an exciting enterprise.

Now I'm on the verge of leaving for Ethiopia (departure at 6:15AM this Friday), where two RWC workshops are scheduled in November and December. I plan to spend three weeks in each of the two language communities, so will be gone from home for almost seven weeks. While there, I will be focusing on training others to facilitate these workshops in the future. There will be at least two trainees from Ethiopia and one from Tanzania. Watch this space for more details.