Yesterday afternoon Tany and I arrived in Orlando. Temperature leaving Boston was around 20c, in Orlando it’s closer to 35c and humid. All this sun and warm weather and there’s not a person on the street to enjoy it, they’re all hiding inside where there’s air conditioning.

I’m here because Wycliffe’s US base is in Orlando. They moved here a few years ago from southern California when the cost of living there had become prohibitive from having any kind of operation there. The office is now on 200 acres of land on the outskirts of a newly developing community.

It’s a bit difficult to draw direct comparisons between the Wycliffe operation in the UK and what they do in the US. The countries are different. For all our similarities there is still a greater proportion of the 300 million people that live in the US who at least attend church and hold to a Christian belief system than there are in the UK. That immediately means that there is a bigger marketplace for Wycliffe to work within here than in the UK.

There’s also more engagement between the church and business than in the UK. That’s not to say that the US is more professional, but Christians here are happier talking about money, wealth and the need to finance operations properly. It costs to operate translation work around the world and provide support at home. While often it’s easy to ask for money to support people working overseas it’s more difficult to ask people to put money into buildings, stationery and computers at home.

That’s not really what I was talking about today, it’s just an introduction really.

Despite the grander size of the operation in the US, Wycliffe here and in the UK are facing the similar problems of a shrinking number of ageing donors and a lack of interest in Bible translation by young professionals and the next generation. The question of how to proceed is something we are both thinking about.

I’d show some pictures but I haven’t been outside for long enough with a camera to take any shots. What there is though is the Wycliffe US YouTube channel with some video about the associated benefits of Bible translation. I watched some of these this afternoon and they are worth a look.

Tomorrow morning I meet Ruth Hubbard, Senior VP for Wycliffe here in the US and fellow blogger. Then Tany and I fly on to Charlotte, NC.