The sun was favorable at the event on this Easter Monday in the Cartières. The chapel decorated with spring flowers brought together the members of the Lay Missionary Fraternity, the sisters of the house and the Sma confreres. They were all there to surround David Roberts who renewed his commitment for 3 years in the Lay Missionary Fraternity. David works in Africa as a linguistics and literacy consultant in collaboration with SIL International. He is currently in Togo, in Kara but he is called more and more in other countries,

such as Benin, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon …Everywhere he works with Bible translation teams on spelling issues. “We can make a high-quality translation of the Bible into the local language, if the spelling is imprecise, it will be unreadable for the population. »

During the lockdown, while taking his parents to England, he remained connected to Africa. He wrote a book on the development of spellings for African languages that was published last year.

Today he supervises the research of three linguists in Togo who work on the development of spellings for the Kusuntu, Moba, and Ifè languages. After studying modern Hebrew online, he went to Tel Aviv University in Israel for a research stay on literacy.

Before returning to Togo, he wanted to renew his commitment to the Lay Missionary Fraternity. He gave us the reasons for his commitment in these terms:

“I am committed to:

• As a missionary in Africa to live side by side with the poorest.
• As a linguist, putting my profession at the service of the Church for the translation of the Bible into local languages as an indispensable resource for a growing Church.
• As a Christian to the Lord who constantly challenges me “follow me” with his promise that “I am with you till the end“

 Thank David for being “among the nations a joyful witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ“

At the shared meal that followed the Eucharist we recognized our lifelong brotherhood as Jesus was recognized by the breaking of bread. Alleluia!

Michel Cartatéguy.