In my current assignment, I am living and working in the mountains of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is an expansive region along the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the average elevation is 6,000 feet (1800 meters) above sea level. The climate is hot during summer and warm during winter, with an alternating dry season and rainy season. Oaxaca is well-known as a very diverse region of Latin America, linguistically, culturally, and biologically. There are around 17 major language communities, each having an average of 50 or more dialects.  Society is also vibrant with peoples from many different cultures, each having unique customs and way of life. The wildlife is also very diverse, being home to tens of thousands of species, dwelling in habitats ranging from arid to tropical, mountainous to coastal.

I joined SIL (the Summer Institute of Linguistics), one of Wycliffe’s ministry partners, in 2021 to work as a linguist/translator among the Mixtec community. Mixtec is a complex tonal language with upwards of 60 different dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible, meaning that most speakers cannot understand someone of another dialect. This makes Bible translation difficult, and results in the need for multiple translations of Scripture. Currently, I am working in a village near Juxtlahuaca to learn the local language.