The Guy Who Fades into the Background

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The Guy Who Fades into the Background

Asked what he sees as his role at SIL LEAD, our Communications Consultant Josh Barkey responds, “I just see my role in SIL LEAD as more The Guy Who Fades Into the Background.” But while Josh never gets in the way of telling SIL LEAD’s story, we felt it important to pull him out of the background for just a moment, so you can catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

“I grew up barefoot in the Amazon jungle, catching and eating piranhas before they could catch and eat me,” says Josh Barkey on his Facebook mini-bio.

Josh is an artist who consults for SIL LEAD. We consider ourselves privileged to have him on our team, not only as the communications professional who maintains our website and does our copywriting, but also as a friend.

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For Children Like Himself

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For Children Like Himself

Half a century ago, Robert Waliaula was born into a family that would grow to include eight children, in a small village in rural Western Kenya. Robert’s father was a small-scale farmer and his mother was an elementary school teacher. But even though their family farm was very small, all the children had to help keep it running. They planted and tended vegetables and drove their handful of livestock to water and grazing grounds.

Resources were limited.

Nonetheless…

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“A Desire to Give Back”

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“A Desire to Give Back”

If you were to ask Rebecca Chandler Leege where she was born, she might just answer, “The United States.” This non-specificity is not because she doesn’t know the city or town of her birth, but because she has lived in so many countries and considers herself a citizen of the world, more than of any one country—so regional specifics feel a little less important. While this could be understood as the natural result of her highly mobile early life in a missionary family, it doesn’t diminish the value that such a perspective brings to her current role as the newest member of the SIL LEAD Board of Directors…

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A Place Without a Map

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A Place Without a Map

Anyone born into a larger family can find it difficult to establish an individual identity. But for Mark Taylor—who grew up with two brothers and seven sisters—the task might very well have been overwhelming if he hadn’t known from an early age what he wanted (and seemed naturally gifted) to do.

When Mark was in sixth grade and his parents founded Tyndale House Publishers out of their home, he dove right in. The company had just one product in that first year—Living Letters, which was a paraphrase of the New Testament epistles. Mark’s dad, Kenneth Taylor, had created the paraphrase that would eventually be published as The Living Bible…

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