Internships

On Location! City-focused research – Interns can work in any city where there is some level of displaced, refugee, or immigrant population – this would mostly mean larger metropolitan areas, but there are also many immigrant communities that have converged at cities and towns close to meatpacking plants. The intern will be following guidelines for academic research to assess the language communities in the area, including well-crafted internet searches for any reporting and academic journals on the relevant groups, social networking searches, map searching, and more. Depending on the requirements of the individual’s internship, we can direct the intern in more personal interaction for linguistic or missiological data collection, or more of a cross-cultural experience.

Language Communities with No Bible People-group-focused research – Interns can also help in identifying locations of specific language communities, doing deep dives on migration patterns and historical movements of select, strategic diaspora people groups. As groups like this plan for Bible translation, it will be very important for connecting the scattered segments of a diaspora language community for working together on Scripture production and distribution.

Who’s Working Where? Networking and meeting others in ministry – Interns can be mentored in the skill of networking and growing contacts for potential partnerships. It’s important to learn how God is already at work in communities that are growing and encountering God in new ways. Many times that means there are groups inside the diaspora community already moving towards God, looking for resources and encouragement. Sometimes this means there are others outside of the community already intentionally sharing God’s love with them, who also need encouragement and resources. Connecting with and helping to connect like-minded partners can be very valuable in many ways.

UPG North America People Group Profile – UPG North America is our partner’s website that houses resources for researching and praying for unreached people groups. Interns can learn to add people group profiles to the website that will serve as part of the prayer movement for getting the Bible to all who need it. We will direct interns on which people groups will be strategic to add to the database for Bible translation and Scripture engagement needs.

Testimony from past Intern

One of our interns from last summer majoring in linguistics was required to gather a Swadesh word list for his course requirements, which we helped him complete. Here’s what he said when asked what was the best part of the internship:

"Getting to put linguistic field methods into practice. It's one thing to learn about it in class. It's another thing getting to do it."

– Chipper with Moody Bible Institute in Chicago