Heather’s interest in serving in Africa began when she was very young, as her parents held a monthly missionary prayer meeting in their home. Bob and Alma McAllister and their family stayed with us after their traumatic time in Congo, and the prayer group prayed faithfully for their work there.
After studying French and German at Trinity College Dublin, Heather trained as a teacher at the University of Wales and taught modern languages at secondary level for some years. Biblical Studies at the Irish Baptist College as well as further study in linguistics, literacy and Bible translation led to her and her husband Philip joining Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1980.
For the first twenty years, they were involved in the translation of Scripture into Kouya, a previously unwritten language of Ivory Coast. The Kouya team produced an alphabet, a dictionary, reading books and literacy materials, and eventually a New Testament was published in 2002.
When not working abroad, Heather was a regular lecturer in Phonetics for Wycliffe trainees and also for several years at Ulster University. After completing a Master’s in ESOL at Queen’s University, Belfast, she taught English to Speakers of Other Languages part-time for ten years.
Since 2010 the Saunders have also been members of the Seed Company, an affiliate of Wycliffe. They are translation consultants with experience in Ivory Coast, Madagascar and, since 2015, in Western Zambia. They hope, God willing, to see two more Zambian New Testaments completed within the next few years. They have three married daughters and five grandchildren.