Brad and Tammie Harvey have been on mission in Africa since the early 1990s, supported by Southpoint since our beginning in 1992. They have three grown children, Bradley Jr., Moriah “Morrie”, and their adopted Tanzanian son, Yuda.
Brad is a well-trained, field-experienced linguist. His purpose is putting the Bible into languages that don’t have the Bible—or don’t even have an alphabet. He conceived and initiated a relatively new concept of “Cluster Approach” to Bible translation. Using this approach, translation teams of different but closely related languages can be trained together and benefit from each other. This reduces both the time and resources needed to produce translations.
Brad’s main area of work is about 60 miles outside the capital city area of Dar es Salaam. He works to reach primarily the Omaraz people of Tanzania with the Gospel. It’s mostly a 95% Muslim community. They number about a million–so they’re one of the largest tribes in Tanzania. By giving people the Scriptures, the Omaraz believers can come to a better understanding of the Gospel by reading it in their mother tongue. The highly effective Jesus Film was dedicated in the Omaraz language in October 2020, and the New Testament was dedicated in September 2021.
Tammie’s main field is anthropology, and she specializes in cross-cultural training and team-building. She also helps other mission organizations write project and grant proposals, and conducts some workshops in the areas of Situational Leadership.
Brad is also training to become a Bible Translation Consultant, which is a position of great need in the Africa Region. Together they foresee helping train new generations of expatriate and African national missionaries, as the African churches take more responsibility for evangelizing and discipling their continent.