About

Linnea Boese, global specialist with WorldVenture in retirement — writer

Having spent her growing-up years in four countries, Linnea is one of those Third Culture Kids — although the word “kids” hardly applies to a retired adult. Nevertheless it helps to explain her unusual background and mixed-culture worldview. Her parents were missionaries in Congo and Cote d’Ivoire. So Linnea left her birthplace, Detroit, at the age of 2 to spend a year in Belgium, move to Congo, then to Cote d’Ivoire — with occasional years in the U.S.

She and her husband Glenn were appointed by WorldVenture in 1977 and served in northern Cote d’Ivoire until 2019. They worked at reaching the Nyarafolo people through relationships and church planting. Linnea, a linguist, spearheaded a project that reduced the previously unwritten Nyarafolo language to writing and eventually translated the New Testament, Pentateuch and Psalms into that language.

She is a poet and writer since childhood. Her years in Africa, the whole mission experience and the process of linguistic analysis have blessed her with insights that inform her writing. Exegeting the Scriptures for translation forced her to dig deep into the meaning of the text.

Now retired, she plans to dedicate most of her time to communicating what she has seen and learned along the journey — telling the next generation and her companions what God has done and how she has grown in her understanding.