John and Susan – Translating the Bible in South Central Asia.

UPDATE: NOVEMBER 2021

Dear friends,

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and we truly have much to be thankful for. I am personally thankful that God allows me to keep doing something that I thoroughly enjoy – encouraging Bible translators and helping them to understand and communicate God’s Word in their own languages.  We are also so thankful for you – for your love and prayers, and for your support and encouragement.  You are part of God’s team that keeps us going and allows us to serve our colleagues in South Asia.

 This morning I finished with the four teams which are working on the Gospel of Mark.  We did not finish the whole gospel.  After two weeks away from their villages, the translators needed to go back to their homes. It was real slow going with them.  The translators from the tribal groups do not have any previous experience translating scripture.  They are all using the Oriya Bible as their source and, like most new translators, they stick pretty close to the source text they are looking at.  But three of the languages belong to a different language family than Oriya, and so the way they normally form sentences and the way they put those sentences together to tell a story is different from Oriya. We spent a lot of time trying to get them to think about how Mark would have written, or how Jesus would have spoken, if they were speaking and writing in their language. The teams plan to make regular trips out to a regional center in the coming months so that they can continue working on their translations with their advisors and consultants.

 My priority now is preparing to check Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians with the “K” team.  The team has come out of the village area and is now working with another consultant to check Romans.  The plan is for me to begin “face to face” time via ZOOM on December 6. We still need to work out the times. My planned 3:30 – 7:30 AM schedule these last two weeks turned into 4:00 – 11:00 AM each day.

 May the Lord bless you and fill you with His peace!
John

 Plans:

–          Nov 29 – Dec 18: checking Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians with the K team;

–          after that: resume checking Judges with the ‘S.A.D’ team;

–          coming up: helping the OLO team prepare the New Testament for printing.