Today was the tok ples conference that I attended only because one of
the presentation was doing audio recordings.
When I woke up this morning I prayed 'God, I give this day to you, if
you can spare it, today I'd really like a nod that my interest in doing
audio and video recordings is the right direction to be heading.'
The room was packed with pastors from PNG. The focus of the conference
is that it is very important to get the Word of God into their
languages. They may be able to read foreign language, but the Word stays
in the head and doesn't get to the heart, so it doesn't have as much of
a change.
There were two huge lines, one of people trying out the Audi Bibles
which are low power, mp3 players. (to put it simply) There is a solar
panel on the back, they take a microSD card, and when you put the Bible
on them, people can listen to them.
It can be used for learning the language, learning the Bible, teaching
reading, and dozens of uses. Also on display was a hand crank SABER for
recording,playback to larger rooms. Also on display was a Pico projector.
Mentioned was the Luke video, Jesus, Genesis, Mark, Hope, and many more
videos. The presenter explained how the workers are very few and how he
would love to train as many PNGians as possible to do recordings. There
are far too many languages that need recordings done, and far too few
people who know how to do it. With these affordable tools, it could
very well be done in the village by interested PNG people.
During the training session the linux netbook he was using wouldn't
boot, so I sat there and not being an expert in Fedora or how to get it
to work with dual monitors (on a project) I fiddled around with it for
about three minutes and boom it was working. The instructor replied,
"Boy I'm glad you were here."
I took his camera and shot some stills of him teaching, the room was packed.
A LOT of PNGians were interested in what he had to say.
At the end one man asked for him to give a handout next time of the
training, which the teacher replied, 'I'd love to but I have no time.'
I dashed back to my office, and spent all of 15 minutes typing up a
single page in Tok Pisin with screen shots, how to use the software and
the bullet points of his teaching.
I was VERY encouraged by the huge amount of PNGians that want recordings
of the Bible in their language, excited to find out the local radio
channel wants anything we can give them, verses, psalms, chapters,
books, whatever, in audio.
And then to be told 'I'm glad you were here.' .... well being able to
use my talents in this way was a huge answer to prayer for me, because I
asked for God to give me a nod today, and I got it.
It was important because our family got a bit of bad news last night
that is affecting us deeply. It's not my news to share so I won't but
you can be praying for one of our nephews who is ill.
