(a Maia speaking woman receives a 'mini-Bible' for the first time in her heart language)
One of the things we do is train PNGians to translate the Bible. They learn portions of Hebrew, and go through 4 years of training classes which is much like a custom built university for teaching them how to translate the Bible on their own. Training and Equipping is part of our strategy to help them be less reliant on the highly trained Ex-pat and be able to do the work more on their own. This month 2 different courses finished! (it's a big undertaking).
* Bible Translation Training at Buka finished yesterday with graduation.
* Bible Translation Training in Alotau finished last week.
* At Aitape West, the team have been involved in audio recordings, checking of I and II Timothy, demonstrating audio players in the market, and meeting with church leaders in a Church Engagement Day yesterday.
Story Time:
A 4 member 'discovery team' came for 2 months. Their goals were to learn about the PNG culture, our work here, and to help if they could. One young man named Phillip attended one of the audio training sessions my dept. put on. He was very inquisitive. He went to a village and was intending to go there and work on translating some alphabet work for them, but upon arriving the people said 'we already have that, what we want is an audio recording of Genesis!'. Phillip was at first disappointed that his plan was shattered, but decided God was in control and investigated what they had to record with. Amazingly, the software and equipment they had, happened to be exactly what he had been trained on in high school for audio recording. He was able to complete an entire Genesis recording for them in his time there, as well as put it on an AudiBible player for them. Upon returning to our home base here, he came to me, told me the story, and was completely ecstatic about it.
I helped equip him with more AudiBibles, and more example Scripture and helped him to understand more of what he was doing, as well as send him back to the U.S. with demonstration items to show his church. This young man, whom I hadn't met until 2 months ago, is very on fire for audio recordings now, and is returning today to the U.S. to complete his education in Biblical theology studies.
God knew what he was doing when he brought that young man here, and He began to prepare him, way back in high school if not before.
