I find these things exciting, but it may be of interest to many of you
to find out 'exactly what do you accomplish out there in PNG?'
Well here are some things:
-Work we're doing:
This week I began recording the Arop-Lukep Audio version of the New
Testament. These people live out on Long Island (PNG) and will consume
me for the next 5 weeks.
Kendal organized and ran a professional focus weekend to
equip...[volunteer] teachers from multiple organizations to be better
educators (a yearly conference).
-What work we support (as a team this week, what happened around this
neck of the woods):
Paratext workshop - training nationals how to use Bible translation
software.
Sokarek dialect translation nearing publishing.
VITAL training course -training nationals to translate OT Scriptures
Onnele language walkabout 3 different languages gathered together in a
reading fluency workshop.
Kokopo audio recording and training in progress
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Did you notice how we tend to be doing a lot of training and
'workshops'? Workshops are hands on training sessions. Teaching Papua
New Guineans to own, and translate the Scriptures means we can get more
translation done, in a shorter amount of time. Hands on is the best way
to do this training.
Often times our trainers feel like they are digging in sand, so pray for
their encouragement. For example, recently one of their most trained
individuals passed away.
Life happens a lot, and it is very discouraging to invest years of
training into people that you end up losing. But it happens almost weekly.
If you've ever asked 'why can't they just train the nationals to do it,
and then leave and come home?' The answer is a long list of reality.
But it would be our goal to get sustainable, and repeatable training.
On an up note! We just found, and hired our first PNG audio technician!
This is huge! PRay it works out. If we can equip nationals to do their
own audio recordings, we'll see Audio impacting the nation like wildfire!
