| VISTA Module 5 is Underway! |
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| VISTA module 5 is up and running! As always we had a delay in transportation (everything here happens on “island time”) so we started a week later than planned. We are getting smarter about this though, and even planned for the possibility up to a week of delay. All 14 of our translators are here and the module is progressing well. Craig remarked last week, “this is the first time a VISTA module feels like a normal job!” Usually it feels like a race for survival with unexpected schedule changes or natural disasters throwing us for a loop. Praise God with us that this module is going well! Thank him for the feeling of normalcy that has accompanied this module, for the good attitudes of our students, and for the cooler weather that comes with dry season here in Vanuatu which has made this module much more pleasant.
During this module Craig continues teaching the translators Hebrew and is also teaching Translation of Old Testament Poetry. By the end of this module our translators will have rough-draft translations of several Psalms and some Proverbs. Praise God for bringing his Wisdom Literature into the hands of the people of Vanuatu. Below Craig pauses for a photo while teaching at VISTA. |
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| Praying for Our Teammates: An Update |
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| Thank you so much to all of you who have been praying for our teammates since our email/facebook prayer update. We’d like to give you an update on each of the 3 big prayer requests we asked you to lift up.
Baby Zoe Thompson: When we wrote to you last we had just learned that Zoe, the daughter of our teammates the Thompsons, had experienced some bleeding in her brain and some brain damage of unknown magnitude due to the infection Shawn suffered before Zoe’s birth. Although we still don’t have any more answers about what Zoe’s future will look like, we know that God is in control and that Zoe continues to grow stronger each day! Dan and Shawn were even able to take Zoe home from the hospital for a night, with the promise that they would bring her back the next morning. Dan and Shawn hope to be able to travel with Zoe to the US within the next week or so, their doctor is working to discharge Zoe from the hospital even now. The Thompsons’ oldest daughter Ally, who is married and living in the US, went to New Caledonia to escort her siblings back to the US so 4 of the 5 Thompsons children are back on American soil. Praise God for Zoe’s continued growth and strength. Pray that he would protect and heal her brain and that he would be her Lord whatever lies ahead.
Jim Reavis, father to our teammate Jordan Kopke: Early on Saturday morning Jim left this world to go home and be with Jesus. We are rejoicing with Jim and praising God for an end to his pain and suffering from leukemia but we are broken-hearted at this loss for Jordan and the rest of her family. Please keep Jordan, her twin sister Amanda, their mother Iona and the rest of the family in your prayers as they grieve the loss of father, husband, and friend. Praise God with us for Jim’s life of service to God and for the assurance of salvation in Christ. If you would like to share with Jordan’s family in the burden of medical bills and other expenses related to Jim’s cancer treatment, you can do so here.
We asked you to join us in prayer for a new family who was considering joining our team in Vanuatu. Praise God with us, this family is taking the next step and applying to join Pioneer Bible Translators. They do believe that God is leading them to serve with us here in Vanuatu. We should be able to introduce you to them soon! Please continue to pray for this family as they seek God’s will for their lives and prepare for big changes. |
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| In our last newsletter we mentioned that we are having some difficulty in obtaining a residency visa for Josiah. We have continued to work on this over the last month, but still have not made any tangible progress. Please be in prayer for us as we work through this issue. Please ask God for patience, for success for our applications at the banks (for the immigration bond) and at the immigration office (for the visa). We are asking God to smooth the path for Josiah’s visa to be granted quickly.
In addition to the emotional stress of trying to get Josiah’s visa granted, we are also facing the possibility of some significant fees and fines in addition to the money required for the immigration bond and for the residence visas for the rest of us. If you would like to make a one-time or recurring gift to Pioneer Bible Translators to help us continue in our work here in Vanuatu, you can do so at our giving page. |
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Meet the Translators!
We would love for you all to get to know our translators just like we do. Over the next few months, I will try to take a moment to introduce you to each of our translation teams. This is our Apma language team. Meet Morrie Tabi (left) and Dick Bule (right). Morrie was one of the translators of the Bislama Bible and brings lots of hands-on translation experience to the project. Dick is an elder and family man whose quiet wisdom is a definite asset. Although the Apma team is our smallest team, they are working hard and keeping up with all the others, even the Sa team which has 5 translators!
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| Linguistic Chatter: Passive Voice |
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| Warning: Linguistic chatter coming up! One of the most difficult aspects of this module’s Hebrew course is teaching our translators “passive voice.” In Hebrew and in English we can use passive voice for many reasons, but often to emphasize or de-emphasize the agent (the do-er) in a sentence. For example we might use the passive voice to say “The boy was bitten by his very own dog!” to emphasize the dog’s role in the attack rather than saying in active voice, “The dog bit the boy.” Likewise we could say, “The cup was bumped off the table,” as opposed to “I bumped the cup off the table,” in order to avoid implicating ourselves as the do-er.
Not a single one of the 100+ languages native to Vanuatu has passive voice so teaching our translators to understand this in Hebrew was a bit challenging! Even after explaining how passive voice works and presenting several passive sentences as examples to our translators one of the men asked Craig, “but surely no one would ever actually say that, right?” He was baffled to learn that in English we use passive voice all the time! Understanding passive voice is important in our translation because without this knowledge our translators would likely read and translate a sentence like “Saul was crowned king by Samuel” as “Saul crowned king Samuel.” (This sentence is just an example, not an actual verse of Scripture.)
Sometimes people ask us why we can’t just use computers to do the work of Bible translation for us, this is just one of many examples of why that can’t work. If only it were that easy! |
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The Word for the Month
Psalm 1:1-2, NIV
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither–
whatever they do prospers.”
This is one of the passages that our translators are working on during this module! Praise God with us as we see his word come alive in the languages of Vanuatu!
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