Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Here is a great overview from our leadership of how God is using the staff here in Tanzania and Uganda to accomplish His work of Bible translation and mother tongue Scripture use:

Over the past year we have seen the book of Genesis published in Zinza, the Gospel of Mark published in Vwanji and Rangi, and the Pastoral Epistles published in Burunge and Lugungu (with the book of James). Translation and checking has been completed for the book of Galatians in Aringa, Lubwisi, Lugungu, Lugwere and Lunyole; 1st & 2nd Corinthians in Lugungu;  the book of Romans in Aringa, Lugwere and Lunyole; 1st, 2nd & 3rd John in Aringa; and the book of Revelation in Burunge and Lugungu.  The Christmas story from Luke 1 and 2 has been published in nine Mara languages (Ikizu-Sizaki, Ikoma-Nata-Isenye, Jita, Kabwa, Kwaya, Ngoreme, Suba-Simbiti, Zanaki and Zinza) and portions of the Gospel of Mark published in Temi. The Gospel of Mark will be published shortly in Kinga and Malila.  Our consultants have checked over 12,000 verses in the past year!

Audio recordings of portions of Genesis have been produced in Sandawe. Also recordings of Ruth and Jonah in Nyakyusa, Vwanji and Malila; Mark in Vwanji; Genesis stories in Swahili; and Zinza, Sukuma and Swahili music tapes have been produced. A weekly radio program will be starting shortly in Mbeya using mother tongue Scripture which has potential to reach the whole Mbeya-Iringa cluster language area.

There have been over 40 new literacy and Scripture Use publications over the past year, including a Swahili translation of the D.C. Cook Genesis stories. More than 700 people have attended various literacy classes where they have learnt to read and write their own language for the first time. There have also been training courses for literacy teachers and local artists, as well as Scripture Use training for pastors and others. There have been a variety of Scripture Use events such as listening to megavoice recordings, attending Bible studies using mother-tongue Scriptures, and AIDS seminars using the Kande story.

Underpinning our translation, literacy and SU work, has been the ongoing linguistic and sociolinguistic research to develop good orthographies and to research where we might next work. Over the past year we have seen 8 languages achieve trial orthography status.

We continue to invest in partnership with churches, other Bible agencies and like-minded organisations. We estimate we have over 50 strategic partners/partner organisations and a church leader advocate for most of the languages we are working in. Over the past year the Uganda team have started up a Multilingual Education Network forum bringing together various organisations interested in MLE including UNESCO, Mango Tree, the National Curriculum Development Centre, Makerere University and others.

A number of you have presented papers at various academic conferences and many of you have been involved in capacity building through training others.

You have all been very busy! We have many reasons to celebrate and to thank God.

We are grateful to God for the team he has brought together in Tanzania and Uganda and for the part each of you has played over the year in language or support work. We also thank God for the financial resources He has provided that have enabled the work to move forward. We continue to depend on Him to provide for all our needs as we move into a new year of opportunity.

At this time of Christmas we remember the Child, born in a stable, who came to fulfil the promise and is the “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.” (Isaiah 9: 6 – 7)

I have a Nokia 5000 and a Twitter account.  Sometimes, I like to send a tweet while on the run but for some reason recent changes un-verified my phone number here in Tanzania.  Took me about half an hour to track down how to verify it again, because the ‘Mobile’ [formerly 'Devices'] section in the Twitter settings only has instructions on how to do it using short codes from a very limited number of countries.  Never fear, I found this in Twitter’s support section:

Beginning January 3, 2010, our language project will broadcast a weekly pre-recorded mother tongue radio program.  The Christian station with whom we have a contract has a fairly new tower which reaches up to 100km radius.  That means these radio programs can be heard in at least part of every one of the 10 languages we are translating here.

Basically, our goal is to get God’s Word out there… literally.  So, the focus of every program will be for people to hear Scripture in their heart language, their mother tongue. Wrapped around those audio segments will be announcements, songs, advertisements, intro and outro.

We’ll record six programs at a time so we won’t be in the studio every single week.  I call these our cycles.  Our first cycle will be the dates of Jan 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 and Feb 7.  During that span, we’ll play the Gospel of Mark in the Vwanji language.  I’m excited that for our very first broadcast will give the Vwanji people to hear the actual words of Jesus in their own language.

For your perusal, I’m posting what will be our very first 30-minute program scheduled to be aired on January 3 @ 6:30pm local time, 10:30am Eastern.  Some of you may be in Sunday school or worship service so that would be a perfect opportunity to pray for this great new venture.

That’s the cue sheet above so you can have an idea of what your hearing.

I had been wanting to see him since nearly 6 months had passed since we were face-to-face.  Since my mother’s remarriage and our subsequent move to Charleston, SC, I now had about a 4 hour drive between me and my dad.  If I can just hold out for a couple of weeks, I’ll see him during my Christmas break. Why am I missing him so much right now?

I was sleeping well going into my final two days before Christmas break, but definitely not looking forward to the mid-term exams standing between me and my temporary freedom.  Thursday morning… aahhhhh. Two more to go. If you would’ve asked me, I would have said my junior year in high school was carrying along as planned.  Learning more French.  Polishing up my high school transcript with CP, Honors and AP courses.  I think I even had a girlfriend.  Or had had one… I can’t remember.  The phone woke me up that morning shortly before 6am.  I heard my mom answer it across the hall in her bedroom.  Her door opened.  Then, mine opened.  “Your brother’s on the phone for you, Jonathan,” my mom told me.  Hmmm.  That’s odd. He, my 10-years-older brother, doesn’t usually call me and especially doesn’t do so at six in the morning.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Jon boy.”

“Hey, Charles.  What’s up?”

“I’ve got some news to tell you….. Dad passed away this morning.”

WHAT?!

“….”

“You there, Jonathan?”

“Yeah.”

“His heart must’ve failed him. [Our stepmother] found him really early this morning still sitting in the living room chair after staying up reading last night.”

“Oh.”

“Well.  I’ll call you later on with details about what’s going on and we’ll go from there, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I love you, Jonathan.”

“I love you, too, Charles.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

There it was.  32 months after the brother between Charles and me was killed in a car wreck, my dad had taken his step into eternity, too.  What a blow.  I don’t think I even remember that Christmas or New Year.  I went down hill from there.  Three months of home bound schooling because I just didn’t want to go any where.  Life stunk.  Gosh, who was going to be next???

Seventeen years ago, Thursday, December 17, 1992, I was sixteen years old, aging way too quickly.  I still deal with the wounds from that combination death punch from the early 90’s.  The Enemy still tries to use this date to knock me down but to that I recall one of my favorite verses in the Bible.  Romans 8:18. For I do not consider the sufferings of this present time worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us. That promise backed by the Creator who sent His Son and traded my condemnation for His righteousness is the reason I can, and do, celebrate this time of the year.  God became a man.  A Father sent a Son.  I love and extremely miss my dad but the anticipation of God’s glory that will be revealed in me when I step into eternity… well…

Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory. Romans 5:1-2

That’s why I rejoice this Christmas season… and in every other season of life.  Glory.  His.

http://www.scripture-engagement.org/content/advice-scripture-and-drama-recording

This is a great (very short) article with a downloadable .pdf with advice for recording drama-styled Scripture.  Even though you may not be doing this time of work, it gives you a glimpse of the kinds of things we need to consider as we go into the studio to record mother tongue materials.

To arrive at our house it is advised to have 4WD.  After driving about 0.5 mi into the neighborhood (all rough dirt road) you descend into a small valley.  From there, the short, steep climb up to our house is about a 300 ft increase in altitude.  Remember… all dirt.  And what time of the year is it?  That’s right.  Rainy season.  Simple equation I so delightfully discovered early in my childhood: dirt + rain = MUD!!!!

About 2 weeks ago, we went to pick up our friends’ kitten to cat-sit for them while they traveled to Uganda.  It began raining on our way out of the neighborhood so much to our surprise, we discovered the construction people had just graded the main road leading out.  All was well in picking up the kitten and returning to the neighborhood… until the short, steep climb.  Fifteen yards from the top of the first section climbing up, the back wheels lost traction.  Okay.  So, I thought I’d just back down to the valley and take a different route that wasn’t just graded.  The mud was so soft, once I began backing up, it steered us straight into the ditch.  We didn’t stop until we got to the bottom.  I noticed in the rearview mirror some Tanzanians standing in a safe spot next to the road, getting what I’m sure was an entertaining sight.  Well, it was those same Tanzanians who were knee deep in mud all around the car just after we finally stopped.  As a matter of fact, it was well under a minute, maybe even thirty seconds, when they were already to our aid.  This totally amazed us.  Pouring rain.  Gushing run-offs.  Asher-deep (almost) mud and they still jumped right in to help us out.

An instant sharing of others burdens seems to be a given for the people here.  Our getting stuck wasn’t the first example of seeing this kind of action.  This is one characteristic of the lives around us for which I am definitely thankful.

(P.S. the car was SO stuck that even that many TZians couldn’t get us out.  I finally got in touch with a good friend of ours with a beast of a Land Rover with differential lock and everything.  He pulled us out AND all the way up the hill!)

Just for fun, I HAD to put this image here…

‘Bustani’ is Swahili for garden.  Now that rain time is here, we had our gardener load the ground with our favorite vegetable seeds.  The following are pictures of our garden area. Everything except trees, strawberries and pumpkins are at 5 days in the ground with nothing sprouting as of yet (UPDATE: looked at garden on Nov 17 and the following already have sprouts: corn, zucchini, squash, lima beans, green beans, tomatoes and lettuce).  We’ve had the strawberries since moving in and planted the pumpkins at the beginning of September.

This post has nothing to do with my mission work.  Just to let you know.

I’ve had a problem in trying to change notifications in the Skype Preferences pane (I’m using OS X, by the way).  But, every time I clicked on the red flag (Notifications), Skype would freeze for up to a minute, then crash.  BOO!

With some help through the Skype forums, I have fixed my problem with a small deletion.  Apparently the text to speech feature, the voice of Alex to be exact, caused the problem.  Being a dedicated non-text to speech user, I had no problem ridding of my new enemy. I went to the following location and deleted the Alex.SpeechVoice folder.

Main HD > System > Library > Speech > Voices

If you happen to stumble upon this post and have pulled out numerous hairs, I hope this helps more than Rogaine.

I climbed out of bed at 5:52am this morning.  We have had quite a day at the dedication ceremony up in the Vwanji language area mountains.  We have lots of video and photos but I’m way tired so I’ll have to leave you with this one shot from today…

It is from just after they brought the books into the church.  One of the many, many pastors is taking a turn reading out of the Gospel of Mark (green cover).  The lady you see in the picture is Vwanji and probably in her 60s.  All the other hundreds in the church were equally as captivated.

I kid you not, Scottie kicked in the warp speed around the time I started recording Mark in the Vwanji language.  The ensuing months have blown by like streaks of light from passing stars.  Today, he turned the switch back off.  The Gospel of Mark in the Vwanji language now has 198 complete and ready-to-sell sets of cassettes!  I don’t think I’ve realized the project is complete yet because that kinda ‘urgent’ feeling is still lingering inside.  Hope that doesn’t last too long because I’m ready to slow back down.  I actually like looking at the stars as they go by.