Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Mbeya-Iringa Cluster Project’ Category

A Vwanji woman reading the Gospel of Mark in her language for the first time.

Cassette copies of Ruth and Jonah in the Nyakyusa language ready to be distributed.

In honor of my friend via Twitter @radiobill, I’m going to try to write out a big picture glimpse of what our goals are and where we currently stand in them.
Around this past New Year, Dana and I decided to shift our lives to a different location. We’re still doing the same thing in striving to make God’s Word available in non-print (primarily audio) format. It’s just that such work isn’t critically necessary here in Tanzania. There are other places in the world where my expertise is critically necessary for the most important thing to us to be heard and understood by all. That thing is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
One month from this Saturday, we will leave our home of the past 2+ years… Mbeya, Tanzania. We’ll travel back to our hometown, Charlotte, NC, for a 6-7 month furlough. During that period, we’ll visit friends, family and ministry partners. We’ll also be seeking more financial support as our upcoming path will have a considerable amount of expense.
We hope to leave in January 2011 for Chambéry, France.  We are scheduled for a 14-month French-learning plan at a language school there.  From there, we will travel directly to our new assignment in the country of Mali.  Our first six months there will have us learning yet another language… Bambara.  Then, we will hope to settle into our new home before leaving for the USA for our second furlough as we seek to take those every two and a half years.

So, where do we stand in that now?  In what seems like a whole new beginning!  I currently have SEVEN working days left in Tanzania and I’m on pace to complete what I set a goal to do by the end of this month.  I have one big project remaining that has so far been about 70% recorded.  I hope to attain the remaining 30% tomorrow, edit it all on Friday and submit it to the Malila language translators on Monday for an accuracy check.  There are other smaller projects I need to finish up but The Gospel of Mark in the Malila language is the biggie.

All prayers will be welcomed at the door.

On two hands I can count the number of workdays I have left in the great country of Tanzania.  With today passed, that number is all the way down to single digits… NINE to go!  It has come much, much faster than I expected and before I know it, I’ll be nostalgically looking back on our life in Mbeya from the comforts of life in the USA.

Over these next nine workdays, I’ll attempt to complete the following:

• Finish recording the remaining eleven people needed for Mark in the Malila language
• Edit all the recording of Mark in the Malila language
• Test the recording of Mark in the Malila language
• Test the recording of Ruth and Jonah in the Vwanji language
• Transfer the 18+ GB of my work onto the office server
• Submit cassette and CD covers of Mark in the Malila language for approval
• Submit cassette and CD covers of Ruth and Jonah in the Vwanji language for approval
• I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting… hopefully, I’ll remember at some point over the next nine days.

Flying by like speeding bullets have been my first three days of the work week.  Mondays and Thursdays are my days for going to the office for tea break, devotion and meetings.  I woke up Monday morning with a small hope of being able to record some of Mark in the Malila language this week.  Little did I know that one of our Malila translators was ready to come back to the studio with me after our team meeting!

That’s the way it is here and I’ve gone quite used to it.  You take what you get when you can get it.  It took us the remainder of that day and most of yesterday to record all of Jesus’s words from this gospel.  Making good progress.  Good thing with only 17 workdays left in Tanzania.

Yesterday, I mentioned the desire of the Kinga folks to have a new woman do the part of Ruth in it’s entirety.  They said the first woman sounded as though she was reading (she was) and that needed to be changed.  Below are samples of the same text of the first Ruth, then the new one.  Do you think it was a wise change?

One week ago today, we loaded up the project’s new LandCruiser (the thing is SWEEEET) and headed to Makete to test Ruth, Jonah and Mark in the Kinga language.  My hope was to return the next afternoon with all three books approved and ready for distribution.  None made the cut.

First to get tested Monday afternoon was Jonah.  All of it went great with the exception of Jonah’s announcement to the Ninevites in the beginning of chapter three.  The talent used a normal voice instead of a loud one so they want that to be changed.
Next, after lunch was Ruth.  All great…. except one problem.  In the translated book, a set of closing quotation marks were inserted too early.  Instead of being after “vibena”…

… they should’ve been after “mumwene”.  So, that one sentence needed to be recorded again by the original Ruth speaker.  But, throughout the book, the Kinga translators feel she used ‘reading’ Kinga instead of the desired ‘conversational’ Kinga.  Then, they decided to have all of Ruth’s words recorded again and had a particular woman in mind.  Unfortunately, we had to have the LandCruiser back in Mbeya Tuesday evening in order for a colleague to use on Wednesday to travel to the Sangu language area.  That only left enough time to test Mark for the remainder of the day Monday and the first part of Tuesday.

We finished the introduction and the first six chapters Monday afternoon and even though we didn’t start testing until shortly before 10am Tuesday morning, we still were able to finish up by lunchtime.  The only thing Mark needed was some added space between each heading and the actual scripture text.  That was an easy fix so Mark is completely ready for distribution now!

The highlight of the trip was having Dana and Asher with me.  That was REALLY nice.

The book of Mark in the Kinga language

Early Monday morning, I left on a solo trip up to one of our favorite places in the area: Makete. (mah-KAY-tay)  The drive up was fun as I had plenty of opportunities to play in the mud.  I can vouch for the 4WD on the car that it works VERY well!

Recording went very well.  I had a room reserved until Friday just in case it took that long to get all the parts done.  But at the end of Tuesday, I knew progress was great as we only had 4 people left to record on Wednesday.  I finished those 4 up at noon, ate lunch, packed up the car and headed home.

It was a great trip!

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 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.