Well, about 40 missionaries and over a dozen tribal Translation Assistants (“TA’s”) are gathered here in Manila for that workshop.

Giyang and the other two guys, Abil (one of our church leaders) and Arnel (our worship leader) are here with us, helping everyone on the Palawano team. We’re halfway through the two-week marathon. Jill Goring, NTM’s International Translation Coordinator is teaching on translation principles and techniques every morning. In the afternoons, all team members are getting a chance to put things into practice with live language helpers. Not everyone will become or replace the primary translator on their team, but this workshop is helping to put us all on the same page, and many are learning how they might be of help in certain steps throughout the procedure.

In the afternoons, another translation consultant and I wander around providing help to the teams, as needed.

In their “off” hours, our Palawano friends have been able to do some sightseeing and other outings. They have been to the top of a 23-story high rise, gone shopping in the mall, and the presidential palace at Malacañang. On that trip, they were with a linguistic professor who is a friend on ours. He was fascinated to elicit some language data from them, treated them to dinner, paid them for their time and gave them presents!

Thank you for praying. Keeping praying for this workshop to be profitable in bringing God’s Word more quickly and clearly in all these languages!

Well, even for us, travel-weary globe-trotters that we are, we just experienced a FIRST… while checking into my flight in Omaha, right between getting my boarding passes and my luggage tickets, we were all herded into a stairwell (they actually called it a “storm shelter”) for a half hour because there was a tornado in the vicinity! When they gave the all-clear, we finished checking me in, got some dinner and, thank the Lord, my flight was able to leave on time.

We just heard that my letter reached my main translation helper Giyang and he found two other guys (from among my suggestion list of names) are willing and able to come out for the Bible Translation Workshop. Thanks for praying with us on this one.

Our buyer called the airlines and they were plenty of seats for the needed date, so we should be able to get their tickets without any problem… but don’t stop praying until we tell you the tickets have been bought! Pray, too, that they can get photo IDs made quickly and without hassle, so they will be allowed to board their flight.