Whew!
Thanks to God and to all who prayed. We completed the consultant check of Acts!
We faced many difficulties… for one thing, the check went slower than expected (and Acts, as you know, is a BIG book!). 1007 verses, to be exact.
Also there were heavy storms the whole time, so the river was usually a raging flood. This makes it difficult (and dangerous) to cross. It is deep, turbulent, murky brown, and branches (and at times, whole trees) are floating past. And of course, the consultant, Ginny Sharp, was staying on the other side of the river with our partners (Tim is her son and so Tim and Monika’s girls are her granddaughters.) Nili, the Palawano helping us with the check lives on the other side, too. Some days they could not cross at all. Other times, we had to wait for the river to go down and we could only work a half day. So the check stretched over ten days total.
So with the flooding, there were exciting moments shuttling them across in a small dugout canoe, which had the interesting “design feature” of sitting low in the water and filling up as you paddled! Tim’s dad Dwight grew up on rivers in Brazil (he’s an MK) so he know how to handle a canoe. But this “lowrider” canoe was a lot safer with a 90 lb Palawano guy paddling it.
But, praise the Lord, in spite of all that, we were able to finish the last verse of Acts just at as it got dark on the night before Ginny left!! And, we’re thankful, too, that the weather allowed Ginny and her husband to fly on as planned, so they didn’t miss their commercial flight back to Mindanao the next day.
The check produced good results. It did confirm that most of the book communicated well. But it also turned up a number of passages and words that did not communicate clearly, especially to the younger generation. So we’re thankful for discovering those issues so we can fix them! I’m going to write a blog soon about some of the kinds of issues we discovered.
Another fruit of the check was that Nili asked a few other ladies to sit in on the check as her “companion.” Out of that we discovered another young woman who is willing to help… not too shy, doesn’t mind sitting there thinking all day(!) and has a desire to help us with the translation. Her name is Nursalin. She’s a young mother of 22, and we’ve known her since she was born. Her father is Susing, one of our church leaders. After she helped with the check one day, I asked her, “So, Granddaughter, it wasn’t too much of a headache, was it?”
With a sweet smile, she said, “No, Grandfather, it wasn’t hard. And I think it’s good to learn more about God’s Word.”
We’re glad that she even sees the translation process itself as a chance to learn and grow. And we’re challenged to keep pressing on to see God’s Word in Palawano… clear and alive, communicating and touching hearts among the Palawanos far and wide.
Yes, “It’s good to learn more about God’s Word.”
Yours for Reaching Palawanos,
-Bill and Donna
