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.

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS…

So Giyang should hear over the air that he’s supposed to get to town to read a letter from me (which will tell him all about the workshop.) And if he doesn’t hear it personally, anyone within an hour or two’s hike who was listening to the radio will tell him about the announcement.

So we pray this will work and things will work out for some guys to come to Manila and help us with the translation workshop.

In our latest Prayer Request update, you will see see a mention of a Translation Workshop coming up in April. Here, where I have a little more room to write, I will try to describe in a little more detail what that’s all about, and explain that prayer request in a little more detail.

Translating the Word of God is not only an enormous undertaking, it is a humbling and sobering task! There is always more to learn about how to determine the meaning and how to communicate it well. Experienced translators and consultants can teach others a great deal, and good dialogue between those of us who are involved in the same ministry is both interesting and helpful. Often, there are new reference works and software for us to learn about together. To communicate so much to dozens of translators, it is more efficient to gather everyone together for a workshop… traveling to each tribal allocation to cover the same material one-on-one with each translator would take too long and run up huge travel bills.

That explains why I need to communicate with my Palawano translation helpers. I need to let them know about the workshop, and find out which of them (how many guys and which ones, specifically) can come to the workshop. They in turn need to know in time to make provision for their families during the time they will be gone, etc. But all this is difficult since they are all on Palawan in the village and I have no way to contact them! My main helper Giyang comes out to town from time to time to buy supplies since he is also our village clinic medical worker. I have left word with people in town which they will pass to him if they see him.

So if you think of it, please pray that Giyang will come out to town and get my letter. Pray, too, that two or three of the translation helpers I need will be willing and available to come to the workshop.

Pray most of all that we will learn to translate better… and faster, and thus to make good progress to quickly get the Word of God into the hands of the Palawano church.