language learning

What Are We Doing Lately? Lots…

Posted by

THE  PALAWANOS  NEED  MORE  TEACHING…

   …WE’RE  HELPING  WITH  THAT

WE’RE STILL INVOLVED WITH THE PALAWANOS

  • Ongoing ministry after 33 years of ministering to the Palawanos and translating the New Testament for them
  • Recently put the Southwestern Palawano New Testament (written and audio) into an Android app
  • Annual trips to Palawan for Bible teaching seminars to supplement our partners’ teaching
  • Working with our missionaries who are mentoring the youth: Bible study materials and online discipling
  • Helping missionaries learn Central Palawano and put our New Testament into that related language

 

 THE  WORLD  NEEDS  MORE  MISSIONARIES…

   …WE’RE  TRAINING  THEM

WE’RE TRAINING A RADICAL NEW GENERATION OF MISSIONARIES

  • Teaching language learning and Bible translation at Radius across the border – come along sometime!
  • These are young people who want to go to all the hard places to reach the Unreached
  • Serving as a language learning consultant for them as they get out on the field

 

MISSIONARIES  NEED  LANGUAGE  FLUENCY…

   …WE’RE  HELPING  THEM

WE’RE HELPING MISSIONARY LANGUAGE LEARNERS—AND THOSE WHO HELP THEM

  • Developing the DIY language learning materials all our missionaries around the world will use to be able to communicate the Gospel clearly and to disciple the Unreached
  • Teaching and leading language coach workshops in the USA, Thailand, Latin America, and more to come…
  • Doing online language coaching via Skype

 

NON-WESTERN  MISSIONARIES  NEED  TRAINING,  TOO…

   …WE’RE  PROVIDING  CULTURE-SPECIFIC  TRAINING

WE’RE WORKING TO DEVELOP THE TRAINING FOR NON-WESTERN MISSIONARIES WORLDWIDE

  • SE Asians including Filipinos, Chinese and Indians, etc., want to reach the Unreached
  • Two recent trips to Asia Pacific to help local believers reaching other tribes
  • An upcoming trip to South Asia to help our missionaries to begin training local Christians as missionaries

 

THE  CHURCH  IN  AMERICA  IS  REACHING  THE  UNREACHED…

   …WE’RE  TRAINING  THEM

WE’RE HELPING CHURCHES REACH UNREACHED PEOPLES… RIGHT IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

  • Training language learners so an immigrant Unreached People Group can be reached in their heart language

 

WE  NEED  HELP  TO  KEEP  GOING…

   …OUR  PARTNERSHIP  TEAM  IS  STANDING  WITH  US

WE CAN’T DO IT WITHOUT YOU!

  • One upcoming ministry event is our November trip to Thailand and South Asia to train missionary language learners and consultants
  • International and in-country tickets needed for Donna (Bill’s tickets already covered)
  • Conference expenses already provided—praise the Lord with us!

Full Circle

Posted by

Another Palawano Translation?

Yes. Did you know there are THREE Palawano people groups on Palawan? Three related-but-distinct Palawano languages? It’s true. For security reasons, let’s call them Palawano 1, Palawano 2, and Palawano 3.

We did the translation for Palawano 1. Some friends with Wycliffe Bible Translators did a translation for Palawano 2. But Palawano 3 needs a New Testament translation. Actually, they have one–it’s 50 years old and no one can understand it, which is sad.

Another Palawano Translation!

Yes! We’re not going to do this translation. But we’ll be helping those who will.

Some missionaries have moved in among that third Palawano group. Graeme and Rachel are learning the language, and they plan to organize a translation team of native speakers and missionaries. The plan is to adapt our Palawano 1 translation into Palawano 3, and then check it and revise it so that it communicates really well.

We’re excited about this for two reasons: First and foremost, those Palawanos will finally have God’s Word in an understandable form. But secondly, we’re very happy to see all the effort that went into our translation have a wider impact.

Helping Translators Learn Language

In a recent post Then and Now, we talked about how our ministry has shifted to an international focus, and we explained how we are no longer involved full-time with the Palawano work. But we know we’ll never be 100% done with the Palawanos. Lord willing, we plan to return from time to time to do teaching from our translation as we did last February. In the past year we put the New Testament into a mobile phone app, and we are developing Bible teaching materials for the youth.

But… we’re “all about language learning” now, right?

True. And now our new ministry of helping missionaries with language learning has circled right back to Palawan. Bill is helping Graeme and Rachel as they study that Palawano 3. “Our” Palawano 1 is similar enough that Bill can explain things to them about the grammar and vocabulary, and it is helpful. Bill is pretty familiar with Palawano 3, as well. And this is Graeme and Rachel’s third Philippine language, so they are making fast progress.

Once translation begins, the plan is that Bill will help as a translation consultant.

Pray with us that language learning would progress well, and that the new translation team will be able to start soon. Pray for Bill as he helps Graeme and Rachel with the Palawano 3 language.

And for all who had a part in seeing our translation completed for Palawano 1, rejoice with us about the added fruit of seeing God’s Word more easily put into another Palawano language.

God’s Word is life. It’s eternal. Nothing matters more than getting his Word into people’s Heart Languages.

Partnering together, we can get this done for his Glory!

 

 

Image credit: Palawan mother and child. Photo by Norm Rice, former missionary to the Palawanos.

Then… and Now

Posted by

Then-Now single

Then (1980s) and now (2016)

 

A LOT HAS CHANGED. (Well, besides the fact that we are a little bit older…)

THEN: For 33 years, it was easy to explain our ministry: Bill and Donna? Oh yeah, PALAWAN. We lived and ministered on Palawan. We worked with the Palawanos (we were palawano.com, for goodness’ sake!) We were translating the Palawano New Testament. It was easy for people to “get” what we were all about. And when people thought of us, they thought of Palawan, Palawanos and translation. Simple.

NOW: We’re all over the place. Lots of different countries. Various projects. We even have to be cryptic about where we are going sometimes for the safety of the missionaries there. Since our ministry is not tied to one location or one people group, it’s harder to get a handle on… especially for many who have had “Bill & Donna = Palawano” in their minds all this time.

Basically, we are helping lots of missionaries to do what we did.

We had to learn Palawano on our own (there’s no Rosetta Stone language course for languages like that.) And other missionaries who want to reach other Unreached People Groups have to do the same kind of language learning. It’s hard! So we’re teaching them how to do it. And many of the missionaries we get to train are non-Western missionaries: Asians from many countries, and (soon) Latin Americans and Africans.

WHAT HAS NOT CHANGED: We’re still with New Tribes Mission, still passionate about seeing Unreached People Groups like the Palawanos reached for Christ. But instead of reaching one people group, now we are a part of reaching many groups as we train others all around the world. It’s a big ministry with many challenges in terms of travel, budget, health and strength, as well as the often daunting task of figuring out how best to train missionaries from such a diverse range of cultures.

We need your prayers more that ever. We need others like you to join our team, as well. So many people groups around the world are waiting to hear the Gospel in their Heart Language. We’re doing all we can to reach those people groups by training missionaries to learn their languages in order to reach them with a clearly-communicated message.

This weekend were asked to shared at the Missions Moment in a church who have been partnering with our ministry for nearly 20 years. So we took the opportunity to make a one-page flyer explaining what we did “back then” and what we are doing now.

We thought you might like to see our cool flyer. You can read it here (or click on it to open it/save it.)

Join our team. Pray for us. Let’s reach the world.

Flyer

Over the Border and Around the World

Posted by

Training in Tijuana

Last week we once again had the privilege of teaching at Radius International in Tijuana. There are 11 students there this year, all being trained to go to the hard places of the world, and take the name of Christ to Unreached People Groups.

They are also being taught how learn the Heart Language of the people to whom they will minister, and that’s where we come in. This semester Bill taught a 10-hour course called Form and Meaning.

Form & Meaning? What does THAT mean? Glad you asked…

Form & Meaning

Missionaries have the most important message in the world (that’s the “meaning” part.) They want to communicate that message clearly. But that’s not so easy. To have effective cross-cultural ministry, they need to be trained about what to say and do (that’s the “form“) that will clearly get that message across.

The trouble is, people around the world communicate meaning in different ways. Each language and culture has unique forms to share a particular message. Sounds, words, letters, grammar, gestures, even acts of friendship… all are forms that communicate very different meanings.

THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL WAY TO COMMUNICATE A PARTICULAR MEANING

Bill teaching Form & Meaning at Radius

It’s All About That Meaning

Here are some fun examples of form/meaning differences:

  • Letters: The letter j represents one sound in English (as in “jump”), but a different sound in other languages: h as in Juan in Spanish, y as in Bjorn in Swedish, etc. “What a j sounds like” is completely arbitrary.
  • Words: “Cat” in English is gato in Spanish, right? Well, kinda. Gato also means a car jack, a person from Madrid, and many other things. Words don’t have one-to-one correspondence.
  • Metaphors: In our English Bibles, we have “edge” of a sword; but in the Hebrew and Greek it is actually the “mouth” of the sword (yes, it’s a double-mouthed sword in Hebrews and Revelation!) In Palawano, the “mouth” of the sword is its tip; the blade or edge is called the “eye” of the sword.
  • Grammar: English has the single word “us.” Palawano has three different words, meaning: “us, but not you,” “just you and me” and “you, me and all of us.” Three forms. English has one form, and lumps all three meanings together.
  • Little Things: English has about 150 prepositions and some of them, like “of,” for example, have a dozen or so meanings! Some languages have ONE preposition. Meaning gets communicated with very different forms.

And those are just the easy kinds of differences!

Expect the Unexpected

  • Turning verbs into nouns: Some languages don’t make nouns (repentance, baptism) out of verbs (repenting, getting baptized) the way English and Greek love to do.
  • Making friends: What if saying “I just got you a little something” was an insult? What if saying that a baby was beautiful made the mother frightened (because you just alerted the evil spirits to where a cute victim was)? What if you were supposed to change the form and say that the baby was “ugly” and mother (but not the spirits) would understand the meaning to be, “Oh, what a cute baby!”? What if you gave a friend a dozen roses and they understood you to mean, “Drop dead!” because it was an even number?
  • Asking questions: And what if Jesus’ rhetorical question, “To what shall I liken the Kingdom of God?” meant that he really didn’t have a clue and was asking the disciples to explain it to him?!

In each case, you would have to make some big changes to communicate what you meant to say.

THE FORM MUST CHANGE FOR THE MEANING TO REMAIN THE SAME

That is the lesson Bill was teaching the students. They cannot afford to “think English and translate.” They must learn to think about the meaning and communicate that in the best form. In the fall semester, Bill will teach them more about how to discover the underlying meaning.

It’s a joy and a privilege to teach these eager missionaries and to get to know them. Both of us enjoyed chatting with them over lunch and answering their questions about missionary life.

Oh, and by the way, lunch at Radius is always awesome:

IMG_1139

Thank God with us…

  • a good week of teaching
  • no hassles driving in and out of Mexico 5 days in a row
  • safety in spite of a flat tire on the interstate (after leaving Mexico on Friday)
  • the privilege of training others to reach the Unreached

Give us the Tools!

Posted by
e1 Group (crop)

Sharing a Passion for Equipping Missionaries

“Give us the Tools…

…and We Will Finish the Job!”

 

Sir Winston Churchill spoke those inspiring words in 1941 when England was under severe attack and needed help to survive, and to win the war. He boldly told the world that his country was ready and willing to fight.

They just needed the tools.

That is much like the situation we find around the world today. Missionaries from Asia, Latin America and Africa are ready and willing to join in the battle, to endure hardship and to labor to see every people group reached with the Gospel.

They are asking for the tools they need.

Training Forum in Manila

The Forum on Missionary Training in Manila was a huge success. 65 attendees came from 16 different countries to talk about training missionaries in many different contexts throughout Asia, Africa and Europe. NTM brought them all together to meet one another, to learn from one another, and to encourage and help one another. We were there to listen to them and see how they felt we might be of assistance to them.

We were blessed to learn more about the training programs that are already in place. At the same time, we were challenged by the tremendous needs and the many opportunities that remain.

There are large areas in Central Asia where help is needed in setting up training programs for missionaries. Existing programs are asking for Bill to teach modules or to help them further develop their course materials.

Our next several updates will feature different connections we made at the forum.

First up… THE PHILIPPINES

Bill & Joseph (crop)

Bill with longtime friend and coworker Joseph Lee

After 33 years in the Philippines, for us, attending the Forum in Manila was like going home. We enjoyed fellowshipping with many of our Filipino missionary coworkers and talking about their training program.

They have invited Bill to teach some courses on translation and language learning at their School of Missions. We’ll be working with them to figure out the best timing for this. Bill will also want one or more Filipinos to work alongside him that he can train to take over teaching those courses.

We want to give them the tools and see God use them to finish the job!