Sunkissed, dusty, and with a beam­ing smile, Durk Mei­jer is an end­less stream of anec­dotes about his trav­els through­out South­ern Africa as­sist­ing mi­nor­ity lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties to get God’s word in their lan­guage. Durk works for a joint ini­tia­tive known as Re­gional Trans­la­tion Services and they are us­ing oral Bible sto­ry­ing as a way to get God’s word out quickly. An oral Bible story is a short pas­sage of Scrip­ture that is trans­lated orally and then shared with oth­ers. This method al­lows peo­ple to en­gage and dis­cover the truths of Scrip­ture from the be­gin­ning of a pro­ject. They don’t have to wait un­til the trans­la­tion is finished.

Durk is pas­sion­ate about us­ing this ap­proach be­cause he be­lieves it helps a com­mu­nity cre­ate a strong the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion. “Peo­ple are dis­cov­er­ing for them­selves what the Bible re­ally says,” he says. “It gives them an enor­mous free­dom, but also sim­ple prin­ci­ples they take into their heart.”

“If we bring what they can re­late to, they start to get in­ter­ested and want to learn more,” Durk shares. “And that’s what you want.”

Read more.

Photo & Words: El­yse Patten

The post Meet Durk – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

Bible sto­ry­ing taps into the lifeblood of an oral cul­ture, and the sto­ries travel sur­pris­ingly fast.

Ethno-com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant Durk Mei­jer re­calls a man he met at a Bible sto­ry­ing work­shop from the Himba com­mu­nity in north­west­ern Namibia. “He was ed­u­cated, spoke Eng­lish and uses Face­book – he’s a mod­ern guy. He learned four Bible sto­ries im­me­di­ately to retell.”

When Durk used a dif­fer­ent ap­proach – teach­ing prin­ci­ples rather than sto­ries – the man strug­gled to re­mem­ber what he heard and retell it.  Durk has ob­served this is a com­mon chal­lenge among oral learners.

“We’re help­ing people…​engage with God’s Word in their own way,” ex­plains Durk.

Tech­nol­ogy is in­creas­ing this en­gage­ment even fur­ther. South­ern Africans liv­ing in re­mote ar­eas, in­clud­ing many San peo­ple, have em­braced the mo­bile phone as a per­fect method for do­ing what oral cul­tures love: shar­ing stories.

Se­bas­t­ian Floor, di­rec­tor of Wycliffe South Africa’s Re­gional Trans­la­tion Services,re­ports that even with­out wide­spread ac­cess to elec­tric­ity, peo­ple find a way to charge their phones. They also climb moun­tains or travel long dis­tances to get a net­work sig­nal. Such ob­sta­cles are no match for a de­sire to com­mu­ni­cate.

“It’s amaz­ing!” ex­claims Se­bas­t­ian. “We are find­ing that sto­ries done orally spread very quickly.”

One way oral Bible sto­ry­ing dif­fers from writ­ten trans­la­tion is that less lan­guage analy­sis needs to be done at the out­set. Bible sto­ries can be pre­pared quickly and checked by a con­sul­tant right away.

“Ba­si­cally the [oral] trans­la­tion work gets done at the story work­shops,” Se­bas­t­ian says.

While oral sto­ry­ing is a startup strat­egy for Wycliffe South Africa’s Re­gional Trans­la­tion Services (RTS), it isn’t nec­es­sar­ily a sub­sti­tute for writ­ten trans­la­tion. It of­ten pre­pares a com­mu­nity for a full Bible trans­la­tion project.

“But the main ad­van­tage,” says Se­bas­t­ian, “is that it gets God’s Word out to com­mu­ni­ties very quickly.”

By Elyse Patten
Photo: Zeke du Plessis

Re­turn to the ar­ti­cle Sto­ries and Broth­er­hood: Bible Trans­la­tion in South­ern Africa to read more.

The post News travels fast in an oral culture appeared first on The Messenger.

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

– African Proverb

The ge­o­graphic re­gion of South­ern Africa in­cludes 10 coun­tries with more than 100 lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties that have no avail­able Scrip­ture in their heart lan­guage. Wars, lin­guis­tic com­plex­ity and en­vi­ron­men­tal ob­sta­cles have his­tor­i­cally been bar­ri­ers to ex­ten­sive Bible trans­la­tion work here.

To­day, God is writ­ing a new chap­ter for South­ern Africa. Bible trans­la­tion or­ga­ni­za­tions* across the re­gion are work­ing to­ward a com­mon goal: help­ing lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties trans­late God’s Word into their own languages.

A New Focus

Af­ter serv­ing in Bible trans­la­tion more than 20 years in Mozam­bique, South African lin­guist and trans­la­tion con­sul­tant Se­bas­t­ian Floor re­turned home with a new vi­sion. He wanted to help the dozens of lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties in other South­ern African na­tions that need and want ac­cess to God’s Word.

In late 2009 Se­bas­t­ian pro­posed a plan to the Board of Wycliffe South Africa, re­quest­ing that the or­ga­ni­za­tion take a more sig­nif­i­cant role in fa­cil­i­tat­ing Bible trans­la­tion for these lan­guage communities.

Since its found­ing, Wycliffe South Africa has sup­ported Bible trans­la­tion through prayer and re­cruit­ing per­son­nel, but en­gag­ing di­rectly in trans­la­tion work was out­side of its ex­pe­ri­ence. In De­cem­ber 2009, the Board agreed to the new ven­ture, but with one im­por­tant instruction:

“They wanted to see all the work be­ing done, man­aged, owned and dri­ven by the end-users of the trans­la­tion,” re­counts Se­bas­t­ian, who is now the di­rec­tor of Wycliffe South Africa’s Re­gional Trans­la­tion Services (RTS). With lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties lead­ing the work, Wycliffe could pro­vide crit­i­cally needed train­ing and sup­port from a po­si­tion of servanthood.

Se­bas­t­ian put to­gether a small team of train­ers and con­sul­tants. When they be­gan look­ing for ways to con­nect with lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties, they quickly dis­cov­ered that their African broth­ers and sis­ters were al­ready look­ing for them.

Invitations to Partner

Within two months of RTS be­gin­ning, two re­quests came from Angola.

Tucked away on a moun­tain top, the Muk­wandu peo­ple first heard the Good News from an An­golan cou­ple trained by Youth With A Mis­sion (YWAM). Over the years of their min­istry, a church was born and flour­ished. The cou­ple tried to trans­late the Bible, writ­ing trans­lated pas­sages in an ex­er­cise book, but were soon over­whelmed. They started ask­ing around for help and Se­bas­t­ian heard about their request.

Around the same time, a Wycliffe col­league for­warded Se­bas­t­ian an ar­ti­cle about an­other YWAM cou­ple in An­gola who were work­ing with the Mukubal peo­ple. In the ar­ti­cle they re­quested help from Wycliffe. For Se­bas­t­ian, this was a dis­cov­ery not only of a new trans­la­tion need, but also a lan­guage that he didn’t know existed.

Se­bas­t­ian left for Angola as soon as he could. At the time YWAM An­gola was in­volved in eight mi­nor­ity lan­guages in the coun­try, and Wycliffe agreed to work to­gether with them on six of those. Wycliffe pro­vided train­ing and help with strate­gic plan­ning, while YWAM be­came the fa­cil­i­tat­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion for Bible trans­la­tion on the ground.

“This is a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing. It is an ex­per­i­ment in many ways,” ex­plains Sebastian.

This new model of part­ner­ship en­cour­aged other or­ga­ni­za­tions in the re­gion to part­ner with RTS in sim­i­lar ways.

Joining Resources

In 2011 Wycliffe South Africa part­nered with Seed Company, the Bible so­ci­eties ofNamibia and Botswana, Lutheran Bible Translators and var­i­ous churches to start the San Bible Partnership.

The San peo­ples live through­out the Kala­hari Desert re­gion of Botswana and Namibia. These no­madic hunter-gath­er­ers, in­dige­nous to south­ern Africa, num­ber ap­prox­i­mately 90,000 and are be­lieved to be one of the old­est eth­nic groups in the world.

They speak some of the most in­tri­cate liv­ing lan­guages, with up to 80 dis­tinc­tive mouth clicks. Be­cause of these com­plex­i­ties, al­pha­bet de­vel­op­ment is chal­leng­ing. San cul­tures also have a strong oral tra­di­tion, and lit­er­acy isn’t widely valued.

Re­spond­ing to the unique cul­ture of the San peo­ples, these or­ga­ni­za­tions are work­ing to­gether to trans­late and record oral Bibles that will be avail­able on au­dio de­vices. They started on nine San lan­guages and since 2015 ex­panded to 11 lan­guages so all San peo­ple will have ac­cess to God’s Word.

Brotherly Relationships

Work­ing with lo­cal part­ners means that RTS staff make build­ing strong re­la­tion­ships their first pri­or­ity. Se­bas­t­ian calls it “broth­erly relationships.”

“We aim to build the strength of re­la­tion­ships to the ex­tent that we feel we are re­ally broth­ers,” he ex­plains. “It is no good for us to just go there for two days, dis­cuss [an agree­ment], sign it and dis­ap­pear. We need to sit to­gether and laugh to­gether. It un­leashes a high level of trust.”

Se­bas­t­ian re­quires that all his con­sul­tants move be­yond only teach­ing tech­ni­cal skills and gen­uinely en­joy en­gag­ing with the peo­ple they serve.

“It’s a key value that we in­sist on. I would rather that my staff get less work done but come back with a solid re­port that they had a fine time to­gether,” he says.

This is an at­ti­tude that Se­bas­t­ian de­scribes as be­ing well-re­ceived by their partners.

“We might be start­ing slower,” Se­bas­t­ian ad­mits, “but you can work so much faster later on be­cause you’ve laid a foun­da­tion of trust in the beginning.”

Starting with Stories

The RTS em­pha­sis on re­la­tion­ships also af­fects how they ad­vise part­ners to be­gin Bible trans­la­tion pro­jects. Their rec­om­men­da­tion is of­ten to start with oral Bible sto­ry­ing. Us­ing this ap­proach, a short pas­sage of Scrip­ture is trans­lated orally and then shared with oth­ers. One ad­van­tage of this method is the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the wider com­mu­nity from the out­set.

“If we bring what they can re­late to, they start to get in­ter­ested and want to learn more,” ex­plains Durk Mei­jer, an ethno-com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sul­tant for RTS.

Durk be­lieves Bible sto­ry­ing also helps the whole com­mu­nity cre­ate a strong the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion together.

“Peo­ple are dis­cov­er­ing for them­selves what the Bible re­ally says,” he says.

Through oral sto­ry­telling, the com­mu­nity be­gins to iden­tify with these truths.

“They say, ‘This is mine,’” Durk ex­plains. “The sto­ries be­come a part of who they are.”

News travels fast in an oral culture

Bible sto­ry­ing taps into the lifeblood of an oral cul­ture, and the sto­ries travel sur­pris­ingly fast.

Ethno-com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant Durk Mei­jer re­calls a man he met at a Bible sto­ry­ing work­shop from the Himba com­mu­nity in north­west­ern Namibia. “He was ed­u­cated, spoke Eng­lish and uses Face­book – he’s a mod­ern guy. He learned four Bible sto­ries im­me­di­ately to retell.”
Read more…

 

.

Relational and Process Quality

A re­la­tional em­pha­sis does not mean sac­ri­fic­ing quality.

“This is God’s Word we are deal­ing with,” says Se­bas­t­ian. “It needs to be done the best pos­si­ble way.”

How­ever Se­bas­t­ian points out that tech­ni­cal qual­ity is not the only mea­sure of an ef­fec­tive trans­la­tion. How ex­ten­sively a com­mu­nity uses trans­lated Scrip­ture is a good in­di­ca­tor of how in­volved it was in the process.

“We must have tech­ni­cal, re­la­tional and process qual­ity – the whole pack­age,” Se­bas­t­ian says.

One of the San lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties in Namibia has two words for God. One word im­plies that God is dis­tant, and the other im­plies that God is ap­proach­able. The com­mu­nity is dis­cussing the terms and their use.

“That is a fas­ci­nat­ing process,” re­marks Se­bas­t­ian. He main­tains that he will of­fer con­sul­tant ad­vice, but the com­mu­nity needs to dis­cover which is the right one and why.

“Maybe it will be a com­bi­na­tion of the two,” Se­bas­t­ian re­flects. He joins them in pray­ing for God to give wis­dom to every­one involved.

To bet­ter equip com­mu­ni­ties for chal­lenges like these, RTS of­fers reg­u­lar train­ing in Bible trans­la­tion prin­ci­ples – not only to those in­volved di­rectly in trans­la­tion and Bible sto­ry­ing, but also to church and com­mu­nity leaders.

Se­bas­t­ian ad­mits, “We nor­mally just train the trans­la­tors….now we are also train­ing in­flu­en­tial church lead­ers. It is a whole new ball game.”

Together on the Long Road

Al­though these strate­gies were partly born of ne­ces­sity, the team can now see why God di­rected them this way. With only a small staff, they’ve been able to help start trans­la­tion pro­jects in a large num­ber of languages.

Cur­rently 30 Bible trans­la­tion pro­jects through­out South­ern Africa re­ceive ei­ther fi­nan­cial or tech­ni­cal sup­port through Wycliffe South Africa’s Re­gional Trans­la­tion Services (RTS), in part­ner­ship with oth­ers. Se­bas­t­ian es­ti­mates that at least an­other 70 lan­guage com­mu­ni­ties through­out South­ern Africa still need their services.

RTS is seek­ing the best way to be a cat­a­lyst for Bible trans­la­tion, bear­ing in mind that every sit­u­a­tion is different.

“That’s one of the biggest chal­lenges,” says Durk. “There will never be a pack­age that you can reproduce.”

Short on ca­pac­ity but re­ly­ing on God, Se­bas­t­ian, Durk and the other RTS staff ask for prayer. “There are risks,” Se­bas­t­ian says. “We need wis­dom. We are learn­ing.”

*In­clud­ing: Wycliffe South Africa, Seed Company, SIL South­ern Africa, The Word for the World, Lutheran Bible Translators and na­tional Bible so­ci­eties such as the Bible So­ci­ety of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa etc.

By Elyse Patten

Published on www.wycliffe.net

The post Stories and Brotherhood: Bible Translation in Southern Africa appeared first on The Messenger.

You’d be for­given for think­ing that this im­age, em­bell­ished with an em­broi­dered vest and dry­ing corn, de­picts a scene in South Amer­ica. In fact, this man be­longs to the Hani peo­ple who live in south­ern China near the bor­der with Viet Nam. Ap­prox­i­mately 750 thou­sand peo­ple be­long to the Hani lan­guage com­mu­nity, which is con­sid­ered a mi­nor­ity in the vast na­tion of China. Since they speak a lan­guage to­tally dif­fer­ent to Chi­nese, the lit­er­acy rate is low and they have no Scrip­tures avail­able to them. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has rec­og­nized that the Hani have the low­est qual­ity of life of all the of­fi­cial Chi­nese mi­nor­ity groups. Please pray for the Hani peo­ple to have ac­cess to God’s message.

Photo: Marc Ewell | Words: El­yse Patten

The post Hani – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

What strikes you first about this image of a Bible school student in Central African Republic? The blue pen resting on his head while deep in concentration? The bare rustic classroom? The Bibles he is referencing: one dirty and used, one new and clean – why is that? Just think, this scene isn’t posed. It wasn’t created in a photographic studio. No one came in and removed things from the background to make it look a certain way. This man isn’t a model. He is real. His desire to learn from God’s word is real. His concentration, his environment, his struggles, are real. As you look at this photograph he is still working – reading, learning, teaching, and maybe translating, the word of God. Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Central African Republic.

Photo: Zeke du Plessis | Words: Elyse Patten

The post Real Life – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

Late on a spring night in the Arctic Circle the lingering twilight illuminates a herd of reindeer while a massive orange moon rises outside the city of Salekhard in northwestern Siberia, Russia. This far north two seasons predominate, one with constant sunlight and one without any at all. But the light of God’s Word is constant here, as it is being translated into the local Nenets and Khanty languages by a team of Russian and multi-national partners supported by the Good News Church of Salekhard. Please pray for the ongoing work of translation and Scripture engagement in this beautiful but challenging environment.

Photo: Marc Ewell | Words: Craig Combs

The post Arctic Moonrise – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

Paul Machira mod­els his run­ning style in the lead up to the 8th an­nual Run for the Bibleless, a fun run in Kenya’s cap­i­tal city, Nairobi. The run was held in March 2015 to raise funds for, and aware­ness of, com­mu­ni­ties in Kenya with­out a Bible in their lan­guage. The 10 kilo­me­tre event drew over 6000 en­thu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pants from all over Nairobi and raised an es­ti­mated $74,000 to­wards the work of Bible trans­la­tion in Kenya.

Paul works for Bible Trans­la­tion & Literacy (BTL) – the lo­cal Wycliffe or­gan­i­sa­tion in Kenya – and co­or­di­nates the run. His fer­vency re­flects the shock he ex­pe­ri­enced when he first learned that there are still com­mu­ni­ties within Kenya with­out a Bible in their lan­guage. “That’s the ur­gency” says Paul, “with which I go to churches, schools and uni­ver­si­ties. I tell them that in our gen­er­a­tion we must make a dif­fer­ence. Come and make a state­ment… let’s bring Nairobi to a stand­still… Chris­tians are run­ning on be­half of those that have never heard about Jesus.”

The ba­ton is be­ing passed, and as BTL re­lies less and less on out­side help they are rais­ing up lead­ers and fi­nances from within their own na­tion. Let us pray for, and cheer on, our Kenyan broth­ers and sis­ters who press on to­wards the goal set be­fore them.

Photo & Words: Rod­ney Ballard

The post The Nairobi Standstill – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

The post Publications roundup appeared first on The Messenger.

Children from the remote city of Bili in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo crowd in for a photo. This city lies in the midst of the rich Congolese rainforest and only about 50 km south of the border with Central African Republic. People who live in Bili speak a language called Mono.

A Mono Bible translation project, started in the early 90s, halted in 1996 due to civil unrest. War engulfed Bili, and rebel soldiers captured community leaders like Gaspard & Marie Yalemoto. A pastor helped negotiate their release. The rebel commander insisted that the release be on the condition that Gaspard receive theological training and released them on the doorstep of the seminary. After three years in Bible school, Gaspard and Marie were invited to join the Mono translation team. Read Gaspard and Marie’s dramatic story.

Photo & Words: Heather Pubols

The post A New Testament in Mono – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

Hundreds of buildings cast an array of colour on Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. In English Hong Kong means Fragrant Harbor. Viewed from this vantage point it is clear that Hong Kong’s 7 million people live in Earth’s most densely populated city.

In the midst of this powerhouse city, Wycliffe Hong Kong, founded in 1987, operates with over 50 staff members who serve in the home office or in various locations around the world. The staff serve in Bible translation, literacy, administration, media, finances, mobilization and more. Over 100 churches in Hong Kong also embrace the vision of Bible translation and participate through funding, prayer, and visiting field projects.

Learn more about Wycliffe Hong Kong.

Photo & Words: Marc Ewell

The post Fragrant Harbour – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

Betty Amon reads from the Nuku oro New Testament as other members of the Nukuoro translation team meet to pray. Women in Betty’s family have been longing for, and working on, a full Nukuoro Bible for generations. Betty inherited the call to bring God’s word to Nukuoro speakers from her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother before her. Just a tiny island in the vast Pacific, Nukuoro comprises only 1,000 speakers. But their desire to understand God’s message has been strong enough to carry on for decades without expert help and modern resources. With some help from Wycliffe’s partners, a full Bible in Nukuoro will soon be published. Read Betty’s story

Photo & Words: Elyse Patten

The post Inheritance – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

A young Bud­dhist monk reads in an an­cient Myan­mar pagoda. Mo­ments like this are among the things I en­joy most as a pho­tog­ra­pher. It’s such an honor to ob­serve some­one’s life. But I had dif­fi­culty pho­tograph­ing this boy. I found my­self wish­ing that he was read­ing the Bible. I ended the day with some beau­ti­ful im­ages, but feel­ing dis­cour­aged. This ex­pe­ri­ence re­minded me why I be­lieve in Bible trans­la­tion. Peo­ple need to hear the story of Jesus. I pray that peo­ple in Myan­mar like this young boy will one day ex­pe­ri­ence the word of God.

Photo & Words: Marc Ewell

The post In Search of Truth – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

A woman carries supplies out of her choom (teepee-like home) as her nomadic group in northwestern Siberia packs up their sleds to move farther north for the summer. Even in the farthest corners of the world God’s Word is being translated for those who need it. The team working with the Vostok, for example, is taking God’s Word to several small, remote language groups in far eastern Siberia through oral Bible storying. Their hope is to translate and record 30 Bible stories for each community.
Pray for translation projects in progress in the Russian Federation.

Photo & Words: Marc Ewell

The post The Far Corners – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.

In March of 2012 I visited a Ngbakan literacy class in Gemena, a city in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Most of the students were adult women. The class instructors told me that since education is not free, families are often left to make the difficult decision about which of their children to educate. When faced with this impossible choice, many families choose to educate their sons. This has left many women without basic literacy skills.

Approximately one billion people around the world do not know how to read, and two-thirds are women. Imagine not being able to read the label on your child’s medicine bottle, receipts of your purchases, or business contracts. Imagine not being able to read a letter from a dear friend. Imagine not being able to read God’s word in your own language. As I saw these ladies working hard on their lessons, I couldn’t help but think how much I take reading for granted. See more in this blogpost.

Photo & Words: Heather Pubols

The post The Privilege of Reading – Weekly Inspiring Image appeared first on The Messenger.