Colossians checked. Redirecting to Nigeria.

Consultant Training Trip

Thank you all for your prayers for me (Benjamin) and our family as I traveled to observe consultant checking in South Africa. Everything went smoothly (including the fuel-related ticket change and new flight route) and we are all back home now.

The group I am training with observed the consultant checking of Colossians for the Betselio language of Madagascar. It was a very interesting experience especially because the consultant is from Madagascar and at other times in the last two weeks has actually been working on four languages at a time! They are all closely related enough that the consultant could make suggestions to the translators based on what the other languages had done.

While our cohort mostly observed and took notes, we prepared notes and comments as if they were for the translation team in our own private workspace, particularly focusing on Colossians 3. During the course of the session we asked a few questions and in one instance helped the team realize they should remove “without cause” from their translation of Col 3:19 because Paul really was telling husbands not to be harsh, at all. In many other instances, it was confidence-building to see the consultant ask the team the same question we had made a note of.

For the next few days, we met with people from a variety of different local missions agencies and Bible schools to get a picture of what people are doing for the Lord there. We had an invigorating time with another agency, especially hearing from one South American headed to the Middle East and hearing about the agency’s drive to do a large number of oral Bible translations. Another time was encouraging as we heard of God’s surprising provision for a couple’s kids, but also sobering as they told us of the struggles convincing people to use the newly translated Bible and of the multiplying number of “denominations” where they had worked. It was inspiring to sit with senior consultants and intimidating to be mildly interrogated by a recently retired senior professor of Biblical Hebrew regarding our skills in that area.

A glimpse of our checking setup: The two ladies on the right are the translators (who spoke English) and the consultant is with them at the table.

This clarity of plan, overlap with my skills and recent work, as well as the fact that Teryl’s last several years have been spent deeply focused on developing consultant training and assessment metrics give me great confidence that this path will lead to me meeting the requirements for Translation Consultant certification in the expected amount of time. Therefore, I have accepted this offer. Please pray for swift ironing out of any necessary paperwork for it. 

We will not be moving overseas for this assignment as the work there has been done remotely all along with workshops in the country. We hope there will be the opportunity to meet the team in person, at least for our first session, to establish good relationships. However, in-person meetings haven’t happened since 2020 and at the moment the jet fuel issues we faced getting to South Africa have affected Nigeria to the point that they may be shutting down all internal flights.

As a family, we are deeply feeling the strain of life (and particularly our living situation) being constantly in flux. Please pray for wisdom for us as we seek some stability and try to determine the healthiest way forward.