Equipping the church to lead
In the middle of the workshop last month, Rev. Ben introduced me to an interesting man. This man had come to the city looking for Rev. Ben because he’d heard about how the Alis i Ron are owning their own Bible translation project as a community–and he wanted the same for his community. It is a really encouraging sign that the movements within the Bible translation world toward local, community, church ownership of their own translations really resonates with people.
I’m thankful that, over the last several years, I’ve been in this stream. It is constantly uplifting to see the church doing more with less from us (outsiders) and then turning around and training the churches in other languages around them.
Meanwhile in East Africa…
While I was in Nigeria, another team was hearing stories from the teams we worked with in South Sudan this past March. They had told us of plans to open pastoral and translation training centers in two strategic locations in Sudan and how all the teams that had started translating an overview of the Bible stories series planned to go to their people (mostly Muslim) and test them. On April 15 a civil war started, but as I review their testimonies from July I see wonderful stories of faithfulness. Despite the danger and despite increased security and the difficulties that created for the teams as they traversed Sudan, they brought the Bible stories to their people, and many were well received.
Many people had never seen their language written or thought that they could hear from God in their native language. This opened many doors in communities that would otherwise have been closed. In one area the chiefs told them that long ago missionaries tried to build a church or teach kids but were rejected and chased away. But now, coming with the Word of God in their language, these native believers were welcome.
Pray for the growth of the church in Sudan!
-Benjamin
Home
At home, we’ve started back to homeschool. Mira’s in 3rd grade. Peregrine and Anastasia listen in to some of her things, but are working on learning their letters. Cyrus is rolling and starting to scoot. Anastasia is our little extrovert who asks nearly every day if we’re going to see friends or if friends are coming over. Cyrus is trying to join her by being too busy “talking” and smiling to eat.
Looking Ahead
Starting next week (9/5/23), Benjamin will be observing some consultant checking for a language in Zambia (via Zoom) for up to three weeks. Hopefully at some point he can lead a session with this group and get evaluated by the consultant working with them. (Once several consultants have observed him leading the consultant work and given their approval, he’ll be certified and able to consult teams on his own.) He also started a Biblical Backgrounds course which should help him understand the culture of the Bible times better so that he can share that with translators when it will help with translation. Further ahead, the planned trip to Nigeria this fall has been changed to a Zoom workshop, so he’ll be finishing checking Genesis (Lord willing) for two weeks online at the end of November (including on Thanksgiving). When he’s not doing any of these things he’s working on notes on the Psalms for translation teams and learning how to improve his training abilities.