A couple years ago I received a message on WhatsApp from a young P man named Alexandri. Though he knew of me, I had never met him. He was contacting me to ask my opinion on translating the OT into P. There is a Spanish speaking outreach organized through SIL which is wanting to train mother tongue translators that are bilingual. This group had made contact with the Ps with the proposal of translating the OT into P. Alexandri asked if I would want to participate. I told him that, as of now, the Lord has not led me to translate the OT, as I feel quite strongly that my remaining years should be spent on teaching. I had never wanted to translate the NT. I had only ever wanted to teach it since the Lord had captivated my heart revealing to me the message of His grace and mystery of godliness in Christ Jesus. This I am greatly enjoying through radio programs.
However, I did say that I would be happy to help as a reference person. We will see how involved I may end up getting with this project. Through Alexandri’s contact with me, I also met (via WhatsApp) a Venezuelan (Spanish speaking Latino) missionary named Gabriel, who appears to be the chief contact person and overseer of the SIL translation project. The plan they have is a 5-10 year plan where SIL will train mother tongue translators. Gabriel has been a tremendous blessing to me as he has free access into the P villages and makes frequent trips. He is constantly relaying messages from the P’s to me and from me to them. Alexandri incidentally just finished creating a children’s primer to train children how to read P. I edited it and we had enough money to print 7,000 copies.
Last weekend, they had a workshop teaching the concepts of hermeneutics, original languages and an overview of the OT. Gabriel asked me prior to heading into ‘White Dirt’ for the workshop if I could send a short video to the Ps who would be there studying. So I set my phone up in my office here in BC Canada and spoke a 12 minute message from John 16 and 17 about the importance of God’s word. “…I have given them Your word…” “…Your word is truth…” “…sanctify them by your truth…” “…when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth…” were the words of our Lord which I spoke about on the video. The message was basically regarding all the tools a translator needs to translate, but the greatest importance in it all is the Spirit of God guiding your heart in every moment.
Yesterday Gabriel sent me a small video clip of him playing my video message way out in the jungle at ‘White Dirt’ where there were 50 men and women students who are potential translators of the OT. I’ve attached his video clip here. Technology is wonderful at the moment. I thought you may enjoy watching the video clip of me sitting in my office on the video while 50 P’s watched it out in the village.
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