Category: Bible Translation

On Saturday we finished our first Kwakum literacy course (we have worked through the material with some people, but this was the first official class). We went to a village called Sibita every weekend for 4 weeks. The group varied between 4 adults to 20 adults, depending on the week. We explicitly said this class was for adults, but there were always 10-20 kids there too. The kids participated and learned probably more quickly than the adults. Being that it was our first official literacy class, there were some things that surprised me. Here are three: 1. No Abstract Categories…

We have the exciting opportunity to participate in VBS at Grace Church Frisco this summer. How? Well, they are doing VBS completely virtually, online. They are using the curriculum Incredible Race by Answers in Genesis. The main theme throughout is the story of the tower of Babel, which works pretty well with our jobs as Bible translators. So we recorded five short videos talking about ministry here and relating it to the Babel story. I was thinking, if Grace Church Frisco is doing VBS this year, maybe other churches are too. And maybe even if churches are not able to…

Here is a quick, informal video that we put together on why we do what we do. It is designed for churches or individuals who are just learning about Bible translation among the Kwakum.

“Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is like trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished.” – Cameron Townsend These past couple months, we have been training a group 8 Kwakum people in principles of translation and we have seen them go from getting a ‘taste of a Word of God’ into being nourished by it. Let me give you an example. I (Stacey) was teaching on how we can translate concepts that are unknown to the Kwakum people…

Meet the eight people that we have asked to work with us to translate the Bible into Kwakum! Throughout the years, we have worked closely with many Kwakum individuals and watched how they interacted with people, especially when they disagreed with each other. We have watched how teachable they were when criticized. We have also watched to see how capable they were in their knowledge of the Kwakum language. Then, this past month we put out an application to see who would be interested in becoming official translators with us. We received 18 applications, called references, interviewed people, and prayed….

This coming Saturday will be a big day. On the literacy front, we will be administering a 10-page exam in Kwakum to determine who among our students is ready to receive a diploma and an “I can read in Kwakum” T-shirt (one of the many tools that we are using to get people reading…). In addition to students reading various texts and answering comprehension questions, they will be required to teach someone who has not participated in a literacy class the ABCs. We’ve set the bar high in literacy and so far people are rising up to this standard. On…

I was once that young, bright-eyed, seminarian. I studied Greek and wondered at how easy it was to translate passages of Scripture that I already had memorized in English. And when I eventually heard that the vast majority of languages in the world (~91%) do not have the entire Bible, I was a bit shocked. I mean, we have had the whole of the canon for about 2,000 years. Surely, it should not be taking this long. How hard could it be? For those of you that are in the same place, or who at least are asking these questions,…

Yesterday, we, along with about 50 people, sang praise songs to Jesus and danced in the streets for hours. Why? Like my son Kaden said, it was because we were joining in with the angels in Heaven who were rejoicing over sinners who had repented of their sins. We walked through villages as people came out of their homes to see what all the singing was about until we reached the river where three Kwakum people were baptized (two out of the three are our close friends). Let me tell you how the Lord has dramatically changed the lives of…

Saturday marked the end of our second Oral Bible Storying (OBS) weekend! This is a really exciting time because now, for the first time, we have started to translate biblical content into Kwakum. We have spent a total of two weekends working on the Creation narrative from Genesis 1-2, and currently have a very good draft that we will soon be sending to consultants to check. I thought some of you might want to know what that looked like, and how OBS relates to Bible translation. This post is going to go through what we did for these two weekends,…

The curtains are hung, the furniture is in place, the books are in their shelves. It is time to get this ministry party started. This literacy and translation center (“Kwakum House”) is designed to be a hub of Christian and literacy efforts among the Kwakum people. Our dreams for this place is that the Lord would fill it up with education and spiritual truths to bring change among the Kwakum and to bring about worship of Christ. In September, we plan to kick off women’s Bible studies going through Firm Foundations (an evangelistic curriculum that goes from Creation to Christ),…