Not just your normal lumps in our Cream of Wheat…

Since we buy groceries for several months at a stretch, we shouldn’t be surprised by the extra protein in our noodles and grains… this is what came out of our last fresh box of  Cream of Wheat this morning.

Foibles

On the surface, translation is a simple concept right? Just take what is said in one language and transfer the meaning into another… So simple, and yet so interesting and difficult. What happens when, (as is the case in Pal) the people have never seen a live sheep, have never heard of slavery, and a desert is as distant a concept as the moon.

All of the sudden the story of Joseph being sold into slavery after wandering the wilderness looking for his brothers who were supposed to be watching their father’s sheep doesn’t seem so much the slam-dunk that it used to, does it?

Before we turn one word of scripture into the Pal language we are spending hours studying the text, analyzing what is there that could potentially cause misunderstanding. With language helpers we are going through those concepts seeking a ways to communicate clearly and succinctly the meat of scripture. Today I had the pleasure of trying to explain slavery to a Pal person. It took three times through the explanation for him to understand that the slave is not the one who is gets the money when he is sold. Even then, he was not able to put the concept of slavery into a few words…

…Uh oh… Footnotes!

Yes, you guessed it, we will need to put in some kind of note system to help our Pal friends understand these foreign ideas.^{oh no!} Pray for us as we try to work out how much we need to put into notes within the scripture and how much can be included in companion materials.

So different! A group of folks came by today just to see what white people are like. (It was a zoo.)

Pray

We have four weeks to go before the next Culture and Language Assessment for Elizabeth and our partners. At this point we are praying that they all will have reached a level in which they can participate in if not fully lead the literacy classes. Its kind of like studying for exams all over again…

Thanks for caring so much for us,

Nate for the team

^{oh no!} In case you were wondering, I’ve never been a fan of footnotes, more prejudice than anything else.  If you are a footnote fan and feel the need to, feel free to express your ideas – but be sure to use 6 point italic typeface when you do write us. (a sequential coding system would be helpful as well)