Pregnant or Starving?

Our afternoon activities. The boys working on digging their own fort/hole/play area, Elizabeth just coming back from visiting friends in the village, and the sun breaking through the clouds.

Only an letter, but OOOPs!

Translation progress has been good this week, more that 100 verses have been roughed out so far. After battling through unfamiliar (to Pal) concepts like slavery (‘People that can be bought and sold?!’), kings, houses that include jails, and various animals (camel, sheep, donkey… not the everyday stuff of jungle life), we were working to bring across the concept of starvation (Genesis 42-43).  Proud that I’d finally hit on a solution, I read the sentence to a friend:

The brothers and their families were so pregnant that they were ready to die.

Not sure what the guy was thinking, but by the look he gave me I bet it was something like: ‘I’d be pretty much ready to die too if I found out I was pregnant.’ It wasn’t hard to fix my mistake and the guy went away chuckling (in fact lots of folks have come by chuckling… wonder how many friends he told…).

Turns out that there are two forms of ‘with’ in Pal. So, saying ‘with stomach’ can either mean pregnancy or hunger depending on which with is used. (technically: uhna or mana).

School construction is on schedule. The first class is selected and the 140 printed books and flashcards are on their way here. (Thanks for making these things possible).

Shapes, Lines, and Holding Pencils

One of the other things that we have been working on is developing lesson plans and ancillary materials for the literacy program. For people who hardly have held pencils, fine motor skills need to be developed by extensive practice. In preliminary testing this week with a random sample of Pal friends, we had a great time talking about how each thing that we are doing in the school is focused on developing skills – even if we are not writing actual words. It was also interesting to me to see how many of the Pal people are left-handed.

Moving forward we would like to see the Pal people have a library of their own, lots of opportunity to write their own stories, and lots of extra reading material that will encourage them all to grow their literacy skills. Oh, so much to do, so little time. Will you please pray for us for strength and speed in our work.

Thanks,

Nate for the family.