April 2009

Thank you to all of you who kept us in your prayers the last couple of months. February started with village checking the book of Jonah and a
'Key Concepts' workshop for the Khwe, where the participants discussed key terms of the Bible (God, sin, grace, salvation, etc.)  and how they
should be expressed in Khwedam. After the workshop our translation consultant came up and checked the book of Jonah with the translation
team. Overall, things went very smoothly, the workshop was a success, and both checks went well, with the consultant being fairly pleased with
how well such a new team is doing--though he did point out some things which needed more work or correcting.

March was also busy, with the translation team starting work on portions of the first five chapters of Genesis and getting 72 verses translated.
We also distributed the new Khwe calendars (only 2 months late) which have proved to be very popular with the people in the communities.
They are so proud to have something like that just for them, and it has renewed interest in literacy training again. During March Tim also
attended the funeral of one of the men who contributed a story when Tim was out collecting traditional stories for language learning. This
funeral really brought home to Tim the need for a Khwedam funeral booklet: the majority of the funeral was conducted in Setswana (the
national language), even though the family and friends of the deceased do not speak any Setswana. Unfortunately, there is just no resource for
doing funerals in Khwedam, so Tim is thinking that would be a good project to do when they are finished with the Genesis chapters. There
definitely is a felt need for it.

So, what are we planning for this month? Well, as you might guess from the last paragraph we are planning on finishing the portions of the
first five chapters of Genesis, including team and village checks. After that, work on a funeral booklet, including some Khwe hymns, some Bible
verses, and some prayers. Perhaps we may even squeeze in a short vacation of some sort.

Prayers:
* Please pray that translation continues to go well, there are so many things that can 'crop up' and sidetrack or delay progress.
* Please pray that our team and village checking of Genesis 1-5 will go well and that the communities will feel more and more ownership of this project.
* Please pray that we may craft a funeral booklet in Khwedam that will clearly express the hope that we have because of Jesus and that it will be well received and used.
* At this point there are few that can read Khwedam well, please pray that the hunger to learn to read will increase and that we will be able to facilitate literacy.

Praises:
- Thanksgiving that so much has been started and accomplished in the past couple of months.
- Thanksgiving for continued good health (with limited and usually poor health care here, this is a big thanksgiving for us).
- Thanksgiving for the commitment of the translation team, especially Moses who really is working hard to bring God's Word to his people.

January 2009

Happy New Year! We wish all of you a very blessed 2009!

Thank you to all of you who kept us in your prayers this past month, we have been feeling them.

The workshop for national translators I told you about last month has come and gone, and while Tim enjoyed the workshop and got a lot out of it, three weeks was a long time to be gone and he is glad to be home. Aaron and Andrew are also glad to have Dad home, apparently Mom was getting to be kind of a grouch towards the end there. Last month we asked you to pray for me and the boys because it always seems that something unusual happens when Tim is away. Yes, the unusual stuff happened, but on the upside I learned that to reset fuses you push down then up, I can do basic plumbing, and can deal with people moving most of our belongings outside, spraying the house for mosquitoes (never had done this before), and not helping to move anything back in. I was very grateful for the two-way radio we had just gotten. I didn't need to use it, but it was nice to know I could call someone up if I really needed to!

As for the workshop, last time we told you that four Khwe men were signed up to go, but at the last minute three of them said they might not be able to attend. Well, praise God that even though things didn't go at all like we had planned, all of them attended some part of the workshop. Unfortunately one guy dropped out after the first week, one came down with Malaria (thank goodness the one instructor had medicine and he didn't miss too much), and the other two guys only made it for weeks two and three. Tim was pretty frustrated by all this, but we just have to remember this is all in God's hands, not ours. Fortunately the three guys who finished the program got some good insights into the translation process and hopefully will be a real asset to the translation work when it gets started.

So, what is ahead in January? We will take a few days vacation then Tim is meeting with the guys who finished the translation workshop to review what they were taught, clarify what they may not have understood, and practice some more what they learned. They are planning to begin translation work in earnest this month. Tim will also be getting ready for the workshop which will be held in the Caprivi Strip in February on key concepts in the Bible.


Prayers:
* Please pray that Tim can finally get the bad cylinder head on the truck fixed.
* Please continue to pray for our safety and welfare. It was brought
home to us this past two weeks how much God does protect us; friends of
ours were in a serious car accident just shortly before Tim drove the
same stretch of road, and a neighbor's teenage daughter was stung by a scorpion and required medical help -- the same sting could have killed a child the size of Aaron or Andrew.
* Please pray for integration of the ideas and concepts learned at the translation workshop.
* Please, please pray that translation will get off to a good start this month.

Praises:
- Thanksgiving for a fantastic workshop.
- Thanksgiving for safety for in all of Tim's travels this last month.
- Thanksgiving for all of you who faithfully supported us this past year.

November 2008

During October Tim was able to get some of October's goals finished; namely, getting the tri-lingual animal booklets, a click booklet, and a Khwe story booklet off to the printer in Francistown. The 2009 Khwe calendar is also done, and at the printer in Maun. Getting these materials to the printers is a huge relief, and now we wait for the printing to be done.

This past month Tim made another trip up to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia, meeting with twelve enthusiastic Khwe people who want to be involved in the work we are doing. A couple of times during the meeting the people were so excited about what was happening that they got ahead of themselves--and the meeting agenda. They kept asking "How can we be involved, what can we do?" Music to the ears. Tim was also pleased to see that five of the 12 were women. Up to now all the people interested in the translation project have been men and we haven't been sure if this was a cultural thing, or if the women weren't interested in this work--or didn't know about it, or if there was some other reason. Anyway, we are excited to have more of a cross section of the communities represented and hope they continue to stay involved in the project.

So what's ahead for this month? Tim is planning on doing more Khwe story translation, some more vehicle repair (cylinder head replacement on the truck), and if the printing gets done this month perhaps distributing some of those materials among the communities and another trip up to Namibia. And there will always be those other things that aren't planned but which crop up and need to be done.


Prayers:
* Please pray that the relationships begun in Namibia will deepen and grow and that they will be actively involved in the translation project.
* The rains have started, hooray! However, that means that the malaria season is underway. Please pray for protection from those nasty mosquitoes for our family.

Praises:

- Thanksgiving for yet another good meeting with some enthusiastic Khwe in Namibia.
- Thanksgiving for completing some of our projects and getting them to the printers. Please pray that these publications will really benefit the communities.

August 2008

This past month Tim had a very good trip up to the Caprivi Strip in Namibia. Since probably all of you get our prayer letter I won't bore you by repeating it all, but will just reiterate that the trip was much better than expected, and Tim is very excited about some of the people he met who could be real assets to the Bible translation project. One of them worked with a Roman Catholic priest, who has since been transferred to another parish quite a ways away, to translate the Gospel of Luke. Unfortunately so far it has been impossible to find the translation. These men are interested in language development and Bible translation, so we are hoping for an August meeting with them, the church leaders there, and the men from Botswana who want to be part of the project.

Tim has also been doing revisions and final touch ups on the trilingual animal booklets that we made two years ago and the click booklet that we made at the same time. Besides using them for literacy, the language committee wants to make them available for tourists who come for the Khwe cultural hiking trail. The hiking trail is a guided trek over several days to three different villages. There the hikers are treated to traditional dance, food, and story telling around an evening fire. The Khwe cultural trust has been operating this for a couple of years and it really seems to be taking off. The new director of the trust anticipates that they could sell the three booklets we've produced so far, generating income for the project as well as keeping the Khwe and their culture and challenges in the minds of the tourists who have visited. We are impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit that some of the guys are showing.

Prayers:

* Please pray for open minds and hearts as Tim trains Moses and others in translation principles.
* Please pray for wisdom and good church involvement as we begin selecting a translation team.
* Please pray for our health. Right now all four of us are either recovering from or are in the middle of having the flu.

Praises:

- Thanksgiving for good meetings with some of the Khwe in Namibia.
- Praise that the new director for the Khwe development trust is a very capable person and committed to his job.
 

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