Hello CCA
This goes out to our congregation, friends in the States and our missionaries too. Many love to hear what is happening here and around the world. Here is a note from Robert Rees who works in India. Your vision just enlarged!
Deryl Titus
From: Robert Rees
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2019 2:29 AM
These last few months have been all about translation for the most part. We finished translating, Exegetical Checking, and village checking Revelation. We were also able to village check Proverbs and get it ready for Jill to consultant check. Then we focused on Romans which was difficult. Paul is very hard to translate due to the way he writes. His sentences are so long and complex that it takes forever to break them down into shorter understandable pieces and translate those in a way that makes sense.
Meanwhile the recording of John was finished and reviewed and it sounds good from what I have heard. While all of these do not take up much space in a report they take a ton of time in reality. 🙂
One funny thing did occur while checking Proverbs chapter five (verses 1-2). There is a passage that talks about a double edged sword. I asked if they knew what that was and they replied that no one had such a thing. I asked what they meant, and was the word wrong or could we say it a different way so it was clear. They kept arguing that no one would ever have something like that. As I kept trying to find out what they meant one of them said in frustration “No one has anything like this. Only bandits have them. Why would we need them.” Suddenly I realised that they meant none of them had one while I was asking if such a thing existed. Once we got that cleared up they got it and said oh such things exist but no one would keep one unless you were a bandit. Since were talking about a bad person anyway it fit so we did not have to change anything. 🙂
We are having a rather annoying problem. The largest denomination is refusing to allow us to distribute our app and Audio Translation in Pnar to it members. They suddenly decided that they need us to get permission from the state/provincial branch of the Bible Society. The reason is that the local leader of this denomination does not want to get into trouble in case our translation offends people. He is an excellent politician and is not one for making brave decisions. So he would rather delay the launch of the Pnar Audio Translation then take the least chance of being held responsible for any arguments that might arise from its launch (even though the denomination had no objection to this translation for the last 5 years).
But in a way we are lucky the local branch of the Bible Society of India is full of Preachers and Elders from the churches and denominations that have supported us from the beginning. To top it all off after inquiring we found out the person that should give us the permission is the Uncle of our village checker and he also did the voice of one of the apostles in the Film! So we talked with him explained what we needed. He was so much on our side that he in fact mentioned that this was all about politics that they we as God’s people should not being doing things like this.
But, when he called the state office about the wording for the permission they told him he should not give it to us. However rather then denying us permission which is what they usually do they asked us to get the permission from their head office. While it was horrid we could not get permission at least we still have a chance. The BSI is a bit old fashioned and hates to work with anyone else but, since the last time we talked to the BSI God had done some amazing things with them. In fact just a while back they asked us to work on a language that they were having trouble with so who know what God can do.
On to more personal stuff, my neighbour’s son is doing much better. Over the last few months his anger has disappeared and he is able to concentrate on things again. He was even able to go back to school again and is settling in fine. He is doing well in his classes and is studying once more. His family is also closer to God after this whole experience. So that is a huge praise.
In fact when he went out with some of us someone mentioned that he looked perfectly well and they were confused since they had heard he was not well.
Once more personal thing is that my Mother came to visit with our accountant to check our accounts and once they were done she stayed on for the rest of the month. The reason is that where they live in the South the temp is 40C at night and 45C in the day. Since they do not have air-conditioning she decided that this was the perfect time to check our accounts and also work from here for a while. 🙂 It was a good visit and I got to take her to some Bodies in the area while when I was teaching. One was a in a Coal mining village and the people spoke a language that she knows so she liked that.
We also went to a village where my grandmother was the one that started the church after walking for days through the jungle. (now there is reasonable road but a bit bumpy. It takes 3-4 hours to go 60 Kms (~ 40 Miles). 3 if there is no fog and 4 if there is. The day we went was 3.5 going and closer to 5 coming back since it was very foggy in the evening.
Sad part was that the village is beautiful and has waterfalls, rare plants, and a beach (at about 3000 ft high). So it is a great place but it rained and was covered in fog the whole time. The Villagers were delighted to see her since she is the Daughter in Law of the person that brought them to Belief but they were disappointed that she could not see the area around them. So they told her to be sure and come back .
Almost forgot I was very proud of our translation team this month. They were able to run a training session on how to do Village Checking all by themselves. We have a project in the south we are helping with and who needed to be taught village checking. I decided that our Northeast team could do it and they proved me right. They even wrote up a manual on village checking that I think will be very useful for the other teams in South Asia. In fact while they were doing the training session the only thing I had to do was translate for them (since I was the only one there that could speak all the language that were needed reasonably fluently). It was great seeing people growing in abilities and the gifts that God has given them like this.
Praise:
• That we have been able to do so much translation in the last few months.
• That the Village Checkers were able to do such a good job teaching people from another language group how to do village checking.
Prayer:
• That we will be able to get permission to release the app to the local people from the denominations and from the BSI.
• That we can get the books that we are done translating ready for consultant checking.
• That Jill our consultant will not have any continued problems with new Government regulations and will still be able to check out our work.
• That our Translators and their families will be healthy and that God protects them from the pitfalls of the Adversary.
In Him,
Robert Rees