Download the April 2017 Beans'Talk with photos here.

A warm FATTY greeting!

I grinned as the first three men showed up for the workshop and greeted me. First, I was happy to see them again. That was reason enough to smile. Another reason for smiling was thinking how their greeting translates into English. What is really a wonderful compliment in Quechua literally sounds like: “You’re so fat!” What they mean by that is: “Hey, you look good! You look nice and healthy!” It was good to be together again.

Progress

All of the goals for the workshop were met, including reviewing questions that had come up regarding key terms, handling the 270 outstanding issues Mark had for them, looking at both the thematic and names indices, checking a few new glossary entries, and going over additions to the introduction to the Bibles. We praise God for keeping the team alert, healthy and actively involved. Thank you for praying for all of us during that time.

Brain stretching

During the workshop we all lived together in an empty house. During the evenings the guys learned a new game: Blokus. Like chess, which is still a favorite, Blokus helped them think ahead and stretched them to look at pieces and the board from different angles. Those are good skills for Bible translation!

It would be a bit boring to show the team working in front of computer screens. So, here are a couple of photos of them at lunch break and in the evening stretching their brains and having fun. (Thanks D & L for sharing your games with us.)

The week at the Bible institute

Along with some extras who just sat in, fifteen students took the course about the Bible with Mark the end of February. Mark’s 80-plus page text was ready in three varieties of Quechua for the students from those three areas. Just before the course began we scrambled to make a Spanish version for the four students who couldn’t follow the Quechua. Together the students learned basic facts about the Bible: its inspiration, sufficiency, languages, organization, history, translation, manuscripts, etc.

The Bible institute seemed truly grateful to have the course in Quechua and asked if they could use our materials as a textbook for future courses. We hope our Quechua colleagues will be asked to teach the course. The director also asked if we could return sometime and teach another course.

Still chipping away

Mark has a short list of things to change or check for after working with the translation team. Then, it’s back to chipping away at the daunting list of things to do to get these Bibles ready for publication. As I draft this, Mark is writing a computer program to hunt down stray capital letters in the text. The next big thing is probably finishing putting in cross references for all six versions and then checking them.

Praises and Prayer Requests

*Praise for a good week teaching pastors and church leaders in Quechua at a Bible institute.

*Praise for the good time catching up with Peruvian friends and colleagues.

*Pray for continued sustained attention to detail and stick-to-it-tiveness as we plug away on preparing these six Bibles for publication. This is definitely a big job!

Thank you for so faithfully accompanying us along the way with your prayers and encouragement.

Mark & Patti