The Bean Family

     


Mark and Patti serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators, working among Quechua speakers in the Andes mountains of central Peru.

Recent Blog Posts More

  • Mark & Patti March 2024 Prayer Requests

    The first three Sundays in March we will be speaking at three different supporting churches in Wisconsin. The weeks between include lots of small groups: kids' groups, teens, community Bible studies, and prayer groups. We want to express our thanks for their continued encouragement and support as well as report on what God's doing. Additionally, pray that we might be an encouragement to some of them as well. May God reach out to others through us.

     

    Praises:

    Update re: our grandson Jeremiah. He had a lumbar puncture and biopsy Feb 15th and no cancer cells were detected. The bone marrow transplant was successful!

     

    Update re: our newborn granddaughter. Her one functioning kidney is not in critical condition. The medical team is monitoring her regularly, giving her body a chance to grow before any surgical intervention. Yay, God!

  • Mark & Patti January-February 2024 Beans'talk

    Download a printable version of the January-February 2024 Beans'talk.

     

    Adeline Eden

    How does a newborn have a most perfect head? Well, in our newest granddaughter’s case, on January 15th she was lifted out by C-section rather than take the squishy route most babies take. Adeline Eden is our daughter Emily’s third child; our twelfth grandchild.

     

    We were hoping to have more news about Adeline before sending out a letter. The most recent ultra-sound (while still in utero) seemed to show that one kidney was dying and the other might need some surgical intervention. Next week the specialists will begin to assess both of Adeline’s kidneys. So, you’ll just have to wait with us as we continue to pray and see what happens.

     

    Big news: peed diapers!

    In light of what the medical team thought they saw before Adeline was born, it’s good news that this little girl is peeing. Who thought there’d be such excitement over a wet diaper? And she’s had several wet diapers! Yeah! Something must be working.

     

    Holding down the fort

    Our main job has been caring for Adeline’s two big brothers, Than and Elijah. Here they are “meeting” their new little sister. She may be coming home Friday. This family lives in Australia, so we are in the midst of summer.

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  • Mark & Patti November-December 2023 Beans'talk

    Download a printable version of the November-December 2023 Beans'talk.


    Artificial Intelligence & Bible translation

    Last year, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon reached out for help for one of his PhD students. Her specialty is machine translation using large language models, with an interest in modifying the model to help Bible translation. She was looking for language data and someone who could evaluate her results. That's how Mark entered the picture.

     

    At the end of October, after months of trying different things, Z defended her dissertation and passed. Surely the things she learned will help future translation projects. What a cool example of someone wanting to use their gifts to further the kingdom of God. Hurray for Z!

     

    Field testing a new program

    SIL, our linguistic organization that partners with Wycliffe, is working hard to develop new linguistic software. They have had their Fieldworks Language Explorer, or FLEx, out for some time. FLEx is the current computer tool for people to analyze, document, and better understand the languages they work in.

     

    Now they’re working on FLExTrans for adapting Scripture from one related language to another. This tool has advantages over using the modified large language model approach, but it has some disadvantages, too. It also makes several improvements over the old package of programs, CARLA (Computer Assisted Related Language Adaptation), that Mark used for years while translating in Quechua. Since Mark has experience with related language adaptation, he is taking part in a field test. Helping to improve FLExTrans and understanding how much work it takes to get adequate results will help it be more useful for new teams. Mark also hopes to use it to help one of the teams he is consulting for.

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The Bean Family

Mark and Patti Bean
About


Mark and Patti serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators, working among Quechua speakers in the Andes mountains of central Peru.