Download the PDF of the May 2014 Beans'talk here.

Why was Paul in the basket?

This past workshop a funny example came up illustrating again differences between the Quechua spoken among the five groups we are translating for.

Quechua sometimes requires an explicitly stated reason or purpose. You can’t leave it unsaid. So, in Acts 9:25 when Paul is in a large basket and lowered down, the Quechua adds one word that means “in order to escape.”

When the team revising Acts 9 came to that verse, a couple of the guys burst out laughing as someone read their version with the added word: qeshpinanpaq. For two of the lan-guages, that would mean that Paul got into a large basket and was lowered down the wall in order to give birth!

Offering basket

At a typical church service, all kinds of things are used to collect the offering. Hats? Defi-nitely. Baskets? Not really around here. But even without a basket, we have some neat news about an offering.

A prominent denomination here started pro-moting missions education at the national level. One of our former co-translators, Wil-mer, is the sub-regional director for the de-nomination. He jumped at the opportunity to get missions classes started in local churches.

When the class at one church got to the sec-tion in the course about the importance of Bible translation, they learned about transla-tion going on right in their neighborhood! They took up a love offering for our project. Here Pastor Venancio just gave Mark an enve-lope heavy with small coins that total the equivalent of nearly $25.00. That is a big deal!

More blessings

At the same time that Wilmer brought Pastor Venancio to meet us, he also brought bags of groceries donated by the denomination’s local headquarters. Some of the crackers, cakes, cookies, tea, sugar, coffee, milk, etc. provided our morning coffee breaks. Some will be used next workshop. It’s great to see this expression of local support.

Explaining the raven

Ravens do not live in South America. A type of blackbird, however, does. Back when translating the story of Noah letting out the raven from the ark, the team worked on a footnote that would explain what a raven is. Mark suggested saying that a raven is “like a big blackbird.”

One of them piped up, “You can’t say that! There are no big blackbirds!” “Now what?” thought Mark. Then he rephrased his com-ment and said, “It’s like a blackbird, but it is bigger.” “Oh! Ok!” Word order makes a big difference!

Praises and Prayer Requests

• Praise: for a good workshop and steady forward progress. Praise for the expressions of local support.
• Pray: After putting it off for a long time, Mark is re-working the dictionary files for the five lan-guages to more accurately check spelling and to be able to change from one spelling system to another. He is writing a computer program to generate all the forms he needs. He enjoys writing programs, but it is much more complicated than he envisioned. Pray him to the end.
• Pray: Patti has been asked to teach twice in May at our neighborhood Spanish church. May 2nd the topic is women as wives, and May 16th it is women as mothers. Pray for clear presentations that encourage women with practical application and reasons to draw near to Christ.

Blessings!  

Mark & Patti