Beans'Talk July 2015

Download the PDF of the July 2015 Beans'Talk with photos here.

Pleasant places

Earlier this month Mark turned sixty. How true the words of Psalm 16:6: The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely I have a delightful inheritance. What a gift to have meaningful work that he really enjoys and friends along the way. Wilmer (left) and Walter (right) along with their wives helped Mark celebrate. We were missing Felipe who was in the capital city with Shatu learning about the next step to complete the JESUS movie. We were also missing Leoncio.

Missing Leoncio

Beans'Talk June 2015

Download the PDF of the June 2015 Beans'Talk here.

Waiting

This past week we met a woman who has seen a Bible in a different Quechua than what she speaks. She couldn’t figure it out. She asked: “When can I buy a whole Bible in my language?”

Beyond the green boxes

In order to complete these five Bibles, there is more to do beyond coloring the boxes dark green on the chart. There are currently 1300+ outstanding issues to address. We’ve actually been working on this list, but at the same time, adding new questions. So, there hasn’t been much forward progress.

Beans'Talk May 2015

Download the PDF of the May 2015 Beans'Talk with photos here.

Stormy weather in Isaiah

How many of you learned the saying in school: April showers bring May flowers? Sometimes weather shows up in translation. Isaiah 30:30 speaks of God’s majesty and strength as being like cloudbursts, thunderstorms and hail. Quechua doesn’t refer to these things quite like English. See if you can match the English to the Quechua equivalent:

cloudbursts         egg rain

thunderstorms     crazy rain

hail                    lightning & punching 

(cloudbursts = crazy rain; hail = egg rain. “Punching” refers to thunder in some Quechua varieties.)

Beans'Talk April 2015

Download the April 2015 Beans'Talk with photos here.

A building for the church

The Quechua speaking believers that meet in Pichipampa, just 30 minutes or so outside of Huanuco, dedicated their new church. Mark cut the ribbon and spoke for the occasion, teaching Saturday evening, and again Sunday morning. The rain on the tin roof made it hard to hear him sometimes, but it wasn’t much of a deterrent to the 11-piece band. Imagine the celebration accompanied by the exuberant sounds of four trumpets, three baritones, a saxophone and three drummers (a snare drum, bass drum and a drum set) all within a small building!

The Beans'Talk March 2015

Download the March 2015 Beans'Talk with photos here.

Silly reporters

Mark & I were asked to give a report at our annual retreat last month. We compared our work to a multi-ringed circus and dressed accordingly as clowns. Who wants to hear a boring report! The whole week was a nice break from work.

* * * * * Now, we are three weeks into a four-week translation workshop. Each day we take time to sing, pray together and learn something new. This workshop the team started reading The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.

Wait until she’s dead

The Beans' Talk February 2015

Download the 2015 February Beans'Talk here.

It’s not Valentine’s Day yet, but, by the time our February Beans’talk comes out it will have already passed. So, here’s something to help get you thinking about it.

Valentine lungs

We’ve mentioned before that the Quechua word used as the emotional equivalent of heart is actually the word for a different part of the body. If someone is translating between Spanish and Quechua, shonqu is always used for the Spanish word for heart because that is where the emotions reside. But when you butcher an animal, the shonqu turns out to be the lungs. (The anatomical heart in Quechua is puywan.)

Expressions using “heart” (lungs)

The Beans'Talk January 2015

Download the January 2015 Beans'Talk with photos here.

A weird reindeer?

At the recent translation workshop we introduced marshmallows and toothpick construction for a fun break one afternoon. Some of the guys had never heard of marshmallows before. It was interesting that three teams built animals. This donkey was carrying the box of toothpicks for awhile.

A Gluten?Free Andean Pizza

During workshops we take turns making breakfast. Usually every morning it’s the same thing: a large bowl of porridge, hard boiled eggs and fresh bakery bread. On rare occasions, if Sumer is feeling ambitious, he makes what he calls “pizza” for breakfast. The crust is made of French fries! Besides cheese he adds green fava beans. A US cookbook would probably call it a strata since it is really baked eggs. It’s also interesting that he always serves it with cooked veggies, including more fries!

The Beans'Talk December 2014

Download the December 2014 Bean'sTalk with photos here.

Surprise news

The very first day of this translation workshop, Sumer got an unexpected phone call from home. His wife told him she had given birth to a baby girl. Obviously, they knew they were expecting a baby, but they weren’t expecting anything to happen until December. Sumer turned right around and traveled the 8 hours or so back home on the second day of the workshop. I wish we had a photo of his new baby daughter. She was born on her big sister’s third birthday. This photo is of another baby girl wearing a traditional frilly hat. After a couple weeks, Sumer hopes to come back and join us for the last two weeks of the workshop.

Words—and their emotional impact

Beans'talk November 2014

Download Beans'talk November 2014 with photos here.

One of our co-workers, Leoncio, was away from translation for 6 months teaching high school language arts in various villages. In the evenings, he taught in the local church. Working through the book of 1 Peter, the believers in one village were surprised to learn two truths.

I never knew the Bible said THAT!

Beans'talk October 2014

We're in Huaraz with the translation team. Yesterday we finished the revision of I Corinthians and started 2 Corinthians.  We also finished recording Genesis, making changes for naturalness.

Pray for the backlog of OT books that Mark still needs to check.

Inside: photos, a challenge we face, and an update on Shatu's broken arm.

Thank you for your continued prayers,

Mark & Patti Bean