The Holy Scriptures in Swo

At long last, the Word of God is being recorded in Swo. Lounga-Nang is excited by the experience of seeing Genesis 1:1-2:3 in his language. He will be taking around Yaounde with him tomorrow to show it to other speakers of Swo. Here is the first page of the sacred text. If you need more, ask.

Reading through Genesis in Nzime

Praise the Lord! The two leaders of the Nzime church we hoped to work with are now in Yaounde and we have finished 3 Days of reading and processing GENESIS! We have read and revised chapters 1-43, making lots of decisions about to say about some matters that are new to us, which do not occur in the New Testament (©The Bible League, 1998). I have finished the adaptation of the (checked) text of Genesis from Badwe'e to Nzime. The complete document will now be sent to the translation review committee when ready for them to read and check. These two church-leaders just said that what they need most next are the Psalms, and they want them ALL!

Parsing Genesis

In trying to get a high quality publishable text for Genesis in Badwe'e, Mary and I have been using a nifty program called Fieldworks Language Explorer. Produced by SIL programmers, it is now going into its seventh version. What we are doing with this program is called "parsing", which means analyzing every word in Genesis, to see that its spelling and meaning conform to a dictionary that we have been building up. This program is also helping us to prepare a document that can be adapted into other languages. At the same time, we are making a French back-translation that gives a reader of French a global view of the text and allows us to spot any parts of the message that might be missing. Here in Cameroon we receive help from our computer department in making good use of this program. Jenni Beadle and Matthew Lee are available to help us with this resource and teach us aspects of the program that are difficult. Please pray for these programmers and software trainers who "speak fluent Geek", as Matthew describes it, so that we can translate the Scriptures better into Badwe'e and other languages.

What Happens Next? The Adaptation of Genesis

We have helped the Badwe'e translators complete and test a translation of Genesis, and on Sept 20 it was finally checked and approved for publication. The exegetical consultant for this task was Patricia Wilkendorf, who says she never has enjoyed a checking assignment so much. The text will next be adapted into Nzime, where the Christian community is eagerly awaiting it. The interchurch committee has picked two community leaders for this task: Rev. Ernest Njyelo, a Presbyterian pastor, and Jean-Marie Koonzo', a lay leader in the Roman Catholic Church. Keith will support the adaptation process. Pray for us that this process of adaptation which will produce a first draft will go smoothly. The dates for this work are Sept. 28 to Oct. 2. It will be at the SIL center in Yaounde. We are using Adapt It, a program developed and supported by SIL. It is in use world-wide, and it has proven its worth many places, assisting bilinguals to produce first-drafts of a high quality from documents in related languages. Badwe'e is related to Nzime, and this makes Nzime a good candidate for receiving an adapted form of Genesis. When Genesis is adapted into Nzime, the texts in Nzime and Badwe'e will then be published at our expense and distributed among these two people-groups at a small fraction of the true cost. (They are economically very disadvantaged.)

GENESIS in Badwe'e: Checked and Ready for Publication

Patricia Wilkendorf has checked the Badwe'e translation of GENESIS. The work is now ready for the first of an unknown number of adaptations into related, Bantu languages. Everyone wants to preach and hear the Word of God about the great beginnings of the cosmos and of God's redeemed community.

Genesis being translated in Nzime

Francois MEDJO, the promoter of Scriptures in the Nzime area, has sent me the first eight chapters of Genesis to revise and comment on. These are in the Nzime dialect and represent the work of laymen and pastors. He sent them by attaching them to emails.
We are very grateful that the work of Bible translation can go forward through the wonders of the Internet.
The way we interact is by using the "tracking changes" feature of Word.
We are grateful to Microsoft for its contribution to this life-transforming task.

Publishing goals

This past Thursday we printed 25 copies of Badwe'e GENESIS for reviewers to study. The publisher of this document is CABTAL. They are one of the many members of Wycliffe Bible Translators International.
Another publication in circulation recently is the oral version of the KANDE Story. This is distributed by means of the "Sabre" player.
Soon we will begin printing a collection of works written by new Nzime authors that Francois Medjo trained last week in Lomié. A fund internal to SIL-Cameroon Branch is extending to them the needed money for publication.
We also have funding for the Nzime transition primer, used among Nzimes literate in French. That should go to press in August.
We are still hoping to find sponsors for the following books:

• The Badwe'e transition primer (for Badwe'es literate in French already)
• 300 copies of the Nzime "KANDE Story", which teaches the facts of AIDS and the way communities can survive it.)
• 300 copies of the Badwe'e "KANDE Story".

Inclusio in Genesis 1:1 to 2:4a

The analysis to the left was what I presented in my lecture today, although I don't claim that it is original. My best recollection is that I heard it from Dr. John Stek, who died last month. He taught me the principles of text analysis at Calvin Theological Seminary, in Grand Rapids Michigan. I had the privilege of studying there in 1984-85 and 1990-91. It might have been someone else, however. It certainly makes sense of the passage. The point is not the creation of man but the creation of holy time in a good creation. God rests and we celebrate His mighty acts of creation and redemption.

First week of the Translation Consultants' Seminar

The first week is over. Everything is going well, it would appear. I have contributed a devotional on Monday and lectures on Wednesday and Friday.

The devotional was on "The Promise of God is fulfilled as Its True Heir is Saved from Submission to Worldly and Demonic Forces" (Gen 31:22-34: 31) You can read the outline at the left if you click on the image.

See for yourselves if you can agree with me that when God blessed Jacob at the Jabok River, there was a decisive turning-point in the story. I see the meeting of Jacob with Esau as being anticlimactic after Jacob has received his new name and fresh blessing from God. Surely no false pretender to the promises of God could defeat God's declared plan to bless Jacob.

Prayer Letter from June 2009

This is one of the new styles for prayer letters that Wycliffe Bible Translators created and advocates.