Panama News

Chaz will be accompanying an Embera church delegation in order to give a linguist’s perspective on the alphabet issue. Some possible activities may include Bible teaching, literacy instruction, reading practice, all with the end of strengthening ties with the community. They don’t know if any activities are actually scheduled or exactly what format to expect. Please pray for the Lord’s guidance, safety and good health. Chaz seems to be starting a sinus infection (courtesy of his loving wife). Please also pray that they can be a strong encouragement to a single Panamanian missionary who is working out there alone in church planting.

They will be traveling tomorrow (Monday) to the area that is circled on the map above.

Chaz recently returned from a brief trip to Michigan for a Mortensen family reunion. Someone unearthed this and passed it on to him. We are starting to feel old as we contemplate this c. 1988 photo.  Are there many of you reading this who remember receiving this card?

On August 2, Chaz, Doug, Cornelio, Abundio and Wendy (a New Tribes Mission literacy specialist) went up the Chagres River to Parara Puru (see red arrow in map above), an Embera community with a high interest in reading. They spent the day conducting a “transition literacy” workshop. “Transition” means helping the people transfer their knowledge of reading in Spanish to reading in Embera. Read the rest of this entry »

Danny returned home safely from Peru last week, glad for the adventures he had and the opportunities for ministry. Soon we will post his report and more pictures.

The youth group flew into Guayaquil, Ecuador, then took an 11-hour bus ride to Mancora, Peru. See the upper left quadrant of the map.

Here’s an excerpt from our latest email update from Peru:

“They had another good day of ministry yesterday. Christian and Gerardo did a great job speaking, although Gerardo was a little sick. He is feeling better now. Today there were 55 kids. They were excited about that.

“This afternoon they continued with the youth and more kids showed up there too. They are doing a mini-Crossfire type program [Crossfire is the name of the youth group at our local church]. Danny and Lina shared their testimonies. Then our youth taught them two Crossfire songs and the local kids taught ours two of their songs…. Tonight Mark will teach on 1 Corinthians 10:31-33.

“Prayer requests:
Thursday Alejandro & Andrea will teach on love - sportsmanship and teamwork.
Mark is almost back to normal. Thanks for your prayers.
That God would speak through our kids and to our kids as they interact with the people in town.”

We’re posting some new video clips.

Here is Luke 14:31-33 being read by Fle during team checking.

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Here is the team discussing Luke 14, during the second week of team checking.

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Here is our most recent chart showing the status of all New Testament books in Northern Embera.  Read the rest of this entry »

The second week went smoothly, despite the continued lack of washing appliances and some minor health complaints.  The laundry and (at the end) all the linens were washed at our house and the weather cooperated by sending mostly sun to dry things quickly.  Health issues were remedied with OTC medications.  Our car was fixed with a fairly simple answer - replacing a leaky radiator hose.   Doug and all the Emberas left on Friday afternoon and Sunday evening we were at the house with Marion and Jim Miller to welcome back the Betancurs, the host family who’d lent us their house while they were gone.  Read the rest of this entry »

“As soon as you see a cloud coming up in the west, you say ‘It’s going to rain’, and it does. When the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to get hot,’ and it does.” –Luke 12:54-55 (CEV)

When we were checking the Embera draft of Luke 12:54-55, we ran into some weather problems. In these verses Jesus is commenting on the typical weather patterns in Israel: a west wind from the Mediterranean Sea brings rain clouds and the south wind off the Sinai and Arabian deserts brings heat.

The weather patterns in Embera territory are the opposite: rain comes from the east and when it’s hot and dry, the winds come out of the north. To complicate the matter, Emberas don’t give directions using the four points of the compass. You can translate ‘east’ as “where the sun appears” and ‘west’ as “where the sun falls”, but there is nothing for ‘north’ or ’south’. People usually use directional words like upriver, downriver, in the headwaters, across the river, inland, beyond X, this side of Y, near Z, and so on.

In solving this translation problem we cannot alter the meaning. This means that in tailoring the translation for the Emberas we cannot have Jesus saying that the rain in Israel comes from the east or the hot wind comes from the north. However, we do not have to use the four points of the compass to describe the weather; it confuses the Emberas, anyway, because their weather is the opposite. Suddenly we got an idea. Instead of “where the sun falls” for ‘west’, we decided to use “on the side of the sea.” Since the Mediterranean is to the west of Israel, that is a legitimate way to translate ‘west’. For ’south’ in Embera we decided to try “on the side of the land”, which describes what is immediately south of Israel. It also implies the direction away from the sea.

The Embera working with us last week liked the solution. Here is what the Embera draft sounds like in English:

“When you see clouds on the side of the sea, you say ‘rain will come’. Just like this, the rain comes. When the wind blows from the side of the land, you say ‘it will be very hot’. Just like this it really happens.”

Here’s a link to a YouTube video of the team discussing II Corinthians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhbFZcyZYUc

If you are anything like me, you like the Gospel of John the best because it is the easiest to understand. However, in our time checking this Gospel with a team of Embera Christians, we stumbled upon a number of misconceptions which had them confused.

One man, who had participated in the check of Luke, recognized the words in John 1:15 as those of John the Baptist. I said, “Yes, you’re right.”
Then the man concluded that the “John” mentioned in verse 6 was also John the Baptist. Then he said, “So John the Baptist wrote this book? I always thought John the disciple wrote it!”
I said, “No, John the Baptist dies before the book ends. He couldn’t have written it. The John who wrote this book never calls himself by his own name.”
An eye-opener for an earnest Christian trying to understand the Bible. Were you confused by this, too?

In John 8:41, Jesus accuses the unbelieving Jews of doing like their father does. These Jews respond, protesting that they are not illegitimate children. We had used the expression, “We were not born by an adulterous woman!” However, in discussing the passage, the Emberas said that particular expression did not communicate that the children were fatherless or stigmatized in any way. One man said, “If you really want to say they are fatherless and people look down on them, you have to say ‘We were not born by a single woman!’ ”
That’s why we check the draft!

The phrase “living stones” in 1 Peter chapter 2 is a translation problem in Embera because a live rock is one you can’t break. It’s too hard!

Here’s a short movie of the Emberas in Parara Puru enjoying the reading materials:

Go here

Last week all four of us accompanied a group of children from our local church up the Chagres River to an Embera community called Parara Puru. The church kids have gone before to minister to the Embera kids and today they did the same - games, singing, sharing food, Bible stories, personal time of sharing the Gospel. Chaz had brought along a stack of provisional editions of Matthew and Paul’s letters and also samples of beginning reading materials in Embera. See sample: Read the rest of this entry »

About six weeks ago, Sonia, one of the students at the nearby Youth With a Mission training center, was leaving for an Embera village to do a month-long ministry practicum. I happened to have five copies of our latest provisional Scripture book in Embera, so I gave them to her to distribute in the village. I didn’t have very high hopes because this village’s church does everything in Spanish, some of the children don’t even speak Embera, and we haven’t had enough time to teach much reading in Embera (many can read in Spanish).

Last Sunday we saw Sonia at church and asked her how her time had gone. She said she had given away the books. A number of people were making an effort to read them. One day as Sonia was approaching a house she could hear one man was reading from Matthew and explaining it to his kids. To top it off, people said the translation was “perfect.” Emberas do not normally give compliments like that.

“Even now the harvest workers are receiving their reward by gathering a harvest that brings eternal life. Then everyone who planted the seed and everyone who harvests the crop will celebrate together. So the saying proves true: ‘Some plant the seed and others harvest the crop’.”  —John 4:36-37 CEV

When Cornelio and I were checking this passage some weeks ago, Cornelio said it sounded OK but he wasn’t sure why Jesus was saying it. The order in which the information is presented doesn’t help in making the Embera draft any clearer. Often when we have trouble drafting or revising a passage we talk first about what it’s supposed to mean. After a couple of failed attempts in explaining it, I finally asked Cornelio,
“When you first believed God’s word when you were a kid, who taught it to you?”
“Brother Gregorio and Brother Beltran,” he said.
“When you left the church,” I continued, “do you think they were sad?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Cornelio said.
“Now when you decided to come back, who taught you then?”
“You, Doug, Luis, Jamie…”
“When Gregorio and Beltran found out about this, do you think they were happy?”
“Yeah, sure they were.”
“So now all of us are happy, aren’t we?” I fought back the tears.
“Yeah.”
“That’s what this passage is talking about.”

What’s NOT on the schedule for June? Our consultant, Marion Miller, will be arriving June 1 along with her husband, Jim. While Jim helps out a translation team working in another language, Marion will be checking the first 10 chapters of the Gospel of Luke with us.

Part of the time Marion is in Panama she will be working with the translation team that works in the Naso language. I was asked to get training as a consultant by checking the Gospel of John with this team. This is the first time I have done real checking in the consultant’s role. I am pretty nervous about working face-to-face with them. That will be the week of June 11-15. Marion will be assisting me.

The last full week of June Doug and I will be meeting along with a few Emberas to do more reading of our draft of Luke. We have done more checking of it lately so the group read-through goes faster.

Thank you for your prayers and financial support!

The month of May is busy for everyone with end-of-the-year school functions and so on. For one example, the first weekend of the month Danny performed in a school play, took the SAT the next morning, and sang in a talent show his youth group put on that night to raise funds for their summer mission trip (see post below). It was also Missions Month in one of the churches we participate in, and we participated A LOT! One thing we did as a family was to take the children’s group from the church to an Embera village for a day of fun and interacting with the children there.

Bienvenido has recently completed drafting the book of Acts. That is another milestone and we are grateful for his hard work and his willing spirit to devote so much time to this work. He is a great asset to the translation project.  See his picture below.

Cornelio, an Embera we mentioned in an earlier post, came to help during two different weeks on the second revision of the Gospel of John. We finally finished last Thursday and he is beginning the back-translation in Spanish for our consultant.

In a post from December we mentioned PAAM. A meeting is being held May 28 to formalize PAAM as an official government-recognized organization. Representatives from denominations, independent churches and other organizations will be present in order to commit to being member organizations of PAAM. We will elect board members as well.

In April our N. Embera translation team met with one of our consultants, Bill Bivin, to finish a second check on Genesis. Since Genesis was the first book I did, it has had to be revised a lot, and so we felt a second consultant checking it would be worthwhile. It is approved for publication pending a group read-through of the whole book. We also checked 1 Corinthians with Bill and he has approved that as well. My partner Doug is using provisional copies of 1 Corinthians to test a couple of changes in the alphabet, which we agreed to try in 2005. Pray for clear direction in that.
Once Bill left we used the rest of time to read through more of our draft of Luke and got as far as 11:13. That material has now been prepared for our other consultant, Marion Miller, and she has already sent me her comments on those chapters. We will discuss them as a group when she comes to Panama in June.

Dear friends,

The youth group at our church here in Panama City is going on a mission trip this summer to Peru. Danny will be a part of this mission trip. They will be doing a vacation Bible school, concerts, sports clinics, medical help and any physical labor that is needed. We have posted a video of the youth pastor explaining the trip:

Go here

The entire youth group put on a talent show two weeks ago to raise money for the trip. Here is Danny’s solo/duet, accompanied by Jeff Penn, one of the youth leaders who will be going on the trip also.   (note - the lighting was very poor and the video was digitally lightened, then compressed to upload to YouTube.  This is to explain the inferior quality of the video as well as the audio.  But it still gives you a good idea of how it sounded).
Go here

The youth still need to raise more money for their trip. If you’d like to help out with this, please let us know so we can tell you how.

The newest provisional edition of Matthew, along with other epistles (see blog entry below), is being distributed in Panama and beyond.

-Darien province of Panama: Chaz sent a copy out with Chad, the missionary who is in charge of broadcasting at least once a day a short radio program of Embera Scripture, read aloud by Enrique Chango, an Embera Christian who works occasionally with Chaz and Doug.

Read the rest of this entry »