Tyler and Emily in PNG

March started out with a bang and a quick one week trip to the Mborena Kam language group. The reason of the trip was to field test recorded scripture from Mark and parts of 1 Corinthians.

The middle part of February three men came to town to record the scripture. I was apart of helping Kevin and Jim setup two laptop computers with a new audio recording program that specializes with translation software. My previous post was about this recording opportunity and using the recording software, HearThis for the first time. It took almost two weeks to record all of Mark and 3 chapters of 1 Corinthians. Once the recording was finished it was my job to do minor editing and cleaning up of the wav files in preparation for joining the files into chapters then converting to MP3. Since we were just testing the scripture and not making a finished product the editing was speedy and quick.

A one week trip was organized for Kevin (Scripture Impact co-worker) and myself to go to the village and test the recording. We planned on going to eight different villages within the Mborena Kam language and hold a town hall like meeting with the leaders of the communities. The plan changed to combine two communities for one meeting and go to four villages instead of eight as originally planned. (#1 rule required to be a missionary – be flexible.)

At each community Kevin lead the discussions with questions as the community listened to scripture portions. They would listen to the short parable then answer questions to gauge their understanding. Was the recording natural, was is true Mborena Kam language, were there errors or flaws in the recording, was the parable understood in their dialect. Simply, it was a recording survey of the scripture in a village context.

The results were mixed but the simplest explanation from a community leader was the road has potholes. Meaning, the translation is ok but not perfect. We can understand the translation but there are bumps along the way thus not smooth. A final report was written and passed to the Director. I believe the final agreement between all parties were we need to fix the potholes. This may delay the final product from being published but we want a final product that is natural, smooth, and free of error.

Please continue to pray for the Mborena Kam language group as well as Steven and Denny the two national mother tongue translators. Pray for their health and for stamina to continue the process until completion.