Moved By Light

I step off the plane, through Thai immigration, through customs, out the double doors. It’s 1:45 in the morning. Last flat on back time was 34 hours ago.

Somewhere outside stands a man holding a sign with my name on it. Before I can see him, the humidity hits me, thick as Malt-O-Meal. It feels like one huge sigh out here. My deoderant started to fail somewhere over Nevada. Now it completely chokes and dies.

My glasses fog. But there’s the man with the sign.

Next week Brian and I both leave for Thailand. I did myself a favor and packed early this time. Now I'm just praying nothing breaks around the house for the next three weeks. We go to teach translators how to translate, check, and publish Bibles. That's not quite accurate: we go to teach the people who teach teams how to translate, check, and publish Bibles. I'm excited. I get to spend two weeks with some of the most dedicated and enthusiastic people I know. And I get to meet some more.

These past couple days my mind is in Africa, swirling around Swahili. Thirty million people use Swahili as an official language. I'm not one of them. Did you know a Swahili syllable can't end with a consonant? Id didn't either. And it's breaking one of the computer programs I'm responsible for. Today I feel like a dumb programmer and wonder if I should have been a mechanic or something instead. Ah well...hand to the plow, child, hand to the plow...

“Be salt in the world at your doorstep…and across the sea,” a pastor once challenged me.

So I try. But it’s easy to ignore one or the other. Or both.

One thing I do on my doorstep is play chess. I don’t really play on my doorstep—not usually—but I teach a chess club at our grade school.

God seems to be guiding me into the role of teacher and a toolmaker. I probably won’t get to do a new translation; I just get to “sharpen quills and make parchment,” so to speak, for those that do.

One of my ongoing tasks it to improve a tool that spell checks languages without a dictionary. It also helps hyphenate them.

I don’t always get to hear about people using these tools, but after the conference in Bangkok, there is a lot of request in using SpellingTool to prepare Bibles for Khmer, Nepali, and several languages of Burma.

Brian just got back from there, so I need to hear more

Dear Friends,

I love this work! Wish you could come with me!

All around the world, common people make Bibles. Why? Because they want to be disciples, and they want to grow disciples.

And it’s such a Spirit thing. You can’t point to a center. You can’t point to one place. You can name people, but you can’t find a chief. It’s a ferment, it’s like Jesus said:

This last month I’ve devoted to training four guys in Asia.

Twice a week, at 5:30am my time, 5:30pm (or so) theirs, we meet. We pray. We catch up, then we get to work.

I wish I could share their names, but I never now if that will jeopardize their work. I wish you could come with me and visit them —a little whirlwind tour of Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

They’ve worked hard. They’ve had one month to cover a semester’s worth of material. They’ve had translation work to keep up with. And families.

God has been speaking to me lately about how the approval and disapproval of others means to me.

In short, I think I hear God saying, “Yes, I want you to learn to live in harmony with others. Yes, it feels good when people appreciate what you’re doing. Yes it’s nice when people urge you on.

“But I need servants that aren’t addicted to approval. I need disciples that aren’t easily manipulated by opinion. I need you to be part of community, but strong enough to act—and keep acting—by faith.

“I can teach you those things…but only by sending times that test your resolve and break you

Leaking the courage God already gave you.

See also: Where you’re at when…

• You disappoint yourself
• You dream of quitting
• You quit dreaming

• You forgot God’s faithfulness. Again.

So many bad reasons for doing good work, but each one a way for faith to grow…

This morning I teach translating skills to four people.

The topic: a computer language called Python that we use extensively for checking and cleaning translations.

The place: China, Indonesia, Vietnam.

That’s why I wince a little when people ask me where I work. I ate breakfast in Michican and sat down at my desk. But my service today is to translations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Later today I will work on a tool used mostly by our African translating teams.

Where do I work?