Moved By Light

It’s wierder than pizza for breakfast, but I’m really growing fond of Thai breakfast:

It’s soup, basically rice boiled in a watery broth with a few pieces of shrimp or chicken.

Fairly bland…until you hit the condiment bowls.

First, add three spoonfuls of roasted garlic. Then two of ginger, one of some dried vegetable pieces I can’t identify, then a few spoonfuls of chopped green onions.

Next: salt. Lot of salt. I’ll sweat it all off by noon.

Stir it up.

My friend, Steve Pattemore, who worked for years with Urak Lawoi’, shared this amazing story with us. A must read:

Stranger Blessing

Matt 5.1-11

1 When Jesusa saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

Today I worshiped with the Urak Lawoi’, “People of The Sea.” This old Thai tribe has been pushed off its land and walled off from their livelihood, the sea. A rich Thai landowner tricked them of their property rights. Even still, the wall by the sea is illegal.

We taught them Siyahamba in their own language. It goes like this:

“Kita jalat de’ saya na’ Tuhat.”

And it means, “We are walking in the light of God.”

It’s a Zulu song of faith and resistance we sing in my own church, Trinity Reformed.

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.

Well, I am excited too about the trip to Thailand, but will be getting there via the Netherlands on KLM. An event like this will draw people from around the world. The list of countries represented includes…. Australia and New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, Nepal, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Benin, Gambia, Kenya, Netherlands, UK, Russia, Canada, USA, Bolivia. It will be great to work together these weeks. Progress will impact translation around the world.

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.

Today I finished an important project. An experienced translator worked on a book that helps other “spanish speaking” translators better understand problems encountered in the process. This 200 page volume only covers issues found in the book of Ephesians. Words, phrases, and discourse that impact a translation are explained with possible solutions offered. More of these are planned to cover other books of the Bible, but it takes quite a bit of time and money for each volume, as well as a translator who understands the comlexities found in the text.

This is an example of the text from Ephesians 1.13 …

In November I was able to make many new friends while helping with a Bible publishing workshop. I was there to help with training, but also found myself learning a lot. Tam from Vietnam and Chitra from Nepal taught me much about non-roman scripts. Translations that were finished are now ready for publication.