Apal Bible Dedication Trip: July 9 – August 15, 2023
I’m still fundraising! Your contribution will help me assist with the Bible dedication for the Apal people (a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!!) and “finish my time” in Papua New Guinea (PNG).
If you do not currently support me, or have yet to join my team, now would be a wonderful time to start! If you do support me, please consider raising your monthly donation or sending an additional one-time donation. All gifts, big and small are appreciated and tax deductible! Click here to give.
I am using an app called “Signal” to send short periodic prayer requests for this trip. Please sign up and/or “join my group” here.
Some people have asked me, “Sharon, do I have to be a translator to serve with Pioneer Bible Translators – overseas (or anywhere)?
I am not a translator or a literacy specialist, but God used me in Papua New Guinea. I did not go there with one special talent to do a particular position. The Lord used me in several different areas like finance (which is what took me to PNG in the first place).
One of my favorite responsibilities was to be a buyer/shipper for missionaries out in the bush (meaning those missionaries who live incarnate in jungles where they are translating the Bible, doing daily life with their people group). Being a buyer/shipper means that I receive their list of items, go to various stores until I can find everything on the list, or whatever is closest to what they want, then I go back to the office to package it. If the supplies will be transported via helicopter, just putting it all in boxes is pretty much what that entails – and then coordinating with the flight schedules.
To be Martha’s buyer/shipper was a little more detailed. Her cargo traveled many (many!) hours up river to get to her house. We would take, for instance, the Maggi noodles (like packages of ramen noodles) out of the box, put them in a garbage bag, seal it as well as possible. Then put it back in the original box, and seal it in another garbage bag – then “shrink-wrap” it all over with river wrap to keep the contents dry in case it goes overboard, or it rains. A lot of Martha’s supply runs involved many kilos of rice. They had to be sealed as well as possible to make sure the rice made it in good condition. Imagine if that got wet, yuck, right?!
Another responsibility that I really liked was being the Admin Assistant to the Director of Support Services!
But truth be told, my favorite part of what I did was build relationships with the Papua New Guineans and surrounding businesses. I also deeply love the baby ministry that the Lord created in 2014; the Baby JJ Ministry – which is still up and running today, thanks to wonderful ladies who sew, crochet, and quilt – and send blankets to be distributed. It is a beautiful ministry! I have 37# of baby items for this trip!
There were many different things that the Lord had me do while there… here is a fun picture! We had to give our dogs monthly shots – I am filling a syringe with medicine.
BUT!!! If you are feeling led to check into being a Bible translator, here are a couple of stories from translation projects that Martha has overseen:
Martha Story #1: “Did God rescue Israel from Egypt one time or every year?”
Jeffrey, Martha’s head translator asked “Did God rescue Israel from Egypt one time or every year?” as we were looking at Mat 27.15. In the NIV this verse reads as follows, “Now it was the governor’s custom at the Feast to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd.” The Feast, of course, was the Passover which we translate as “God left (passed over/allowed to live) the Israel ones and they were good.” Long ago we had shifted from the historic past habitually tense/aspect to the historic past tense to focus on the fact that the destroying angel only passed over the Israelites one time when the first born of the Egyptians died, but the first born of the Israelites lived. I looked at the translation again and the first sentence literally said, “They habitually heard for [thought about] the fact that on one one year [every year] God left (passed over) the Israel root [clan] ones and they were good. To me it looked fine, but because the temporal clause with “every year” had been placed at the beginning of the sentence, it was being interpreted as God was rescuing Israel every year rather than the fact that Israel was celebrating the Passover every year. That, of course, was an incorrect interpretation. Thankfully Jeffrey fixed the passage quickly by just moving the “every year” phrase to a different part of the sentence so that it would not be misunderstood.
Martha Story #2: “Lasso?”
“What does this say that they will do to the city in 2 Sam 17:13?” I asked one of the East Africa translation teams. After looking at their translation of the verse, I was told that it sounded like they lassoed the city with one big rope and then pulled the entire city into the valley. We all agree that the statement in 2 Sam 17:13 may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but I personally thought that lassoing a city was a bit too much of an exaggeration. Thankfully, my older brother knows how to find archaeological pictures for me and so I pulled up the archaeological picture he had sent of Assyrians destroying a fort. There were no ropes in the picture he sent, but the picture was clear enough that the East Africa translation team realize that they were talking about the actual destruction of the wall of the town and so they revised the verse to make that clear. In this case, seeing a picture made all the difference in the world to the team. It was also helpful that I could ask one of the other language groups to read their translation of the verse and since the languages are related, the team got some ideas about how to translate the verse using ropes to drag the stones of the wall of the city off to a valley.
Martha Story #3: “A stone hidden in the middle of the crown?”
When I heard the back-translation of the 2 Sam 12:30a, I was a little bit dubious. In the NRSV it says, “He took the crown of Milcom from his head; the weight of it was a talent of gold, and in it was a precious stone; and it was placed on David’s head.” I asked them where the precious stone was and they answered, “Oh, it is in the middle of the crown hidden away where it can’t be seen.” As it turned out, this was a verse that several of the teams had to correct because all the American advisors knew how a jewel is set “in” a crown, but that information was not understood by the East African translators. There were several other issues with that verse, but finally the jewel was being openly displaced and not being hidden inside the center of the crown/hat in all three languages.
Translation checking can be tedious as much time is spent checking every little detail for the correct person/number/tense of verbs in a passage, but inevitably, even in translations that are well done, I find myself thinking, “Did I really just hear what I thought I heard.” Many times, it is just the national translator struggling with English, but sometimes, we find these interesting translation “bloopers” that give me an opportunity to encourage the translators by sharing that even in the project I work with in Papua New Guinea, we sometimes have similar “bloopers”. That is why I pray every day that God will show what needs to be corrected. [Martha]
Prayer Requests:
Apal prayers from Martha:
God, we pray for Jekop Sam, main teacher of the leadership training courses, and his wife Esta. While they were away at an area meeting of some of the churches, their beautiful metal roofed house here at Angguna burned down in the middle of the night with all of their possessions. We praise you that their daughter and grandsons were staying with someone else when it happened and that they have been helped by the churches with basic living items. Father, we pray that you will use this bad event for your glory in a way that we cannot even imagine at this time.
God, we’re asking that 200 copies of the Apal Scriptures would be sold before the dedication on 1 August 2023 (63 sold thus far). We praise you that the first set of boxes of Scriptures sent in February finally arrived at Angguna when Jekop brought them to the village by canoe.
Here is a Pioneer Bible Translators video from a person who was called to the field. She explains what she does and how it helps the translators accomplish what the Lord has put on their hearts to do.
Next week I will share about Angguna village!
You get a bonus video this week! In this video Martha explains a translation consultant’s work – and the need for more… just in case God is speaking to your heart to look into it further.
