Tomasi has passed away

Tomasi Kaitogega was probably my best friend in the village of Nubogeta. We worked together for 30 years on the translation. Tomasi gave his life to this work. He gave up doing a lot of other things to work with me each time I came to Papua New Guinea. He was a very good friend.
I received word from another friend, Benedi, on Dec. 26, 2015 that Tomasi had passed away on Christmas day. In his skype message, Benedi reminded me that Tomasi had told us the week before I left that when I returned to the US, he would die. I thought he was just joking. But he was serious. He had been having mild chest pains. I thought maybe pneumonia, but when I listened to his chest, he was quite clear. He complained of a tooth ache that seemed to be an abscessed tooth. Then the night before I left he had a fever of 105. I thought it might be malaria so treated him for that. The next day he seemed to be a lot better. How he knew he was leaving us, I have no idea. But he is in good hands.

He will be missed both as a friend and a co-translator. I don't think the village people realize who they lost. He had learned so much. When you realize he had never been to school, it's amazing how far he had come.

We know where he is and I will see him again. So we move on to finish what we started back in 1985.

Is our faith just a personal thing?

I'm working on editing the Gumawana version of Revelation and also doing a Bible study on the book at the same time. So I've been getting into a lot of books about Revelation and thinking about it. Just looking at the first few verses the word "testimony" or "testify", which have the same root in the Greek martyr, occur twice. This is where we get our English word "martyr" from. John was to testify or bear witness to what the angel showed him.

In a commentary on Revelation by Brian K. Blount, he states the following about this key word that occurs many times in Revelation:

"In the phrase 'witness of Jesus Christ,' the genitive noun is subjective; when John speaks of the 'witness of,' he means 'the witness proclaimed by.' So the revelation of Jesus as John defines it in this transmission chain is the revelation-the witness-proclaimed by Jesus Christ. In the twenty-first century, martys, the Greek term for 'witness,' means something quite different than it did for John and his hearers and readers. The confusion is contextual. When contemporary interpreters transliterate the Greek letters of martys into their corresponding Roman letters, we see and hear the word martyr. H. Strathmann testifies that for John and his hearers, 'The proper sphere of martyrs is the legal, where it denotes one who can and does speak from personal experience about actions in which he took part and which happened to him, or about persons and relations known to him' (Strathmann, TDNT 4:476). Allison Trites offers corroboration: 'The idea of witness in the Apocalypse is very much a live metaphor and is to be understood in terms of Christians actually bearing witness before Roman courts of law' (72). It is a word of provocative testimony and therefore active engagement, not sacrificial passivity. Martyr language, as John introduces (martyreo, testify, 1:2; martyria, testimony, 1:2, 9; martys, witness, 1:5) and develops it, is language preoccupied not with dying, but declaration."*

*(Brian K. Blount. Revelation: A Commentary (NTL) (New Testament Library) (Kindle Locations 614-621). Kindle Edition.)

As I was thinking about these first few verses of Revelation and what Blount states above, I thought of the people whom I have heard say or write something along the lines of "my religion is personal." The implication being, "I don't talk about this in public," or "It's none of your business what I believe." My question is why is that? Are they embarrassed to testify that Jesus is Lord?  I can't imagine John here in revelation saying something like that or Paul writing such a thing in his letters. The testimony we have is that Jesus is Lord. In its first century context that implied that Caesar was not. Emperor worship was growing throughout the Roman empire. The Christians had to take a stand. It was not a matter of "my faith is personal, so leave me alone." Today we see many Christians in Iraq who can't say such a thing. They are told that they must profess Allah, the Muslim God, is ruler or die. There is no making it a personal matter or hiding it. Each person is either for or against Him. They must testify to Jesus' Lordship and receive death, or deny it and possibly live.

So it seems to be a Western idea that one's religion is something you keep to yourself. This fits the individualistic thinking of Westerners and how they tend to compartmentalize their faith. In other words, their faith is merely a part of their lives. For Paul, John and the rest of the disciples, faith or trust in Jesus was their life. There was no breaking their lives up into parts: political, religious, work, home, etc. I heard a Christian convert from Islam explain that for a Muslim Islam can be displayed as a box. Within the box is the Muslim and his faith. In contrast, the Western Christian's life can be displayed with the same large box, but it represents not Jesus or Christianity, rather it represents his life. Within the larger box of his life is a smaller box that represents his faith. Another box represents his work and another represents his politics. The point being that the Muslim's entire life is subsumed under Islam, but the Westerner's faith is subsumed under his personal life. It's only a part. This means it does not govern his overall life.


Jesus seems to take a very different take on this. He says ""But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). Paul uses the phrase "in Christ" to capture the idea that one's life is wrapped up completely in his relationship with Jesus.

We continue to bear witness today that Jesus is Lord. That means our president is not, and neither is any other human on the planet. Our allegiance is to Him alone.

Nearing the end of a translation

We are nearing the end of the NT. It's hard to believe, really. We decided to work on the Amphletts back in 1984. Thirty years have gone by very fast. I still remember the first time I was left on Nubogeta Island by myself. In late 1984, I along with two other men, Doyle Talman and David Lithgow, took the boat MV Kwadima out to Nubogeta. The plan was to get a house started for us. Doyle and David left after a couple of weeks. As the boat began pulling away, I had this strange feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realized that I did not really know anyone in this village and that I was stuck on this little tiny island (1/2 square mile in area) out in the middle of nowhere. My next thought was that I must be totally and completely crazy to be doing this. After I had quelled the fear in me, I set to work on trying to learn the language and get our house built. Not long after that, Roxanne joined me and we began in earnest to understand Gumawana. And now, 30 years later, there are just two books left to translate back into English for a later consultant check.

The present status of the Gumawana NT is as follows:
Consultant checked and published:  Mark, Acts, Titus, Philemon, 1-3 John, Jude and Revelation.

Consultant checked: Matthew, Luke, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, 2 Thessalonians, and 2 Timothy.

Translated but not checked: John, Romans, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter.

Because I was unable to make a trip to the village earlier this year, I will not be able to consultant check the three books I had planned on doing. So I have had to revise our plans a bit.

Plans for the completion of the Gumawana NT:
2014: Village check  John, 1 Timothy, and Hebrews.

2015: Consultant check John, 1 Timothy, and Hebrews.
          Village check Romans, 1 Thessalonians, 1, 2 Peter

2016: Consultant checkedRomans, 1 Thessalonians, and 1, 2 Peter.
          Village check 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians

2017: Consultant check 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians.
          Edit Genesis, Exodus, Ruth and Jonah

2018-2019: Editing the NT and typesetting and publish.

2020: Dedication of the NT

Village checking is where I take the translated material and test it out with people who did not work on the translation. This tells me if people are able to understand it or not. Verses that are not easily understood or where they seem to give the wrong meaning are edited to make them clearer. When this process is over, I give a translation consultant what we call a "back-translation."  This is where I translate the Gumawana back into fairly literal English. The consultant will use this for the basis of his checking by comparing it to the Greek or Hebrew. Based on the consultant check we will again make revisions. As you can see we depend on speakers of the language to tell us how well the translation communicates clearly.

Continue to pray for us as we go through all this editing that God will give us the eyes to catch places that are not right.

Tomasi

During my most recent trip to Papua New Guinea, I was very impressed with my friend Tomasi. Most people come to the house to ask for something. It might be medicine, to buy kerosene, soap or tin fish, etc. But Tomasi comes to visit.

I've known Tomasi since 1985. My first encounter with him was not a positive one. As I was walking through the village, I first noticed him sitting at the window of his house just starring at me. He didn't smile at all and it rather unnerved me. I even mentioned it to Roxanne to watch out for him. I had not talked to him before, but this is understandable since I was still learning the language and it is rather difficult to have a conversation when I could only say things like "I'm sitting" or "I'm standing"!

I had started a Bible study on Friday nights in which two men Karitoni and Kerebi would come and we would read passages and attempt to talk about them. One Friday night, Tomasi came in and sat down. He didn't say anything as we discussed passages in Acts. In fact, he came every week after that, but never said a word. He would just sit there unsmiling and listening to what we were talking about. He came across as very unfriendly during these times. I would ask questions, but he never answered one. I was using the Dobu version of Acts that had recently been completed. Dobu is the church language in the area and at the time most people could understand it.

This went on for several weeks until one day Tomasi came to me and asked if I would pray for his garden. I was rather surprised at his request considering that he had yet to ever talk to me. I knew people did  magic in their gardens, so I looked at him and said, "No, I can't do that." He had a surprised look on his face and said to me, "Why not?" So I explained to him, "You all do magic on your gardens. If I go and pray for your garden, then you do magic on it afterwards, you will say it was the magic that did it." He thought about that for a minute, then replied, "No, I'm not going to do magic on it if you pray for it." With that answer, I decided to do it.

We went and prayed the next day over his garden. He had all his yams there ready to be planted. So we prayed over them and asked God to protect his garden and make it grow. Later during harvest, he had a great harvest. He knew it was God who had done it.

The reason he wanted to do this was due to the Bible study. He had been reading about what God did in the book of Acts, so he wanted to see if God really did help people.

Since that time Tomasi has grown quite a bit in his understanding of who God is. Tomasi has never been to school. When we started translating he attended a course for translation and began picking up some English. He wanted an NIV study Bible, which I got him years ago. From that time he began studying on a daily basis. As we translated together, he was continuously learning. Each time we would go to the village, we spent many evenings talking about various passages and about God. Through the translation process, I taught him how to do exegesis and how to ask questions of the text. I even gave him colored pencils to mark up his Bible and look for the main ideas the author was trying to get across.

Now nearly 30 years later, he is still studying and learning. But he is also able to discuss theology. This time in the village, he came in the evenings and on the weekends and we spent hours discussing various issues about God and numerous theological issues that he was interested in. As we were going over changes that needed to made to 1 Corinthians, we were looking at the Greek and he asked if he could borrow my book that had the Greek with English glossing below it. He took that and after a few days came back and wanted to know how to read Greek. So I printed out for him the alphabet and how to pronounce each letter. A week later he had memorized it and was sounding words out. He has a long way to go and huge obstacles to overcome in order to learn the language, but he seems intent on doing it. If next November when I go he has made progress, I will give him a Greek New Testament and a grammar to continue learning.

It was great to sit and talk theology together. I continue to marvel that this man has never been to school, yet he knows more about the Bible than many educated people in the church in America. God has used this man to bring the Scriptures into his language. I once told him, that if he became a pastor he would have an affect on the people in his church. But in translating God's word he would have an impact on not only the people living today, but also for many generations to come.

Update on Gumawana translation program

It's been quite awhile since I updated the blog. My apologies.

Today is August 13th. Thirty years ago Roxanne and I were at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, doing our training with the Summer Institute of Linguistics. It was at this time we became members of Wycliffe Bible Translators. What a journey it has been for us as we have worked towards completing a New Testament in the Gumawana language. God has taught us a great deal over the years not only through our colleagues in Papua New Guinea, but also from the people of the Amphlett Islands where we have spent many years learning from the Gumawana speakers there. We thank all of you who have prayed and supported us financially over those years. You have made it possible for this to happen. Thank you for allowing yourselves to be used of God in this way.

Roxanne and I made another trip to Papua New Guinea in March-April. We were gone about 6 weeks. The time there was quite productive. The plan was to complete 2 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Peter. We finished all of these and then did a couple of chapters of Hebews which I had prepared last year. I wished I had had the chance to prepare all of it, because we had the time to complete it. But it was still a very productive time.

This now leaves us with just two books left to complete a rough draft of the New Testament in Gumawana. Those books are Hebrews and Romans. As of today I have already gone through and done my own very rough draft to work from of Hebrews and am already well into Romans.

In November, Lord willing, I will be back in Papua New Guinea for another 5 weeks. This time we want to see the completion of a rough draft of the New Testament. It's hard to believe we are this close.

What we have discovered is that by bringing a couple of men from the village to our regional center in the provincial capital of Alotau, we have been able to move forward much quicker. Once the rough draft is finished, however, I will be returning to the village next year to begin doing the checking of the rest of the NT (about half remains). This all has to be checked in the village and then checked by a consultant. We also still have to go back to the early books and make revisions and do a great deal of editing before the NT will be ready for typesetting and publication. So there may be yet another 3-5 years before it is ready for a dedication in the village.

So that is where we are at the moment. Thank you for being part of the team.

Should Christians celebrate Christmas?

It’s 5:30 am and I can’t sleep because of a discussion I had on an internet forum. There was an article explaining the origins of Christmas and the discussion that ensued was focused on whether or not Christians should celebrate it because of its origins.

I wish when I lay in bed and my mind starts writing a paper or an internet blog, I could just record it straight from my brain to the computer. In my mind not more than a half hour ago, it was crystal clear. But now that I’m at the keyboard typing away, the coherent thoughts I had seem to evaporate.

Now before I proceed any further, let me state clearly that I do know that Jesus was most likely not born on December 25. Is there any Christian in America who doesn’t know this? So I am not doing this out of ignorance of history. I also know the background of the original pagan celebration that took place.

Do I think that we should place more emphasis on Jesus’ birth than on the resurrection? No. The resurrection has and should always be the focal point of Christianity. It is the basis for our faith.

Something I did learn from this discussion was that I would never be any good at debating. To debate a person needs to be able think quick at the spur of the moment. I don’t have that ability. Instead after the discussion my mind begins to focus on the issue and I replay what was said by others and what I said. I mull over in my mind what the other person was really saying and what he meant. Then days later ideas start coming to my mind. But a lot of good that does me! It’s never the same to go back and start up the argument again because by that time the other person has moved on. So why don’t I move on? I don’t know the answer to that question. But the discussion seems to follow me around for days. And then things start to make sense to me.

So what do you all think? Should Christians celebrate Christmas and why? At 5 am this morning I woke up thinking about this question. It had been on my mind for several days already. But now the thoughts were clearer and ideas started coming to my mind. At this point I decided I needed to write down what I was thinking in order to get it out. So first let me give as way of introduction some of the points those who were against Christmas made.

A woman, along with a few others, was making the point that God is not pleased with the celebration of Christmas because it was not ordained by Him in the Bible. Only the feasts/celebrations that are actually in the Bible and given by God should be celebrated. This is what could be called an argument of silence. The fact that God did not put it in the Bible means it is not right.

Second, she claimed that because it is a pagan ritual, we should not take part in it. This, I believe, she holds to because she knew the origin of Christmas.

Third, Christmas, according to her, is a man-made religion – human tradition. Based on Colossians 2:8 the argument is that Paul tells us not to be involved with human traditions.

She had arrived at her understanding “through the Holy Spirit from the Word.” I would never claim that the Holy Spirit does not speak to us through the Bible, but when a person uses this type of argument, there is no way to further the discussion because in her mind, it is a done deal. I had a similar discussion with a man from a cult at my door front when he said “The Holy Ghost put a burning in my bosom, therefore it must be true.” I promptly explained that the Holy Spirit had put a burning in my bosom that what he was teaching was false, so now we are in a quandary as to which information from the Spirit was correct. You see it is fine to say that, but I honestly believe God did not require us to shelve our minds when we came to Christ. I like J. P. Moreland’s book “Love the Lord your God with all your mind.”

If Christmas in America today was a celebration of the sun god, I doubt any believer would take part. But as far as I can see it is not about that and never has been in American culture. It started out this way long before America was even founded. But over time it no longer has anything to do with that. Christmas is not evil. It is neutral. Evil happens when greed becomes the basis for the day or the worship of things, whether it be material goods, Christmas trees or Santa Claus. Take for example the recent black Friday sales where greed drives people to do evil things. Or when a store is selling Michael Jordan tennis shoes and people are not interested in the Savior, but only in whether or not they can get a couple of pieces of leather. Retailers are about making money out of Christmas. That does not mean everyone does the same.

As for the Colossians passage mentioned, it is doubtful that Paul was thinking of things like Christmas. If you are interested in a different take on the origins of Christmas observed by Christians see the following article in Biblical Archaeological Review: http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp. In it the author states that the traditional view of Christians borrowing from pagans may not be true. He states:

 “There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.”

The author’s point is that most likely Christians did not adopt the date of December 25 to correspond with pagan solar festivals and that the date was well established before 312 AD.

Furthermore, some of the feasts given in the OT to the Israelites to observe replaced certain pagan festivals such as the agricultural festivals.

After much arguing and discussion back and forth, I realized that it was a game of semantics. The question, to me as a follower of Jesus Christ, should be framed differently. As believers should we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior on Dec. 25? When we leave it as “celebrate Christmas” confusion ensues. What do we mean by Christmas? For this woman, she filled it in with all the content of several hundred years ago, something which most people wouldn’t even have on their minds today. It seemed that when this woman heard “celebrate Christmas” she was really hearing “celebrate a pagan ritual,” but she never did actually define how she understood it. In my posts I tried to narrowly define what I was doing at Christmas, namely, celebrating the fact that God gave His Son Jesus, the Messiah, to save us. But this woman said God judges not the heart, but the actions.  

I did some reading online and came across one site that made the following statement: “Most people assume that it has always been a Christian holiday and that it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus.” According to this article the origin of Christmas goes all the way back to ancient Babylon and it involved the worship of other gods and specifically Nimrod. It became a celebration of the rebirth of the sun god on December 25^th. Winter solstice occurs just a couple of days before this. So from this point on the days start growing longer. The quote from the article is an interesting statement because in America today, I doubt there is anyone who celebrates Christmas as though it were the celebration of the rebirth of the sun god of Babylon. The whole celebration has been changed over the year. Santa Claus is even a relatively new addition.

So I asked this woman several times if God was not pleased if people worshipped Him on Christmas day and praised Him for sending His Son. In her eyes, yes it was wrong because He did not tell us to set aside a day to celebrate the birth of His Son, so her conclusion is that it is a tradition of man and therefore should not be celebrated.

The whole discussion, after much pondering on my part, sounds very similar to Romans 14. And I am convinced now that first century Christianity had a lot of conflicting beliefs between the Jewish and the Gentile believers. But Paul’s point in the passage is to maintain unity. He asks the weak in faith not to condemn or judge the strong and vice a versa with regard to eating or not eating meat or observing or not observing special days. The main point I believe Paul is making is this. As Christians convinced of what you believe accept your brother and do not condemn him because God is your true master and judge. The problem in the Roman church that he is addressing has to do with eating certain foods and observing certain days. The weak in faith have a problem eating meat that has been offered to idols and sold in the market place. In fact, this believer has come to the point of eating only vegetables, a vegan in today’s terminology. The strong in faith do not have any problem with this. It seems that Paul did not want to make it an ethnic issue since he never mentions the weak and strong as either Jew or Gentile. But notice that Paul does not condemn the vegan or the one who is eating meat offered to idols. Instead he tells each side not to condemn or judge the other.

The parallel here, I believe, fits. There are some believers who have a problem with the origin of Christmas and so do not want to celebrate (read observe) it (just like the origin of the meat which had been offered to idols). Paul would say, that is fine, don’t celebrate it, but don’t judge the one who does. The one who celebrates Christmas should likewise not condemn or judge the one who does not. The purpose is for unity within the body of Christ. Whether one celebrates Christmas or not, does not affect one’s salvation. Paul exhorts the strong to accept the weak and not regard him with contempt (Rom 14:3). He exhorts the weak not to judge the strong in the same verse. The most compelling reason Paul gives for backing off from judging is in v. 6 where he writes, 

“He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.” 

So we can ask the question why do we celebrate or not celebrate Christmas. I celebrate it to the Lord to honor Him and worship Him for sending His Son Jesus Christ. On the other hand, this woman is convinced it is not right and she does not observe the day as to the Lord. So each side should respect the view of the other. But the most important verse in Romans 14 is verse 5. Here Paul states 

“One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.”

So I would argue that each of us as believers need to be convinced of what we believe and why with regard to celebrating Christmas. At the same time we must not hold in contempt others with different views or judge them. Why? Because God is our judge. He is the only one who knows what is in the heart of each person.

But it does grieve me when people combine Santa Claus with God or somehow equate Santa with God and somehow get the two confused. Christmas is a time to honor God sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. Just because He does not tell us to do this in the Bible does not make it wrong. Most believers do this throughout the year on a daily basis. But to condemn believers for worshiping God’s Son and thanking God for sending Him on December 25 is not right since it is trying to stop people from worshiping God.

What grieved me most about this discussion is the disunity among believers that it causes and that dishonors God. Every year unbelievers attack Christianity over celebrating it anywhere in public. That is to be expected. But what is happening now is that even among Christians there is argument as to whether or not it is all right to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on that day. And this, I am certain, grieves God and the Holy Spirit. Disagreement is not the problem, condemnation is.

Finally, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas as you worship our Lord and Savior Jesus the Messiah!

Sept-Oct trip to PNG

This is an update on my last trip to PNG Sept. 18-Oct 27, 2011. It was a very different trip than most and it shows that difficulties can be a good thing sometimes or more accurately, God can use difficulties to His advantage.

Perhaps "difficulties" is not the right word, because that is more the way I might perceive what happened. It was not really a difficulty, rather a mere change of plans and a slight problem to overcome. Nonetheless, we are to use our circumstances to bring honor to God in every way we can. Easier said than done for people like myself who by default will complain and see the worst case scenario. But I had a couple of people around me who were helpful in seeing things from a different perspective and who could see another way of doing things.

As I head to PNG each time, I always wonder when I will actually arrive in Alotau. The reason for this wondering is that somehow or other flights get changed without notification and delays happen nearly every time I go. This time, the only problem was in Sydney where upon my arrival there was a baggage handlers strike. This meant a slight delay in getting from the international terminal to the domestic. But with the help of a very friendly Aussie, I made the connection. In Cairns I retrieved one of my bags which had been trashed, but the customer service was extremely helpful and gave me a new bag. However, at the time I didn't know one of the wheels was damaged making movement difficult. In the end I made it to Alotau by Wednesday afternoon, where our center manage picked me up.

I was feeling very exhausted and mentioned to our manager as we were getting into the van that if the boat were to leave on Friday instead of the next day, I wouldn't mind. His reply was "Concerning the boat, it probably will not be able to leave until Friday anyway because it still has a problem." That couldn't be good. He also mentioned that a boat, the Sonoma, was leaving Wed. night around 7 pm. Would I like to go then? Two concerns came to my mind immediately. The first was how in all this world was I too get all my stuff ready to go in just 3 hours when I was feeling the jet lag? Second, how would I get back to Alotau when I had flights to catch at the end of the 4 weeks? This latter issue was important because commercial boats are  notoriously hard to get out there and are quite unreliable. So my response was a simple "I don't think so." The manager, however, expected that and had an alternative idea. We went to the wharf to see the captain and met up with Kwadima's (our organization's boat) manager. After a short discussion, the idea was presented of sending a written message via the captain of the Sonoma to ask a couple of men from Nubogeta to get on and come to Alotau. We could work at the center until the Kwadima was operational. So I gave the captain a note asking Siyokira and Tomasi to come in on the boat to work. I also talked to another man on our radio the next day at noon to make sure they understood.

Somehow with all the messages that I sent, it still was misunderstood and only Siyokira came in. Try as we might to get Tomasi in, no boat ever came by enabling him to come in.

Siyokira came in on a Sunday evening. Because there was no room for him to stay at our center, we decided that he would stay in town with a relative by the name of Gilbert. He was around 3 1/2 km away. We tried to begin the next day, but it did not start off well because Siyokira stayed up all night and it was obvious he was sick. Around noon I took him back to Gilbert's house, gave him some antibiotics and told him we would not work the next day. We did complete the first 14 verses of Ephesians that first morning.

On Wed (28th of Sept) we again worked. However I had decided it might be better to attempt to complete John rather than starting another book. So to John we turned. Tomasi had already read chapters 12-21 and made corrections last year when I saw him. The group that worked with me last year for some reason worked very slow on it and we made very little progress. When I got sick at the end we lost an entire week to work on the book.

Siyokira had a copy of John and I used my computer. We read through sentence by sentence making corrections and discussing the more difficult verses at length. Normally we have a blackboard where I write it all out. We didn't have this and had to make use of my either printing out a copy (while the printer worked) or writing out a verse and showing it to him. He made lots of changes for the better.

We had to set John aside on Thursday so I could buy all the supplies I needed for the village. It was a big risk because 1) if I didn't go, I couldn't get my money back on any of it and 2) it would be wasting a great deal of the little time I had. Friday we went back to John and made some good progress on it. We continued to work on it Saturday and then again on Monday. By this time it was obvious that I was not going to the village. So to make the best of it Siyokira and I pushed on and finished John Thursday. It took us 7 days to complete chapters 12-20.

This was encouraging. So we went back to Ephesians. Five days later we had a rough draft of Ephesians. I had not planned on getting any further than this. In fact, I really didn't think we would be able to finish Ephesians. I had also prepared 2 Timothy but had intended to give the people copies to read through until we could work on it together. So I had not brought any books with on for 2 Timothy. I figured we might as well try it and see how far we get. Three days later we had a rough draft of 2 Timothy.

At this point in time Siyokira told me he wanted to go home. I couldn't blame him. He had expected to be in Alotau a week with me. His garden had not been cut yet, he had received word that his father-in-law was sick (in another language area) and his wife had gone to see him so he was concerned about his kids as to who was watching over them. Also, he didn't like where he was living for various reasons. So I told him we would begin looking for a boat. But none were to be had. We got word that one was leaving in a few days and he said he could handle it till then. Not that he had a choice in the matter.


I had prepared Colossians several years ago, but had yet worked with anyone to go through it together. So we now turned to Colossians. I wasn't certain how far we would get since a boat could turn up at any time. We decided to work on it and see what happened. We began Saturday afternoon (Oct 15). We found the first couple of chapters were difficult to the extent that I decided to skip them and go to the second half of the book. Then in the evenings I could work through the first couple of chapters again to refresh my memory and to make sense out of them for Siyokira. This worked out well so that we actually finished the book on Wednesday afternoon (Oct 19). The next morning we didn't work so that I could make 10 copies of the four books we had completed. That afternoon we discovered a boat was leaving night. We got all of Siyokira's things and put him on the boat. God couldn't have timed it better!

In the end not being able to go to the village was actually the best thing that could have happened. I could not have planned things better. We have never worked that quickly and well before. It took 18 days to complete the four books. When I told Tomasi on the radio that we had finished 4 books, he made the comment that we should probably work at the center again to try to finish up the NT. So that is what we plan on doing in March when Roxanne and I will be returning to PNG. We hope to translate 1 and 2 Peter and other book, either 2 Corinthians or Hebrews. Thank you for praying for this trip.