Category Archives: Anthropology

Christmas Depression

Church, Holidays, Personal, Texas Culture, Thoughts, ,

As we approached the Christmas season, I’ve asked various groups to pray for the depressed on a number of occasions. I’ve been aware of the general increase in depression around Christmas for some time. But I hadn’t thought seriously recently about my own struggles in feeling left behind in the joy others seem to feel, especially at this time of year. Which is a serious shame for a Christian, as we are guardians of the greatest hope of Joy this life has to offer.

This week I had a short but substantive list of things to get done before being able to take time off for Christmas, and enjoy the holiday with my family. This morning, Christmas eve, only one item on that list is done, and that not entirely. My kids are enjoying playing a game in the other room, and I’m still working on a project that really should have been done yesterday.  And I’ve abandoned another project that should have been done earlier.

So where do we go from here?  I’m told that maintaining routines is good for putting the breaks on the downward spiral of depression. One of my routines is to read through a Bible reading plan which has portions of psalms, proverbs, other old testament, and new testament each day to cover the Bible in a year. Yesterday’s reading (which I was catching up on today; did I say I was behind on things?) has Psalm 142, which seemed apropos for my mood today (the following is ESV):

1 With my voice I cry out to the Lord;
    with my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord.
2 I pour out my complaint before him;
    I tell my trouble before him.

Another thing I’ve learned about depression, which I believe is absolutely critical for Christians, is that we must express our worst feelings. We often try to bottle them up and deny them, but they only fester and rot inside, until we ultimately burst. At which point things are uglier than if we had just been honest upfront. What’s worse, I think the desire to keep things bottled up comes from a desire to look like we have it all together. Which comes from a mistaken belief that it is even possible to have it together (c.f., Romans 1-3), which amounts to a basic denial of the Gospel. How can we fully rely on the Good News of God’s provision of Jesus for our sin, while at the same time believing (and or pretending) that we have it all together?

When we are tempted to fake holiness until we make it, while feeling like a tomb full of rotting bones, the gospel shows us another way. And this psalm gives us a way that may even work with our cultural sensibilities. If you can’t show up to church without makeup, fine. Don’t tell anyone else your problems, if you can’t bear it, but you must cry out to the Lord. He already knows your troubles anyway, so you’re really just being honest with yourself — which is a good start to emotional health. Ultimately you’ll want to be honest with others, too, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Once we’re committed to crying out to the Lord, what can we say?

3 When my spirit faints within me,
    you know my way!
In the path where I walk
    they have hidden a trap for me.

Once we’re committed to seeing and admitting to what’s going on inside of us, and crying it out to God, it’s amazing what comes out. To have a fainting spirit that you can’t acknowledge is a great burden. As is feeling like there are traps everywhere you walk. If you feel on the verge of death (physically, emotionally, spiritually, or in any other way), this is a good thing to bring to the surface. One particular pain many feel is loneliness:

4 Look to the right and see:
    there is none who takes notice of me;
no refuge remains to me;
    no one cares for my soul.

There is nothing quite like feeling there are two groups of people out there: those that are against you, and those that don’t see you. I mentioned already the downward spiral of depression; I think it is helpful to at least acknowledge at this point that if we are unwilling to share our pain, we should only expect that no one would know it, or us. Beginning to acknowledge and share our pain, loneliness, and depression is the beginning of the path out of loneliness. But in the mean time, even if not one really cares (which rationally thinking, is probably never true of anyone), you can still tell God you feel that way. Even if you can’t communicate your feelings with another human being, you can talk to God. In doing so, we do eventually find that there is Someone who cares for our soul, however much it doesn’t feel like that now. Ultimately we will be able to say with the psalmist:

5 I cry to you, O Lord;
    I say, “You are my refuge,
    my portion in the land of the living.”

I don’t think the psalmist necessarily believes this as he speaks; I find that I often have to speak truth before I feel it is even possibly true. Sure, He doesn’t feel like a refuge, though we know that He is. I have to decide to proclaim what I know to be true in some part of me, even if that part is so small and feeble at the time. We stand with the father’s prayer: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24 ESV) Even if our speech denies that we believe what we’re saying, crying out for help is a necessary part of getting where we want to be. We need a refuge, but feel that there is none. We see the Bible claiming God as our refuge (Psalms 18, 46, 71, 92; Proverbs 14:26, 18:10; Isaiah 25:4; Jeremiah 16:19, inter alia), but we don’t feel it. Cry it out anyway. This is our need, and this is God’s promise. We must cry out and ask for the safety we feel we need.

But sometimes we need more than just a safe place:

6 Attend to my cry,
    for I am brought very low!
Deliver me from my persecutors,
    for they are too strong for me!

Sometimes we feel like we are being actively persecuted. Like it isn’t enough for people to just ignore us; we feel attacked. There is no safe place, because we are pursued by people who hate us, who are stronger than us. The rational part of me knows this is never true; not only has God provided us refuge, He is also stronger than any adversary (c.f., Rom 8:31-39). But while it doesn’t feel that way, we must cry out and say so, while we wait for the Truth to sink in.

7 Bring me out of prison,
    that I may give thanks to your name!

Sometimes we feel like the work of our adversaries has not only been against us, but has imprisoned us. We are not just attacked, but locked up, and someone else has the key. We need someone to let us out, even if the prison is more a function of our own issues than the actions of others. When Jesus quoted Isaiah 61:1-2a in Luke 4:18-19, he explicitly referenced liberty and the Gospel (ESV):

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

This was Jesus’ mission, set down long before He was born. But in the mean time, we feel poor, imprisoned, blind, and oppressed. To me, the best news in this situation is that if we begin to acknowledge just how horrible we feel, then we are ripe to hear Jesus’ proclamation of Good News. He came to deal with these things. He came to meet our need. If we cry out to him, and tell him how horribly oppressed we feel, then we join the ranks of those He spent most of His time with during His earthly ministry, and we stand apart from those He criticized, who had religious systems in place to feel like they had it all together.

After all this crying out, the psalmist has a glimmer of hope:

The righteous will surround me,
    for you will deal bountifully with me.

Again I’m not sure how much he believed this, but it is a good thing to say, and to trust that we will ultimately feel. Do we feel lonely? Yes, but the righteous will surround me. Why, because I’m a cool person with lots of money and a winning personality? No. Because the Lord will deal bountifully with me. He is our hope and our shield. He is the liberator of the oppressed. He is the one we need. Crying out to Him, then, is really the only hope any one of us ever had.

 

Lifecycle of a Democracy

Congo + Culture, Thoughts, Travels, , ,

As the democratic process in Congo seems to be winding down, it’s weird to think that we saw its beginnings.

When we first arrived in Africa, we spend three months in the village house-sitting for a colleague, and learning language and culture. It was during those three months that the election enrollment came through that area. This was the process that established the electorate which voted on the constitutional referendum, giving D. R. Congo its first democratic constitution in 2005.

It was interesting to witness this, since like many Americans voting was old news to me. I understood the apathy in America that leads many people to simply not vote. But this was not so in Congo. As various people we knew enrolled, they proudly showed off their iodine-dipped pinkies and their voter ID cards, like this one:

Dilo with his voter ID card

These cards are the first and only ID owned by many of the Congolese we know, so it was a serious moment of pride. And these cards are still used as basic identification.

In December 2006, I made a two week trip into DRC (We were still living in Nairobi at the time, due to general insecurity in the DRC) to collect extensive wordlists in four languages. One of those turned out to be two separate languages, so we had data from five languages in the end. These are the same languages we eventually did alphabet charts with, and whose tone systems I’m now analyzing for my dissertation. On this, my first trip to Nya-nya, I stayed with the pastor of one of our local church partners, who had decorated his house with ballot receipts (from the election voting in Joseph Kabila as president for the first time):

Ballot receipts as decoration

On the way out of the country, I stopped back in Bunia, and got to see the inauguration on this TV, in this living room:

Watching TV at the rector's house

The elections in 2011 seemed to come and go with little fanfare; I recall reports of small protests, and some claims of voter fraud, including a report by the Carter Center, which didn’t (seem to, IMHO) go so far as to say that the election was illegitimate, while identifying a number of issues that caused concern.

Since then, we returned to the US and started a doctoral program. I returned to Nya-nya in 2014, then again this year, to collect data specifically for my dissertation, and to help the people on their path toward literacy. In 2014, we took the data that we collected together in 2006, did basic phonological analyses and created alphabet charts. This year we looked at how verb conjugation affects tone melodies, since tone is important in these languages, so they will likely need some solution for writing it. They seem to be on good footing toward managing their own literacy and Bible translation programs, which we want to continue to support and encourage however we can.

And now, as I’m hoping to make one more trip next year, and wrap up this doctorate in the next couple years, we see news that that process started with a new constitution back in 2005 seems to be failing.  The Elections commission has not updated the electoral rolls, due (at least) to funding and disorganization. They didn’t want to hold elections on time, but with five year old election rolls (in which time lots of people die and/or become 18+). The president and the main opposition have not been talking for some time, and the President seems committed to remain in power until elections are held (end of 2018, two years late). This has been described as a coup d’état, but minimally the constitution is not being followed.

But in the mean time, work on minority Congolese languages continues. Just last week, I made a great advance in my analysis of a rather complex aspect of the Ndaka verb tone system. I hope that this will help understand Ndaka’s neighbors, so that steps toward a Bible that is used will be multiplied in a number of local communities. And our colleagues working locally continue to work with these groups to help them take more ownership of the Bible translation movement for their language.

So I take comfort in the fact that despite the political chaos, God is at work. As He said to Daniel:

Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand. (Daniel 12:10 ESV)

And sometimes he works in, through, and/or despite larger turmoil:

You said, ‘Woe is me! For the LORD has added sorrow to my pain. I am weary with my groaning, and I find no rest.’ Thus shall you say to him, Thus says the LORD: Behold, what I have built I am breaking down, and what I have planted I am plucking up—that is, the whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not, for behold, I am bringing disaster upon all flesh, declares the LORD. But I will give you your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go. (Jeremiah 45:3-5 ESV)

So I will continue to pray that whatever chaos the Congolese people have to go through in the next months and years, that God would have His way, and that He would be glorified. That Christ’s Church would be built up in numbers and maturity, and that it would stand out as a beacon of hope and sanctuary in Congolese society. Because despite whatever political failures there may be, our ministry vision remains valid:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10 ESV)

Please join us in prayer, that this vision would be accomplished, even in the DRC.

25km

Church, Congo + Culture, Travels, ,

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For our second weekend in the rainforest, it seemed right to visit Simon’s father’s church, which was just 25 km north of Nya-nya — in fact, while it has another name, it is typically referred to as “25km”. Simon’s father traveled down to work with us a lot in 2014, and some this year, too, and I figured it was about time to visit him. But I had no idea how far away 25 km (15.6miles) was.

First of all, let us be clear that Joel had a blast. Four hours on a motorbike (yes, that’s less than 4mph!) through the brush and mud, with butterflies flying in his face –he enjoyed himself thoroughly. And that was being squished between Simon and their driver, who wore Joel’s backpack on his stomach (above).

Along the road, we ran in to a traffic jam:

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With trucks stuck on the mud on both sides of the road, trucks could not get through. And this is the major road south of Isiro, where a number of the Bible translation projects we support work. Since there were therefore lots of trucks trying to get through, there was a line on each side of the jam (I think I counted about 14 trucks on each side):

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When we got to the jam itself,  the trucks were truly stuck:

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Which is just another reason we travel by motorbike, as we were able to get through 🙂 :

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When we got there, we of course got a “welcome visitors” song and dance:

 

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and we ended up with confetti on our hats:

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and on the ground:

img_8339What most impressed me about this was finding that they had made the confetti by meticulously cutting up shiny snack packages…

I’d like to say that the road was clear on our way back, but it wasn’t. So I asked when they expected it to clear.  Apparently they’d been there some three weeks, and it would be a couple more. ;-( On the brighter side, the governor had a grand opening ceremony a few days later for construction on that road (which had already started), and it sounded like they were sending some vehicles up to clear that blockage. Nowhere else have I seen such a strong juxtaposition of struggle and joy.

Missionary Linguist

Church, Congo + Culture, Thoughts, ,

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It hasn’t always been easy describing what I do to a broad audience, but for some time now on immigration forms requiring a short answer, I indicate my profession as “Missionary Linguist”. I heard a chapel talk at the first SIL summer training I went to, in Eugene, OR, on doing good social science as a Christian. Tom Payne talked about how academics often look down on missionaries, and vice versa. But the dichotomy isn’t valid, he said. And since then, as I think about what I do from time to time, I consider that one of my greater joys is to do both serious academic work and serious mission work — and that these are not exclusive. In fact, I think they can be very much in support of one another.

This is strikingly clear in D.R.Congo, where it could be said that most of the functioning social bodies are religious. If you are unwilling or unable to work with a church, you will be hard pressed to find people to work with, and you will be on your own in terms of your daily life logistics, like how you will eat, sleep, and get around. But we have the joy of working with a number of church partners, and of working in a way that is clearly for their good, all while doing good academic work.

The above picture is from the covered area where we did most of our work this summer. We started out each day with a meditation on a portion of scripture.  I did this in 2014, too, but I wasn’t sure how much they actually liked it, and how much they were just putting on a good face.  So this time I asked directly,  and they said they like it, for a couple reasons: first, it makes it clear to everyone that this is church work, and that it is worthy of their support; second, it provides spiritual food for the workshop participants. Wow. I hadn’t anticipated that a minimal (30 mins) daily commitment to share with them from the Bible would impact them so much.

So I committed to not sell them short, and we walked through the first half of Romans during our three weeks together, ending in the closing ceremonies with Romans 6:23 – For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I knew that there were a couple Muslims in the group, and they didn’t always show up for this part, which was OK with me. Because I got to talk through some really good stuff, and I could see that those that came got it. For instance, having talked through the pervasiveness of sin in chapters 1-3, we talked about 3:21-22 – But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe – and the theological earthquake these verses caused in the protestant reformation. I continued to feel the freedom to simply read and explain the scripture, and enjoyed again seeing the logic of Romans unfold – They sin, we sin, we all sin, we all need Christ… Then some time later I noticed that a large chunk of my audience was Roman Catholic. 🙂 But that was not a source of division.  We want our work to benefit the whole community, including everyone who identifies as Christian. We want everyone involved to be transformed by the Word of God in their language.

But the fact that we’re serious about getting the Bible to the grassroots of the church, and in a way that can reach even those outside of the church, doesn’t mean we aren’t also doing good academic work — which we are. Whenever I start working with people who are used to manual labor, I explain that our work doesn’t use a hoe, but it is work nonetheless. And there always comes a time where people are grabbing their heads and saying “wow, this hurts!”  We had plenty of those moments this time around, as people grappled with the implications of what we were discovering about their language – but more about that (including the octuplets) in another post, I think.

One other point relevant to this topic is the need to make community development truly community based, and my work as a missionary linguist facilitates that. Because I depend on the church to do my academic work, and because my academic work is for the benefit of the church, the church has a strong share in finding out what we’re doing. They have a right to accountability, which goes hand in hand with the fact that we want to share what we’ve learned.

I made some posters from the pages of the vowel booklet we made in 2014, which we then modified to add tone marks to. These became a medium for us to share our insights. Here is Simon sharing from these posters, after service at the church we attended our second Sunday in the area:

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This is another great aspect of combining my various responsibilities – most people agree that we should be training and mentoring future leaders, but we don’t necessarily make it happen, if we’re able to do our work without it. I could have done this presentation myself, but it just made so much more sense in this context to have Simon do it. His father is pastor at this church, and him presenting gave them a chance to have a few back-and-forths in Ndaka, which would (obviously) have been beyond me.

Not only did we get the word out, but we also got to practice doing it.  The next Sunday, we were at another church, after which we gave a presentation to them:

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And then a few days later, in our closing ceremony, we gave yet another presentation, this time in the church that was hosting the workshop:

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So the bottom line here, for me, is that we got to build up the church through teaching, mentorship, and grassroots showing that we care about their language (which is a bigger deal than you might think) –while at the same time we had unparalleled access to speakers of the language, that were ready and willing to bust a few brain cells figuring out how tone works in their verbs. So I’m proud to say that I’m a missionary linguist — doing what God made me for, to His glory.

Trip Cancellation … for now

Congo + Culture, Travels, ,

So we called for prayer for last Friday, and decided to wait until after mail on Saturday, just in case something weird happened. We believe that God is at work in this situation, though we don’t know what He’s doing… We waited until the very last minute, even until Sunday (yesterday) afternoon, before canceling our flights for this morning.

I talked to the airline agent about the possibility of just canceling the first half of the flight, so we could rebook just that much in the next few days, in case our passports come in that time. But by airline logic, that would actually have been more expensive… So we have a voucher with the cost of that ticket that we can put forward to another ticket, so long as we book it before May 2017. Which is nice, because that gives us time to try to get a visa again, if this one eventually comes back refused. But we’ll need to consider that carefully, since DRC-US relations don’t seem too positive right now, and there aren’t many signs of them improving until after the DRC elections, scheduled for this November.

Once the ticket to Uganda was canceled, we also had to cancel our  guest house and taxis in Uganda, our flight from Uganda to DRC, and our arrangements to stay the first few days in the DRC.  Not to mention the workshop and all the logistics surrounding it. 🙁

We continue to believe that God is orchestrating what from here looks to be chaos into something that will eventually be clearly Good, but it’s hard to see what value there is in this delay at this point, especially if the delay extends so long that the trip will simply not be possible.

Please continue to pray for us, that we would be diligent to do whatever we can to move this process forward, that we would continue to trust God and wait in faith, and that we would have the peace to be productive in other ways in the mean time.

Diplomatically Speaking…

Congo + Culture, Travels, , ,

Apparently a UN embargo on arms entering the DRC (except for purchases by the government) was renewed this week. But it didn’t limit itself to arms; it also includes two paragraphs on elections ((“Stressing the crucial importance of a peaceful and credible electoral cycle, in accordance with the Constitution, for stabilization and consolidation of constitutional democracy in the DRC, expressing deep concern at increased restrictions of the political space in the DRC, in particular recent arrests and detention of members of the political opposition and of civil society, as well as restrictions of fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of expression and opinion, and recalling the need for an open, inclusive and peaceful political dialogue among all stakeholders focused on the holding of elections, while ensuring the protection of fundamental freedoms and human rights, paving the way for peaceful, credible, inclusive, transparent and timely elections in the DRC, particularly presidential and legislative elections by November 2016, in accordance with the Constitution, while respecting the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance,“20.))((Urges the Government of the DRC, as well as all relevant parties to ensure an environment conducive to a free, fair, credible, inclusive, transparent, peaceful and timely electoral process, in accordance with the Congolese Constitution, and recalls paragraphs 7, 8, 9 and 10 of resolution 2277 (2016);)).

About the same time, we have this site telling us “After issuing a warning in May that it would impose sanctions against the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the US has acted.” This is a specific sanction against the police chief of the capital city, such that “all assets belonging to [him] are frozen and Americans are barred from doing any business with him.” I have not been able to find the text of the sanction, but it is confirmed here, with nearly identical wording (so one is probably the source of the other).

If there is any question that the DRC is taking this as a serious criticism of the country leadership as a whole, the ambassador made an official statement to that effect.

Anyway, maybe that’s why I haven’t gotten my visa…

DRC STATEMENT ON RECENT U.S. SANCTIONS

WASHINGTON—JUNE 23, 2016—The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today released the following statement regarding the recently announced sanctions imposed by the United States.

“The DRC condemns the action taken today by the U.S. Government. It is an infringement on our sovereignty and will undermine bilateral relations. It will also embolden those who seek to divide our nation and impede our democratic processes,” said Ambassador Barnabé Kikaya Bin Karubi, Diplomatic Advisor to President Joseph Kabila.

“As the DRC confronts important political, economic and security challenges, we welcome the support of international partners. Our efforts to organize elections in particular will benefit from encouragement by those interested in a free, fair, transparent and peaceful process, as we have seen from certain international organizations to date.

“Despite this decision by the Obama Administration, our efforts to engage and work with foreign partners continues. Ambassador Barnabé Kikaya Bin Karubi is in Washington, DC this week to consult with U.S. policy makers regarding the actions by our government to advance both a national dialogue and the electoral process.

“We continue to pursue consensus through dialogue, but also have taken actions that have enabled the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) to continue to prepare for elections, including the allocation of funds to facilitate the identification and registration of Congolese voters for upcoming elections.”

For more information, please contact:

inquiries@drcnotes.com

Crunch Time

Congo + Culture, Travels, ,

There are now three more mail deliveries before our trip should begin on Monday morning, and we still have no sight of our passports. The Embassy is not answering their phone, nor responding to Emails.  To develop our next alternate plan, I called the travel agent (which we are required to use by one of our funders), and found that there is a $300 charge to make any changes to these tickets, PER PERSON, in addition to any difference in ticket price. So if our passports do not arrive in the next couple days, we will be out at least $600.

Needless to say, your prayers would be appreciated. We know the One who has this in His hands, and we’re searching for His glory in this, but it’s a bit hard to see at this point. ;-(

Much in need of Grace,

Kent

Dictionaries

Church, Congo + Culture, Thoughts, , , ,

I just finished drafting the line “good progress on dictionaries for each of the languages” for the newsletter we’re hoping to put out in the next couple days, and I realized I’m not sure that it is clear to all why that is a good thing.  So here’s a bit of a rationale.

From what I understand of the history of dictionaries in English, one of the main reasons people do them is to help standardize the writing system.  Have you ever asked how to spell a word, and been told to look it up in a dictionary?  Perhaps that doesn’t happen so much anymore, but in any case, dictionaries can be an authoritative source for spelling information. I have even understood that one of Webster’s goals was not only the standardization of American English spelling, but also the creation of a distinctly American English. Have you used the words colour, litre, practise, paralyse or programme? If so, you’re probably British (or learned your spelling from a Brit). Nothing against the Brits; it’s just that spelling is one way of saying “this is who we are”. While I’m hoping that the communities we work with in the DRC won’t spend much time distinguishing one dialect of their language from another, I do hope they will spend time clarifying their identity in their writing system.

I want this for two reasons.  First of all, a lot of Bible Translation is about identity.  If we are going to help someone translate what will be seen as a foreigners’ Bible, then we might as well stop today, since these people already have second and third language Bibles. Additionally, this is not the promise of the scriptures. Rather, it promises “…a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages… crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God…'” (Rev 7:9-10 ESV). I don’t see this promise as just lots of different Christians, but people from each of the 6,000+ languages of the world seeing God as their own God, and worshiping Him as such. We don’t want to just translate and print books; we want to see the impact in individuals and communities of the Holy Spirit working through the written Word of God. This impact is hampered if you’re reading a Bible that continues to tell you that God is talking to someone else, not you.

The second reason I’m in favor of standardization has to do with fluency.  I’ve seen a lot of non-fluent reading of the scriptures, and I personally find it painful. And I imagine it must be difficult to have the kind of impact I mention above if the reader stumbles often in the reading, and/or has to read something multiple times to get the meaning. As a result, one major motivation for my work is to see people reading fluently. I want them to read without stumbling, and to get the sense the first time they read. I want pastors to be able to read the scriptures in the middle of a sermon without creating a major break in the thought flow. And I want to do everything I can to remove any barriers to fluency which arise as a result of the writing system. That normally starts with getting the consonants, vowels and tone correct, but it also includes people knowing how words are spelled, and identifying the correct word and its pronunciation quickly as they read.

There are two other arguments for dictionaries as part of language development, one of which is sociological, the other linguistic. Related to the identity question above, many peoples I’ve interacted with don’t see their language as valuable, and this opinion is often shared by outsiders. I once heard a “real language” as “you know, one with books”. I think I know what that person meant, but if it takes a book to give a language respect, then I want to be a part of giving them their first book. And people get this. Seeing someone look at the first booklet in their language (as little as 15 pages, with lots of pictures!) is an amazing sight. They immediately get that someone does finally care about them.

The linguistic argument is that in order to do good dictionary work, you need to do a lot of other things which you already should be doing anyway: collecting and analyzing texts, checking pronunciations, helping the community decide how words should be spelled, including diacritics, spacing, and punctuation. All of this analysis helps build not only the dictionary, but our understanding of the language more generally, perhaps more particularly how the sound and writing systems will interact. I hope it is clear why one would want to do this before publishing much in the language; anything you publish without really understanding how the writing system will work may need substantial revision, and anything you publish creates a precedent that you will have to fight against in making later changes (and if you don’t see how precedent can trump sound reasoning for spelling changes, just look at English).

So our ultimate goal is life transformation through the Bible, but to get there, we want to see that the community is well placed to have and use a Bible that is theirs, that can and will be read fluently and with power, and dictionary work helps further all of those goals.

 

 

 

Boys cabin

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Joel poses with a couple of his cabin mates. They all started out best friends, as nine of the ten of them were in the same cabin last year. But this afternoon, one wanted to stay in bed because others were being mean. So we took a break from our activity (rock wall), to share and reconcile. We read 1 John 4:20, and finished off by memorizing palms 133:1 – “How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.”
So it was good to see them get through that, and we trust that they’re growing together through it, both as a group and as individual young men.