October 2019 Prayer Letter

Dear Prayer Supporters,

      How would you explain the word “snow” to someone who didn’t know what it was?  How would you spell Bible names if you’d never seen the names written in your language before?  How would you feel if you had to check the spelling of 18,000 words?  These are just a few of the issues that some of our translation teams have faced in the past few months!

Quality Checking

      In August and September, I met with the Sara Madjingay and the Sara Kaba Deme.  These teams have completed the translation of the text and the verse-by-verse checking of the translation, and have now moved into the latter stages of the translation process: quality checking - that is, running various checks on the whole translation to ensure its quality.  Here are some of the specific issues we encountered during these checks:

•  In selecting words for a Bible’s glossary, we realized we needed to explain the word for “snow”, since it is unknown in Chad.  We were able to explain it by comparing it to the cottony-like fluff that falls from kapok trees: “Snow: Tiny pieces of ice like kapok fluff that fall from the clouds and cover the ground when it is extremely cold.”
•  One team had spelled the name “Joel” three different ways throughout the Bible (Jowel, Juwel, and Joel), so they had to choose between the spellings to make it consistent in every place (they decided to spell it “Joel”). 
•  While checking some of the references in our lists of proper names, we discovered that Genesis 6:8 had somehow gone missing from the text, having been accidentally replaced with text from a different verse. We quickly corrected the problem and put in the proper text, feeling thankful that the quality checking helped us find the error. 
•  The teams are checking through a list of every word used in their Bible to find and correct any spelling errors.  They have around 18,000 words to check, too many to check in one workshop, but we were able to make good progress.  One morning, we checked the spelling of over 600 words in just a few hours!

      There is much still to do.  Please pray that these checks can be completed in a timely fashion.

Furlough Plans

      In the midst of all this quality checking, I’ve also begun making plans for my next furlough.  For this furlough, I’m expecting to spent nearly a full year in the USA, from June 2020 to May 2021.  I’m looking forward to seeing many of you while I’m there in America!  Supporting churches, please contact me (if you haven’t already heard from me) so we can set up a time that I can give my report to your church. 

      I will need to raise some additional support this furlough.  My support is currently at 87% of my estimated support need, a shortage of about $500 per month.  Please pray for God’s provision for this need.

Thank you for your faithful prayers and support.

In Christ's Service,
Anna Beth Wivell