Christmas stories for 2 new languages

Ngoreme translators holding booklets of the Christmas story in their language

 Hi friends,

After typesetting five drafts of the complete Jita New Testament, I finally sent it off for final approval!! It's a huge step, so we're very excited.

While I'm waiting for that final approval, I'm working on two new typesetting jobs for other translation projects in Tanzania. The Ngoreme and the Isenye have just started translating the Bible into their languages, and they wanted to print the Christmas story for people. I typeset a booklet of Luke 1-2 in the Ngoreme language and then another booklet of Matthew 1-2 in the Isenye language. Right now the translators are taking these books to their villages so that they can get them into people's hands by Christmas time.

Please pray with us for the Ngoreme and Isenye people. In fact, try this: while you're celebrating this Christmas season, whenever you read the beautiful story of the birth of Jesus from Matthew or Luke, just take a minute and pray for the Ngoreme and Isenye people. Pray that they would believe that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, from Matthew 1:23. Pray that they would believe the good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, Luke 2:10-11.

the Christmas story in Isenye

Thank you so much for partnering with us in bringing the gospel to the people of Tanzania. We couldn't do this without you.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Finished the third draft of the Jita New Testament

 Hi friends,

I finished typesetting the third draft of the complete Jita New Testament. After the previous draft, the proof-readers gave me some helpful feedback about spacing and layout to improve the clarity and readability of the text. So I processed all of their feedback and I personally think it looks really good!

As I was working through the text one book at a time, I came to John 3, where Jesus says,

"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

The Jita team thought it would be helpful to insert an illustration of Moses there so I arranged the page like this:

Of course, this is also the passage that contains the beautiful gospel summary of John 3:16, "For God so loved the world..."

As I prepared this page, I was again struck with the reality that the Jita people will soon have not only John 3:16, but the entire New Testament in their own language. I found myself thanking God for the privilege of being part of his glorious kingdom work.

Anyway, after I finished arranging this page nicely, I glanced at the page number:

Yep, 316. John 3:16 is on page 316. That's fun!

Well, I finished the third draft of the entire New Testament and sent it back to the proof-readers again. Hopefully, it's ready to be sent to the printers. Please keep praying for us and for the Jita New Testament. 

Thank you for all of your prayers and support. We appreciate you!

Summer Flowers, Scripture Progress, and Spiritual Attacks

 

Jeannette's flower garden

Hello friends, 

This past summer was full of wonderful blessings and difficult challenges for our family. 

Jeannette planted a flower garden and enjoyed incredible results. Every day our house was filled with fresh dahlias, celosias, snap dragons, and hydrangeas. We were amazed at how our Creator invented so many beautiful varieties of dahlias. Some of the plants were taller than our kids!

Ben finished typesetting the second draft of the entire Jita New Testament and sent it off for review. He received helpful feedback from a Jita translator, a fellow typesetter, a translation consultant, and multiple publication checkers. Now he is working on the third (and hopefully final!) draft. Ben's next project will be typesetting the book of Acts for a language in southern Tanzania. 

Sadly, this summer we have also been afflicted with multiple sicknesses and injuries. Jeannette and I had COVID. Luke had a stomach sickness that lingered for a couple weeks. Kara has been struggling with stomach/esophagus pain and discomfort for a few months now. We've taken her to multiple doctors and specialists but they can't identify the problem. On top of that, Kara dislocated and fractured her elbow. She is still in a lot of pain even weeks after the injury. And just to make things worse, she occasionally has severe dizziness.

We recognize that the enemy wants to use these sicknesses and injuries to make us discouraged and to tempt us to despair, but we praise God that we are holding fast to Jesus during these trials. The Holy Spirit is reminding us of the promises of God's Word like, 

Psalm 5:11-12  Let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may exult in you. For you bless the righteous, O LORD; you cover him with favor as with a shield. 

and

Isaiah 26:3-4  You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock.

We trust that our heavenly Father is faithful even during trials. He is wise and good and all-powerful, but more importantly, he is always with us. Please pray for healing for our family, and pray for wisdom as we finish typesetting the Jita New Testament. 

Thank you!!

First Draft of the Jita New Testament

 

Hi friends, I finished typesetting the first draft of the New Testament in the Jita language. And I think it looks pretty good! It was a slow process, because I'm still learning how to do typesetting, but I'm happy with how it turned out.

One of the things that surprised me was the number of unique elements that occur on a printed page. For example, here's a page from the book of Luke,

There's page numbers, headers, footnotes, sections headings, parallel passage references, chapter numbers, and verse numbers. Each of those elements has its own style options. I had to manually format each of those elements so that the page looked good to the translators.

One of the things that gave me the most trouble was the tone marker on Jita verbs. When I first started typesetting, the tone marker was too close to some of the surrounding elements. It looked distracting and confusing. It took me a long time to identify and solve that problem.

So I sent the first draft to Neema, one of the Jita translators, so that she can review it and make sure everything looks good. While she's reviewing the first draft, I can start working on all the extra stuff that goes into the printed New Testament, like the title page, Introduction, Glossary, color pictures, and maps.

After Neema finishes reviewing the first draft, we will make any changes necessary, and then produce the second draft. We're getting closer to publishing the New Testament in Jita. Please keep praying for us!

Typesetting the book of Ruth

Hey everybody, I just completed my first official typesetting project! It's the book of Ruth in the Manda language of Tanzania. There are about 43,000 Manda speakers and they live in the southern part of Tanzania. They love their language, and they're excited to have God's Word in their own language.

The book of Ruth is usually one of the first books that we print in a new project. It's a great place to start because it's a short story and everyone can relate to it. It also becomes a great tool for the Literacy department to use as they teach people how to read and write their language.

So I typeset the book of Ruth. First, I prepared multiple different formats for the team to consider. One of them had justified text, another had ragged right text. We discussed where the book introduction should occur. Stuff like that. After the team settled on a general format, I inserted illustrations, captions, footnotes, page numbers, copyright information, title page, etc. I tried to make everything clear and easy to read.

Now the Manda people have the book of Ruth in their own language! Thank you again for your partnership in this ministry. We couldn't do this without you. Thank you!

Introducing the Jita Scripture app

Here it is...the Jita Scripture app! It's got every book of the New Testament, as well as Ruth and Jonah from the Old Testament. Some of the books even have audio recordings available. Listen to this...

This is a great way for Jita people to access Scripture, especially while they're waiting for the printed New Testament. People can download the app for free from the Play Store. Here's what it looks like...

So far, we've had over 1,000 downloads of the app. That means Jita people are accessing God's Word in their heart language! It's so exciting!

Another job on my plate

I've recently had another job added onto my plate. In addition to my role as Translation Advisor for the Jita Bible project, my organization has asked me to take on the role of typesetting. Now, when you hear the word "typesetting," you might immediately think of the old Gutenberg printing press from the 1400's with movable type where you have to layout individual metal characters on a page and get ink all over the place and press down one paper at a time.

Thankfully, that's not what I'm doing. Today, everything is digital, which is nice, but it means that I have to learn three brand new pieces of software. Last year I spent six weeks in an intensive training course learning that new software and learning best practices for typesetting. My responsibility as a typesetter is to take the raw translation data from a team and format it in a way that can be printed. By the time the text gets to me, it has already been approved by translators, community members, a translation advisor and a translation consultant. My job is to format it so that it's ready for the printer. For example, here's the raw translation data of the book of Ruth from a language group in southern Tanzania. 

It's full of standard format markers and Unicode numbers and it just looks like a mess. And here's what it looks like when I'm done. 

This job is in high demand right now because our organization is currently working on 31 language projects in Tanzania. All of them are in different stages, but they're all working towards printing individual books of the Bible or complete New Testaments. So there's a lot of work to be done. And I'm excited to get started, but there's a lot of new stuff to learn, so please pray for me.

Ready to Read

 Jita people are so excited about reading!

Recently, in the Jita village of Murangi, 18 people gathered together for a teacher-training literacy workshop. They are so passionate about their language that they want to teach others how to read and write. These new literacy teachers are now teaching 70 more people how to read and write in Jita. And the numbers keep growing! 

Jita people are waiting with eager expectation for the day when they will be able to hold the New Testament in their hands for the first time ever, and be able to read it for themselves and understand it. Please keep praying for us and for the Jita people.

photos by L.W.

I love maps!

I love maps! Maps are so fascinating. And I especially love the maps in my study Bible. When the Bible talks about Jesus leaving Capernaum and crossing the lake and entering the country of the Gadarenes, I can find that on the map. When the Bible talks about Jesus going through Samaria, I can find that on the map. Maps are so helpful. Which is why I'm excited that we get to include maps in our publication of the Jita New Testament.

 

But creating the maps takes a LOT of work. First, I have to search the translation to find all the relevant place names for the maps. Then I have to copy the words exactly so that I keep the correct spelling. Then I have to fit the Jita word into the appropriate spot on the map. Many times the Jita word is much longer than the English word so I need to do a lot of intricate detail work to make everything fit nicely and still be legible. Finally, we need to have the maps reviewed by Jita community members to make sure that they are clear and understandable.

 

Do you want to hear a funny story? So I was creating these maps in Jita, I had finished about 3 or 4 of them. Things were going well. I was starting to figure out the process. The maps were looking nice. And suddenly it hit me. I was using the wrong font on the maps. I was supposed to use the same font on the maps that we used in the text of the New Testament. It's a font that we have chosen specifically because it's easily legible for newly literate people. I just totally forgot. So I had to go back through the maps that I had already finished and fix the font. But thankfully, I learned a valuable lesson and now all the maps look good. I'm excited that we're one step closer to publishing the New Testament in the Jita language.

How important is a Glossary?

                                            

Consider this...how many Bible study resources do you have access to? 

Maybe you have a study Bible, a concordance, a Bible dictionary, or a commentary. Maybe you have Bible software on your computer. Here in America we are blessed with a wealth of Bible study resources. But the Jita people of Tanzania don't even have the Bible in their own language. 

Thankfully, we're getting very close to publishing the New Testament in the Jita language. And in the back of the New Testament, we will include a Glossary. A Glossary is a collection of important Biblical words and phrases, along with their definitions, organized in alphabetical order. So for example, imagine a Jita person reading Matthew 9:27,

As Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.”

Maybe this Jita person wants to know more about that term, Son of David. They can look in the Glossary and find an explanation along with some other relevant Bible verses to help them understand the meaning. A Glossary is a great tool for Bible study.

But we have had all kinds of problems with the Jita Glossary. Sometimes our translated text would become corrupted and entire sections of the Glossary would mysteriously jump into other sections. Other times, whole paragraphs would disappear. We had to sift through the archives to try and recreate those sections accurately. It was just one major problem after another. 

Clearly, these were spiritual attacks to prevent us from finishing the New Testament. Think about it, this little Glossary in the back of the Jita New Testament, will be the first Bible study resource ever printed in the Jita language. That's exciting!

Thankfully, by God's grace we finally finished the Glossary. And we saved it and made lots of backup copies :)

Now we're one step closer to printing the Jita New Testament!