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.