Back in Enga

Over the past few months we have been asking you to pray that God might make a way for us to return to Enga Province, and we are pleased to report that God has answered your prayers (and ours). We are now back in the village of Immi! Although I (Adam) was able to make a brief trip back in February, this is the first time that Martha and the kids have been back in Enga for more than two years due first to our furlough and then Coronavirus travel restrictions. We praise God that we have finally been able to return together as a family.

The kids are on school break right now, and so they are enjoying some down time by playing games, going to the river, and spending time with their village brothers Lami and Sani, and their new village sister Samila. In the past, Martha would homeschool the kids when were in the village, but now she also gets a bit of a break (although she is also using this time to plan for the upcoming school year as she will be teaching sixth, seventh, and eighth grade English).

As always, it has taken a little bit of time to adjust to life in the village. This time out, we discovered that the batteries for our solar electrical system were really starting to get old and not hold a charge well. So the first night here, we were in the dark with no matches or flashlights (except the ones on our phones). But we figured out how to tweak the system to get the lights to stay on longer at night. We also have had no rain for our first ten days here (although it is raining as I type this). Our house water supply is 100% dependent upon rainfall, and so we have had to preserve water by bathing in the river instead of taking showers. Although the water in the local stream is quite cold, it is also quite refreshing as well, and so bathing in the stream is not so bad. On top of water and power issues, our fridge was not working at all when we arrived, which caused a bit of concern until we realized that the dial that regulates how cold the fridge gets was completely turned off!

The kids back in Enga with their village brothers Lami and Sani and sister Samila

Translation Progress
During our first week in the village we were able to complete the face-to-face portion of the consultant check for Revelation. We are now working through the book of Romans. Although Romans is fairly a difficult book, the message seems to be coming through quite clearly in Enga (although we are making a few adjustments here and there). After finishing Romans we hope to continue on with one of the other Pauline epistles that will still have to check face-to-face. Because we have been able to resume face-to-face checking, we continue drawing closer to completing the New Testament. Lord willing, we hope to have the New Testament recorded, printed, and ready for distribution next fall (after the national elections). Please pray that nothing will hinder our progress. It seems that Satan is already at work to prevent the completion of this project with tribal fighting erupting in the village of two of our translators and some other challenges as well, so we need your prayers!

Bella with her village sister Samila

Storying
During our time in the village, Martha has been very intentional about making sure we spend time in the market area outside our house and “story” with people. So we have been going outside late in the afternoon and just talking with people. It is not uncommon for us to start talking to one person only to find that, within the span of a few minutes, we are surrounded by thirty or forty people. People have been telling us over and over again that they were very concerned that we had died in America due to Coronavirus (which would explain our long absence in their minds). We also had an interesting conversation about the Coronavirus vaccine (AstraZeneca). There are all sorts of rumors circulating in Papua New Guinea about the vaccine. One of the rumors is that the vaccine magnetizes your arm. One of the leading men in the village asked me if that rumor was true. So I told him that I myself had received the vaccine, and then I asked him if he had a coin. So he quickly got a coin and I rolled up my sleeve and told him to hold the coin up to my arm at the spot where I had received the injection. Then I told him to let it go, and as soon as he did the coin of course fell to the ground, thus dispelling the rumor about the vaccine magnetizing the arms of those who receive it. From there we were able to discuss more practical information about Coronavirus and who is most at risk of complications, so all in all it turned out to be a beneficial conversation.

Final Check of 14 Books

Last month I reported that we were “starting to finish” the Enga New Testament. This month I am happy to announce that the Enga translators are doing their final read through of fourteen New Testament books. Assisting them in this final check is Benjamin Leo, the man who owns the land where we built our house. Benjamin is providing input as someone who has not been involved in the translation process and who has no formal education. His background puts him in a perfect position to help us identify any aspects of the translation that might be difficult for the average person in the village to understand. The books included in this final check are 1 Thessalonians through Jude. Once this check is complete, these books will be considered finalized and ready for audio recording. Please pray that the translators and Benjamin will find anything that needs to be corrected and that the final edits of these books will give us a translation that is accurate, clear, natural, and acceptable, which are the four translation goals that we aim for. By the way, the translators are currently working out of our house in the village of Immi, where they are spending the night during the week to reduce the number of times they use public transportation. This is to reduce their potential exposure to COVID.

While the translators are doing their final check of these 14 books, I am doing my final check of the book of Matthew, which includes verifying that the parallel passages in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the same where the Greek is the same and different where the Greek is different. I am now halfway through Matthew, so please pray for endurance for me to finish the task. Once I finish my final check of Matthew, the final checks for Mark, Luke, and John should be much easier and faster because I will have already checked most of the parallel passages.

The translation team doing their final check of 14 books

Vaccinated
On Friday Martha and I both received our first dose of the COVID vaccine. We were quite surprised that we were able to get vaccinated here in Papua New Guinea so soon. Australia has donated a large number of vaccines to Papua New Guinea, and our clinic on the center where we live was the recipient of a number of doses, which were then made available to the local community. Because Martha is a teacher and because I have asthma, we were given priority to receive the vaccine. Honestly we were anticipating not being able to get vaccinated for many more months, but we are thankful that we now have an added layer of protection as we plan to head to the village for three weeks later this month during the school break. During our upcoming trip, I hope to do the face-to-face portion of the consultant check for some of the eight books for which this check has not yet been completed. Please pray that the consultant checking will go well.

Receiving my first shot of the COVID vaccine

Starting to Finish

This past week I finished my final read through of 1-2 Thessalonians in the Enga New Testament, and for all intents and purposes those two books are now completely finished! And it shouldn't be long before we add a number of other books to that category. It feels so good that we are now starting to finish the Enga New Testament!

Sometimes Bible translation work can feel like a never-ending series of revisions. No matter how much editing you've done, it always feels like there is more to do. The translation team and I have written countless project notes, suggesting potential improvements or corrections to the translation. Actually, it is inaccurate to say countless, because I just checked, and the total number of project notes that we have written thus far is 30,359. Of that number we have only 189 that are left to resolve (although I have no doubt that we will write even more project notes in the coming weeks and months). To put that number of 30,359 in perspective, consider the fact that there are about 7,957 verses in the New Testament (depending on which version you look at). That means that on average we have written and processed nearly four project notes for every verse of the New Testament! 

Enga translators Reuben, Nete, and Frank reviewing project notes at the Enga Cultural Center

Not only that, but this month we finished the last work of major revision. Inevitably, as a team develops in their aptitude for translation, they return to the first books they translated and realize that they need major revision. That has certainly been the case with Enga. We had already done a major revision of Matthew and Mark, and the last book standing in our way was Luke. Now, the average chapter of a New Testament book has 30 verses, but the average chapter in Luke has 48 verses. Not only that but in terms of total verses and total word count, Luke is the longest book in the New Testament. And as I worked my way through each verse, I found that a large number of verses needed major adjustment. So it was with a great sense of joy and accomplishment that I wrote my last project note in Luke on April 15, and it is with even greater joy that I tell you that all but two of the 4,644 project notes written in Luke have now been resolved!

It feels like everything is starting to come together now and we are really starting to get close to the finish line. However, although we are starting to finish the Enga New Testament, the Coronavirus pandemic is Papua New Guinea is not starting to finish. Rather, it seems like it is just getting started: this month and last month the government issued new restrictions. One of the restrictions currently in place bans inter-provincial travel, and so we cannot complete the face-to-face portion of the consultant checking process for the remaining eight books that need it until that restriction is lifted. So please pray that the current surge in the Coronavirus pandemic here in Papua New Guinea would reverse course and pray that those restrictions can soon be lifted so that we can not only start finishing the Enga New Testament but finish finishing it.

Take Peduncle

During my most recent trip to Enga, I was working with the team on the Greek word that is often translated as ‘betray’ in English, but is more properly ‘hand over’ or ‘deliver up’. The Enga term we had been using was one that I had always had difficulty understanding. It was a two-word phrase, and I knew that the first word meant ‘take’, but I had always struggled to figure out what the second word ‘enge’ actually meant.

I came to find out that ‘enge’ actually means ‘peduncle’, which is a botanical term that means ‘the stalk bearing a flower or fruit’ (see the picture below), and particularly the peduncle of a banana plant. You can imagine that I had trouble seeing how ‘take peduncle’ could have anything to do with ‘hand over’, ‘deliver up’, or ‘betray’. But as the translation team and I discussed it further, the team explained that it was an idiom of sorts. You see, in the past, if someone were to steal a bunch of bananas that were growing in your garden, they would cut off the bananas and leave the peduncle hanging there. So the person whose bananas were stolen would take the peduncle as proof of the theft and give it to someone as a sign that he wished to have the thief killed. In common English terms, ‘take peduncle’ means ‘hire a hitman’ or ‘arrange a murder’, particularly one that would be carried out through trickery or deception.

As odd as that idiom seemed to me, it was certainly helpful in evaluating whether or not we had the right translation of ‘hand over’, ‘deliver up’, or ‘betray’. In Enga we were literally saying, “Judas took peduncle Jesus.” Based on the team’s explanation, I saw that our translation was incorrect because Judas did not hire a hitman to kill Jesus; rather, Judas himself received money to facilitate Jesus’ death. If anything, the Jewish leaders “took peduncle” Judas. Having discovered this mistranslation, we are now in the process of correcting it throughout the New Testament. 

The peduncle of a banana plant in our neighbor's yard in Immi village

Translation Progress
During my recent trip to Enga, in addition to refining our translation of ‘betray’, I was also able to complete the face-to-face portion of the consultant check for 1 Peter and 2 Peter. The team and I had already worked through the books remotely with a consultant who lives in America, but the last part of the consultant check is a face-to-face read-through of each book verse-by-verse, in which I ask comprehension questions to ensure proper understanding. The two men who came to check the books understood the translation quite well, and we only had to make minor adjustments here and there. We have also completed the remote checking for all the remaining New Testament books. All that is left to be done is the face-to-face read-through for Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Revelation, which we hope to complete in the next few months, contingent upon new COVID-19 travel restrictions.

The men involved in the consultant check of 1-2 Peter

COVID
Speaking of COVID, until very recently, Papua New Guinea continued to register very few infections, but over the last couple of months, the number of infections and hospitalizations have been rising. As a result, tighter restrictions have been implemented by the government, limiting travel to other provinces to essential purposes only. While Bible translation does fall under the category of essential business travel, we will probably not return to our village house until the current surge of COVID cases in Papua New Guinea reverses, especially since when we are in the ‘village’, we are actually closer to highly populated areas and have a much more difficult time maintaining social distance. Please pray that the current surge will soon reverse its trajectory and that we will be able to travel to the village during the school break in June and July.

Teaching
Due to a shortage of teachers, in January Martha began teaching English for grades 6 and 7 at the Ukarumpa International School. It is her first time back in the classroom in fifteen years, and she is really enjoying teaching again. Please pray that more teachers would come as teacher shortages are a perennial problem here. And if you yourself are a teacher, we invite you to consider coming to Papua New Guinea and using your teaching skills to help the Bible translation community here. We sure could use your help!

Neither Singular nor Plural

In English we are used to the idea that nouns are either singular (‘cat’, ‘dog’, ‘man’, ‘tree’, etc.) or plural (‘cats’, ‘dogs’, ‘men’, ‘trees’, etc.) Our language has taught us to refer to things in our environment as either one or many. But in the Enga language, nouns are neither singular nor plural; they are conceptual. What do I mean by that? Well, let me explain it by quoting Psalm 8:4, which says, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” In this case, even though the word ‘man’ is technically singular, it does not refer to only one man. Rather it refers to the concept of man, or humanity. Similarly, although ‘son of man’ is singular, again it does not refer to just one person, but to humanity as a whole (although, in this case, it also hints at Jesus, who referred to himself as the ‘Son of Man’). The way ‘man’ and ‘son of man’ are used in Psalm 8:4 is a good description of Enga nouns in general. They are neither singular nor plural, but conceptual. 

If that’s the case, how do we ever tell the difference between singular and plural in Enga? The answer is that the word ‘the’ in Enga can be singular or plural. Now in English the word ‘the’ does not tell us whether a noun is singular or plural; it is the form of the noun itself that tells us if it is singular or plural. For example, we know that ‘the cat’ is singular and ‘the cats’ is plural. But in Enga, it is the article that tells us if the noun is singular or plural. It would be like saying ‘the cat’ or ‘thes cat’ (if we were to invent the word ‘thes’ as the plural of ‘the’). It is only by the article that we know whether or not a noun is singular or plural. Without an article (or a determiner like ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘those’), the noun is purely conceptual. 

But Enga has an additional feature that English does not formally have, and that is what is called ‘dual’. You see Enga does not separate only into singular or plural; Enga has an additional category for exactly two nouns, which is called ‘dual’. So in Enga we can say ‘the cat’ ‘the-two cat’ and ‘thes cat’. Now the hardest things to learn in a foreign language are the distinctions in that language that your own language doesn’t make. In English we do not distinguish between dual and plural, and so it is quite difficult for me to remember to use dual forms instead of plural forms (just like it is difficult for Engans to remember the difference between ‘he’ and ‘she’ because in Enga the same word is used for both). Interestingly the dual form is also used to indicate a small amount of something, particularly something that cannot be counted. For example, in Matthew 13:33 the Enga translation reads, “The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who took a couple of yeast and mixed it into three flour bags, and the yeast spread throughout all the flour and it grew big.” It is not that the woman took two grains of yeast only, but that she took a small amount of yeast.
 

Is heaven singular, dual, or plural?

In translation, sometimes is helpful to have conceptual nouns rather than singular or plural nouns. Take the word ‘heaven’ for example. What many people do not know is that the term ‘the kingdom of heaven’ is literally ‘the kingdom of the heavens’. (And to make matters even more complicated, in Hebrew ‘heaven’ is a dual noun: ‘two heavens’.) Now it can be odd for us to think of ‘heaven’ (or ‘sky’) as being more than one, but that is certainly the biblical concept. For example, in 2 Corinthians 12:2, Paul talks about being “caught up to the third heaven.” So the English translation ‘the kingdom of heaven’ is a slight mistranslation that should more properly be ‘the kingdom of the heavens’. But in Enga, we don’t have to worry about whether to write ‘heaven’ or ‘two heavens’ or ‘heavens’ because we can just leave off the definite article so that the word ‘heaven’ is conceptual rather than singular or dual or plural, which may actually be a better representation anyway since ‘the kingdom of the heavens’ refers not so much to a physical kingdom in a physical location, but to the concept of the reign of God. 

Well, hopefully this short explanation has given you just ‘a couple of’ knowledge (to speak in an Engan manner) into how languages work and some of the things we need to take into consideration in the translation process.

‘Fotos’ on the Road

Every language borrows words from other languages. English is no exception. In fact, only about 30% of English words are ‘native English’; the rest are borrowed from other languages, particularly French, Latin, and Greek. French (or Old Norman) started coming into the English language in 1066 when William the Conqueror became the first Norman king of England. Because the Normans (i.e., French) were the ruling class, certain words that were borrowed from French had a greater prestige. For example the word mansion comes from Latin via Old French. Originally it simply meant a place where someone stays, but because the ruling Norman class lived more extravagantly than the English, the word has come to mean a large, impressive house.

English borrows from other languages as well. The word sabbatical comes from the Hebrew word shabat, which means rest. The word tortilla comes from Spanish, meaning little cake. There is no logical reason why we couldn’t call it a thin pancake, but I suppose that the first time an English speaker encountered a tortilla and asked what it was, the Spanish speaker simply said tortilla, and the name stuck. The word tsunami comes from the Japanese words tsu (‘harbor’) and nami (‘wave’), which explains why it starts with the letters ts. It is quite uncommon in English for a word to start with ts in English. Consequently, most English speakers simply say sunami instead of tsunami. I remember a conversation I once had with a young married couple about the word tsunami. The husband was American, and the wife was Japanese. The husband kept saying sunami, and the wife kept insisting that his pronunciation was wrong. He couldn’t hear the difference. Having the letter ts at the beginning of the word is so strange for English speakers that we just drop the t without realizing it was ever there.

Tok Pisin, the main trade language in Papua New Guinea, consists almost entirely of borrowed words, although, like the word tsuanami in English, the pronunciation often changes. I remember when I was first preparing to travel by public motor vehicle to Enga with my language teacher Reuben. I was asking him about the condition of the road, and he told me that there were a lot of fotos on the road. I assumed that he meant photos or pictures, and I couldn’t quite understand what that meant or how it was that there were photos on the road. Finally I realized that he was talking about potholes!

Driving over some ‘fotos’ on the way to Enga

 Not only do changes in pronunciation sometimes make it difficult to understand borrowed words, but words are not always borrowed as one would expect. I remember a time when we were staying in Enga and had an urgent need for a toilet plunger. I was going around to all of the small hardware stores in town asking for a plunja, trying to pronounce the word as I believed Enga speakers would pronounce it. Now in Papua New Guinean culture it would be shameful for someone to say, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” So instead they say, “Sori, pinis,” which means, “Sorry, finish.” (In other words, “Sorry, but we don’t have any more of those in stock.”) Finally, as I was visiting my third or fourth store and again asking for a plunja, and the store employee was again saying, “Sori, pinis,” I saw a plunger hanging on the wall. So I said, “That! I want that! What do you call that?” And the employee said, “O, han pum,” which means, “Oh, hand pump”!

The dialect of English that words are borrowed from can also cause problems. In Papua New Guinea, words borrowed from English often come from Australian English. So people say spana (‘spanner’), loli (‘lolly’), and ruba (‘rubber’) instead of wrench, candy, and eraser. And because the word napkin has quite a negative connotation in Australian English, the word serviette (borrowed from Old French) is used instead. But Papua New Guineans often just say tisu (‘tissue’), which is also borrowed from Old French.

Enga speakers also borrow many words from English, often twisting the meaning. I remember when there was a wedding ceremony in Wabag town and a couple dozen pigs were cooked in a ground oven similar to a luau (which, incidentally, is borrowed from Hawaiian). As men were butchering the pigs, I heard the master of ceremonies say “Operatimi laa,” which basically means, “Operate it.” In other words, “Perform an operation on the pig.” Of course, in English the word operate is used with reference to cutting open patients in surgery; it is not used with reference to butchering pigs.

Performing an ‘operation’ on a pig

Ironically, words borrowed from English are often quite difficult for me to understand when someone is speaking to me in Enga because the pronunciation is so different, and because I am expecting an Enga word, not an English word. Can you tell me what satumbeti, wanisa, anengapu, and pesembuku potene mean? If you guessed strawberry, varnish, handcuff, and Facebook friend, then you are doing much better than I did when I first heard those words!

As we translate the Bible into Enga, we often have no other option than to borrow words, particularly for things that are not a part of traditional Enga culture. So we use words like breta, waene, and sipisipi for bread, wine, and sheep because there is just no equivalent in the Enga language. Fortunately, Engans now have enough knowledge of outside cultures to know what those things are, and today you can find each of those things in Enga. Even words like ailene (‘island’) and solowata (’saltwater’, i.e., ‘ocean’) need to be borrowed, because Enga is in the mountains. One of the most interesting borrowed words used in the Enga translation is kakopai (‘cargo boy’), which can be used to talk about addiction. For example, 1 Timothy 3:8 says that deacons “must not be addicted to much wine.” In Enga we have translated this as, “Dikenes (borrowed) ... should not tell the [practice] of drinking much wine to take [them] as [its] cargo boy.” This hearkens back to a time when Papua New Guineans often carried cargo on their backs for the ruling Australian class. Although they were not slaves, they were very much in a subservient role, and deacons should not be subservient to wine!

Thankfully God has created languages to be flexible, always adapting to the world around them. For that we can say Hallelujah and Amen (which are both borrowed from Hebrew by the way)!

Reflections on 2020

As we put up our nativity set this year, our daughter Bella put face masks on the wise men, the shepherds, and Mary and Joseph—a fitting capstone to 2020. Christmas is supposed to be a time of hope, joy, peace, and eager anticipation. But I found that the heaviness and despair that filled 2020 carried over into the Christmas season as well. If only everything could magically be made new on January 1 and the nightmare of 2020 could be done away with in one fell swoop! But it is not that easy. It has been a hard year, a year of unfulfilled expectation, a year of disappointment, a year of uncertainty, a year of turmoil, a year of sadness and grief. It has been a difficult year spiritually, and it is not all magically healed when the clock strikes midnight on January 1.

Here in Ukarumpa we are fortunate to be able to attend church in person. A few weeks ago a fellow translator preached a sermon that really touched my heart, bringing me to tears. He said that one of the lessons of the Christmas story is that we surrender our plans to God. It was certainly never Mary’s plan to become pregnant through the Holy Spirit and endure the ridicule and shame that would be associated with a pregnancy that took place before she was married. But she graciously accepted the Lord’s plan for her life, surrendering any plans that she had for herself.

A new twist on our nativity set this year

Often I let my own plans take center stage, pushing the Lord’s plans into the background. It is so easy to make this life about myself and what I want to do, and not about God and what he wants to do. But in the end I find that selfish pursuits leave me spiritually empty. The year 2020 has exposed many of our vain pursuits, forcing us to take a good, hard look at who we really are deep inside as we are no longer able to hide in the busyness of life. And, for me at least, it has exposed a selfishness that is at odds with the message of Christmas: giving up one’s own dreams and plans to become a servant of the living God.

The Christian life seems so simple yet so elusive. It is so simple: love God and love others. But it is so hard to actually do that, and we constantly fall short of that simple goal. Like many missionaries, I struggle to understand how God could use an imperfect creature like me to accomplish his purposes for the world. I feel unworthy and incapable, at times taking too much of the responsibility upon myself and not trusting enough in God and in the power of prayer. And when I rely too much upon myself, I am constantly disappointed with the results.

If 2020 has revealed anything to me, it is just how desperately we need to be connected to Jesus, the true vine. Apart from him we can do nothing. Apart from him we are nothing but dead branches ready to be burned in the fire. Apart from him we have no hope in this world. Apart from him our lives are meaningless and all of our efforts and achievements are in vain. Apart from him, although we might pursue pleasure, we will never experience true joy. Joy—just a few days ago Martha and I were talking about the fact that Christians should be known as people of deep joy. Yet somehow it seems that joy is fading from the church. Of all people Christians should have joy no matter what circumstances they face, but it seems that we have grown soft. As the hardships of 2020 came upon us, we began to find out just how spiritually bankrupt we had become and just how much we were dependent upon the things of this world for happiness. And when those things were taken away, the true state of our spirituality was revealed.

Let us join the angel in shouting Hallelujah!

As I look at the nativity scene, I am struck by the fact that the angels are not wearing masks. They are not subject to the disease and sickness of this world, neither in a physical sense nor in a spiritual sense. I find myself longing for that day when all things will be made new, and we too will no longer be subject to the physical and spiritual illnesses that beset us in this fallen world. But rather we will finally become all that God has created us to be. Our enemies—sin, death, and Satan—will finally be conquered, and we will reign with Christ forever and ever. And then God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” That is the hope of Christmas, and that is the source of our joy, peace, and strength in difficult times.