Thursday, August 4

Ezekiel stopped by and chatted with Aaron on our porch recently. When he left, Aaron wrote this encouraging summary:

On St. James' day, he was the gospel reader. As he prepared, an idea came to his mind of how to really get the people to understand what the work of Bible translation was really all about. Ezekiel looked ahead to the gospel reading for the special day and worked up a rough draft of the required verses from the gospel of Matthew (which is being drafted at this time by the Translation Team).

Ezekiel talked with the new District Priest of his plan and made sure the priest was approving and knew the intent was to build interest in God's word, not to deceive the people. 

When the time came in the service for the reading, Ezekiel had a Pijin Bible and put his paper with the Lavukaleve version of the reading discretely in the pages so that the congregation did not know it was there. 

He read the passage in Lavukaleve and the whole place was so surprised. Many afterward had comments for Ezekiel. One dealt with the reading itself. A member of the translation committee encouraged Ezekiel that he read it just right (a big issue for us as we are starting to sort out where to put punctuation marks). Another man asked where the Lavukaleve Bible was that he read from because he wanted to see it. Ezekiel explained that we don't have it yet, but that they now have a better idea of what we are doing in the translation project. Many talked about how clear and understandable it was in their language and how happy they were to hear it. There was also another big encouragement for Ezekiel who had worked hard on his draft making it have older words with full meaning, but balanced with the style of talk that the younger generation also uses. He got many comments that it was really good at being the real Lavukaleve for everyone.