The Word of God is going out!

When you're working in a translation office every day, working on the details of the Biblical text, it is sometimes hard to remember that God's Word is actively at work "out there". But our team has recently begun what we call "village testing", taking texts which we have translated out to Monkolé villages, where people are asked to listen and to comment on how well they understand and how the translation could be improved.

I don't go out with the team as we don't want people to come just because they see a white person, and it is better that it be the Monkolés on the team asking other Monkolés about the best way to express things in natural Monkolé. This is the best time of year to find people in the villages, as there is no fieldwork to be done at the moment, so my two colleagues have been going out once a week for the last few weeks.

It has been great to see that in every village they have visited, they have found people very willing to sit and listen for long periods of time and to give their comments on the text. In one village three people even enjoyed the book of Jonah so much that they asked to have their own copies of it to read again.

This stage of the work is obviously a help to us in making sure that our text is easily understood and natural-sounding, but it is also sometimes referred to as "pre-evangelism". I like to think of it as a kind of teaser campaign! Whatever you call it, it is inspiring to know that God's Word isn't just staying in our office, but is getting out to people who have never heard its message before.