Cool and uplifting stories to come

Rob properly noted that the snake incident unfairly overshadowed what should have been a momentously delightful week in my life. I began, after waiting for this time since 1997 (more than 11 years!), the work of scripture translation. And it was exciting stuff! I had great stories for Rob each day; new gems of addition to the church’s expression of God’s Word, fixing of transcription errors that had changed the meaning of words so dramatically as to damage the biblical integrity of the stories. Basically, I was finding my work to be of value and, in the cases of error correction, invaluable. It was immensely gratifying, to say the least. And I don’t mean to say ‘was’… it is gratifying stuff. I’m back it, now that my brain is fully focused and functional again. I started back at it Sunday afternoon. This week, I’ll not only be entering the word glosses and back translations as Sarah gives them to me but I’ll be making a listing of the scripture references for each story. That way, people who are trying to reclaim their Shiyeyi language and are using the Bible story book as a literacy tool can consult the other-language scriptures (e.g. Setswana, English) and come to an understanding of more obscure but rich Shiyeyi meanings by scriptural research. Hey, whatever gets people reading Bibles, eh?

So, snakes behind (or, geographically, beneath) me, the work is back to being gratifying. Cool and uplifting stories are to come.