Ross and Lyndal Webb
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News from Ross & Lyndal |
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Lyndal and I have had the privilege of fellowshipping with them, and at this conference for the first time another expatriate couple from another organisation that is about to start translation in the country was invited to join: Vanuatu Bible Translation is expanding its vision from being a partner with us (SIL) in the country to a role of coordinating efforts of different organisations so that we don’t tread on each other’s toes! Great that others are coming to join us in the task!
And even greater for us all (you included!) is that ni-Vanuatu are willing to share the heavy Bible translation load with us outsiders. As Pastor Peter, the VBT chairman, exhorted in one of his addresses, “Let’s work together, joining our experience and ability to make this wonderful work advance. Don’t think poorly of yourself because you have no degree. No, God has taken you and given you involvement.” Pastor Peter took the Bible teaching sessions every morning under the general heading of “A work with eternal significance”. It’s so good to see the level of “ownership” for the huge translation task rising.
As in other years, we were invited by the country’s mainministerial training college to teach a two week introductory translation course in October. We hope that we helped the students to get a better view of what it means and takes to be effective communicators of the Magnificent Message we are privy to.
With that finished we can almost look forward to the Christmas break coming up. After spending a week with the MegaVoice technical mob, I’ll join Lyndal in Sydney for a couple of weeks seeing (among others!) the boys (and to check out how Karen is growing!). Both Paul and Beth and Christopher and Karen have just completed well a year at respective Bible colleges. Still some years to go, but I think they all agree it was a year well spent. It’ll be good to spend a few days together to get the full story!
Lots of love,
Ross and Lyndal |
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11/11/09 email
August 09 news
Dear friends,
It would have been hard to imagine a better outcome for my time in PNG. Thanks for praying. Our aims were more than fulfilled. Everything worked. Not a travel glitch, not a man missing. Nothing! The idea was to finish polishing the Irumu New Testament so we can reprint it as soon as possible. We started the process at Christmas (well, really Gokisia, Kurup and other keen ones had been marking the NT over the past 10 years for improvement!) but didn’t finish. Nor did we finish recording it as we wished, so there was nothing to it but to go back.
Nicely, international mobile phone service hit PNG and the Irumu (if they walk for 6 hours!) so the final touches of planning the trip fell into place the week before I left, and became a certainty these past 3 weeks. Gokisia, Kurup, Sara and Wanzan all turned up at Ukarumpa on schedule the day after I’d arrived to set up camp. We decided not to go to the village - too much time wasted getting to and from, and I couldn’t have used the computer. So the 5 of us lived as single men, whooped it up on rice, sweet potato, 3 minute noodles, ‘beef crackers’, bread and peanut butter - and ploughed into the mission. We revised with a vengeance. The men had kept their end of the bargain by going through the remainder from the Christmas session during the year. We went through it again together and added all the latest changes to the NT text file. Without adding too many typos, I hope!
We got that done in a week and planned to record the 50+% of the NT that remained for MegaVoice ‘publishing’. I figured that we’d just get it done in the time remaining. The kind offer of a friend at Ukarumpa to lend his professional help by recording with two of the men while I worked with the other two reduced my projected 7 days to four. Finished? Well, almost. With three or 4 working days left the men decided that rather than going home we should revise and record the Psalms. What could I say in the face of such enthusiasm? We went for it. The men worked at night revising and during the day 3 of them continued that process while I recorded with one of them - in rotation so that all 4 of them got to record. In three days we got an amazing 86 Psalms recorded - making the number now recorded to just over 100. Maybe Paul will finish them off next month when he and Beth head to PNG for college mission in the highlands and then to Zuepak.
Two and a half weeks of work and fellowship (I ate with them most nights - they cooked!) has left us with a lot more to do. We’ll pass the print off to someone else to do the typesetting for the reprinting and just concentrate on the editing of the recordings to smooth them out. There’s more than enough there to fill the next year… Sure wish there was a way to make it happen quicker! The good news that the men brought from the village was that the players that we distributed last December with about 1/3 of the NT in place has only left people crying for more - more of the NT and more players for the hundreds that missed out. We’d love to capitalise on that wave as quickly as possible. Click here if you want to know more about MegaVoice (ignore the Vanuatu reference!).
Just before we went our separate ways we prayed together. Man, I thank God for those guys. He has given them an enthusiasm for the Scriptures and a commitment to living it and promoting it amongst their people to the Glory of God that is amazing to see. They even caught wind of a 4 year translation training course and feel up to taking that on! We’ll see where that leads. I’ll leave you with Gokisia’s parting prayer…
God our father, creator of all things, knower of all things, strong, famous, desirable; all those things are heaped up in you. Who on earth could command you to do anything? Everything on earth that has breath including mankind is only here because you spoke it into being. And we here, us family here, we praise you. Your name is holy and other and always will be. God, those who take your Word around, their feet are holy and beautiful. And if people like that hadn’t come to our parish, how on earth would we be believing? And if we were just hearing the message in a foreign tongue, how could we have become yours? But you are the owner of all knowledge. You know the heart and mind of all people and you see into our depths. If you hadn’t sent someone along, how would we have heard your Word, like Paul said in Romans? About that work we think of ourselves as fantastically fortunate. You yourself sent Ross and Lyndal - legs, hands, heart and all, to translate into our own language so that we have heard and are hearing your very own word. So we praise you with great thanks. Because of that work, some of us have become your own possession. The fruit of that work is that we believed. Your word was spoken and we believed. Fantastic! Thank you very much! Now, we thought the work was finished, but you’ve gathered us again to straighten it. We’ve worked with Ross and Lyndal, we’ve worked by ourselves, and now we’ve finished it. We’ve done it so that your work will go into the hearts of our people so that they will become yours. We couldn’t have done it by ourselves, and to support this work of changing people’s hearts we’ve been preaching. As we keep it up, may your word which is a fire, clean up the lives of our people back in our village. We aren’t just praying for ourselves. We are thinking of all those people here (at Ukarumpa) translating for other languages, and for Ross and Lyndal working in Vanuatu, so that your people here and there will praise you. And thanks for this time here at Ukarumpa. We haven’t been in need of anything - you have catered for our spirits and bodies. I’m praying in Jesus name. Care for us. Amen.
Love,
Ross & Lyndal
July 09 news
Dear friends,
Being on the same platform as the President and Prime Minister of a country as small as Vanuatu is no great feat, but being there and listening to the two highest men in the country speaking throughout Bible Week with testimony to their faith in God and the PM preaching a couple of stirring sermons on the place of the Word of God as the foundation of the nation was fantastic - not something we westerners might ordinarily expect from a PM! But I don’t mind my heart warmed on the odd occasion! The stint on the platform came with a week-long evening program organised by the Bible Society. We had the opportunity to present Bible translation at various times throughout ”Bible Week” to the crowds and to the daily changing cadre of political personalities - and nicely enough we didn’t even have to organise it ourselves!
So God keeps us busy — but our biggest prayer request is that it really is God that is keeping us busy for his great name’s sake. We don’t want to waste our time or yours with useless busyness!
Now this wasn’t useless… having Paul and Beth visiting during BCV* holidays! They’ve managed to keep our minds off work a bit and give us lots of other things to talk about and the odd excuse to escape the office for tropical shorelines — or coffee shops!
Just a couple of other highlights of the past months… A biggie was having all our teams in Vila in May for our Group Conference. This is a bi-yearly event where we have daily sessions where we hear from the Bible, listen to each other about how the years have been - highlights and lowlights(!), and do a bit of business and strategising for the future. The most memorable part of the conference for us was having Fergus Semler from St Jude’s Dural as our Bible speaker - and house guest. It was a great time with Fergus throwing his heart into both preaching and interacting.
Another significant feature of the week was taking delivery of Michael and Danielle Smith - our newest translation team. They got in a whole 1 day’s experience of the country before the week started. A week of mixing with and listening to their colleagues was probably the best introduction to the job ahead any team has ever had.
Last month I accompanied Michael and Danielle, and 16 month old Alexander to Motalava for them to check it out as a possible place to translate. We had a great time on the island (actually on the tiny one on the south-ish end) and were wooed with enthusiasm. Motalava has had a translation project going for 9 years now but needs help to complete. Yesterday the Smiths announced that they would take up the offer - fantastic! Pray for them now as they face their future, and the daunting prospect of moving to a place that does have weekly air service, but very sporadic shipping service.
Other water went under the bridge at the Southern end of the country. You’ll remember the Bill and Grace story - they were having a hard time on Aneityum and after a couple of visits and much discussion amongst ourselves and with church and community leaders, we decided that it might be best if Bill and Grace pulled out of the Aneityum project. Well, the good news is that all the talking and ‘reconciling’ that went into that process has seemed, under God, to bring a change for the good, and Bill and Grace have decided they will give it another shot. Please pray a lot for Bill and Grace and the community. The Translation row is not an easy one to hoe at the best of times, and this one has been full of rocks.
I guess that’ll do for the moment. We should write more often and have less to say! We are ever grateful for you all out there hovering in our background. Who knows what the prayers of you saints are wreaking. Some would say they can feel the prayers of their friends. For me it is enough to know that God has his designs for them and they will do his intended work!
Love,
Ross & Lyndal
*BCV = Bible College of Victoria
Dear Friends,
Usually we write after things have happened and let you know how it all went. And plenty of things have happened in the short time since Ross last wrote but I really just wanted to write to you about what we think is going to happen in the next few weeks!
On Thursday (30th) Ross plans to fly to Brisbane and the next day to Port Moresby and on to Ukarumpa. That should get him there on Friday afternoon, in time to meet Kurup, Gokisia, Wanjan and Sara, making their way from the village to Ukarumpa on Saturday.
The plan is for them all to work on completing the read through and revision of the Irumu New Testament that we didn’t quite get finished last December. We have heard via the occasional very brief mobile phone calls from Kurup, that the men themselves have worked through a number of the NT books we hadn’t completed - that’s great news. Still plenty to do - Psalms, Old Testament portions and quite a large number of questions which have arisen since entering the corrections we collected last year. And then there is the audio recording of it. The process feels a bit never-ending!! But we have planned this part of the process to end after 2 1/2 weeks! I’m sure you can work out plenty things you might pray for - we’d appreciate that.
For me - it’s keeping things going here. A work party will arrive next week to renovate one of our flats so I won’t be short of company. And I’m working with a few others towards the celebration of International Literacy Day on 14th August - a big day of competitions and activities at one of the local schools so I won’t be short of work either.
The last part of our plan is for Ross and I to meet in Newcastle for a few days - a couple of doctor’s appointments, a visit to SMBC, a few days with our parents. And then we’ll probably feel very happy to head back to the warmth of Port Vila again!
Love,
Lyndal