Transforming Lives

00:00
Kelsey Grulke
This is God’s Word that transforms lives, and we want to make sure that whatever resources are needed for that are available and are easily accessible for the people that need them. 

00:25
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. My name is Rich Rudowske. I’m the Chief Operating Officer here at LBT. 

00:33
Rich Rudowske
Today’s conversation is with Carl and Kelsey Grulke. They and their five children are missionaries working in the southern African nation of Botswana. We sat down to talk about missionary life with a big family, their work with various languages in Botswana, and some thoughts on multilingualism and its impact on Bible translation and scripture engagement strategy, as they say in Botswana, “Let’s go!” 

01:01
Rich Rudowske
All right, Carl and Kelsey, welcome to the podcast this morning. 

01:04
Kelsey Grulke
Thank you. 

01:05
Carl Grulke
Yeah, it’s great to be here. 

01:06
Rich Rudowske
And before we get started talking about some of your ministry and work, I’d like our listeners to get to know you a little bit. Tell us some about your background, what you did previously, how you got involved in Bible translation ministry. 

01:17
Carl Grulke
Yeah, so we first heard about LBT while were at seminary, Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. We were just, when we kind of first heard those statistics about Bible translation and the need there was in the world today, with so many languages that don’t have a Bible in their own language, were really kind of blown away, and it kind of just stuck in our minds as, like, that’s really something that would be an area we would like to be involved with in working in those kinds of things. And so that kind of just stuck in our heads. And long story short, I guess God kind of worked through a variety of different ways to bring us to working with LBT. After I graduated from seminary, I was a pastor in Lincoln, Nebraska for a while. 

02:00
Carl Grulke
But then when we really felt God calling us to join LBT and to help out in that need for Bible translation. And so we love the organization of LBT, and the mission is really important, and so we’re really happy to be working with LBT. I don’t know. 

02:20
Rich Rudowske
Awesome. And how about you, Kelsey? 

02:23
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah, so we grew up together. High school sweethearts, all those things. I went to college for youth and family ministry. After a couple of years, after were done, Carl felt the call to seminary, and we ended up there. First year of seminary, we heard about Lutheran Bible Translators, and went to our friend’s house for free pizza because we heard the recruiter was going to be there with free pizza and found out that this is a really exciting mission. And then the next summer, went to the IDIOM event. They call it Mission Explorers now, I think. And by the time that was done, we knew if we ever work overseas, we want to work with LBT. But then at the end of seminary, it just wasn’t the right time. 

03:05
Kelsey Grulke
So we ended up taking a normal call, like all the seminarians do after seminary, to Christ Lutheran Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s a great place, and we loved it. A couple years in, we started to feel God’s call to something else, and, well, we had three kids at the time, and we knew we wanted to have a fourth one, so we said, you know, well, let’s work on that, and then we’ll start thinking about where God might be calling us from here. And then we found out four kids was going to be five. We found out were pregnant with twins. And as funny as it sounds, that was our big come to Jesus moment of, okay, what do we really feel like God’s calling us to? What do we want our lives to look like? What do we think God’s calling us into? 

03:52
Kelsey Grulke
And we thought, well, maybe it is LBT, but there’s like a million different things that are going to have to fall into place for this to be the right thing. So the long story short, know one by one, all of those million things fell into place and we applied to LBT and were called and then accepted and haven’t looked back. 

04:14
Carl Grulke
Yeah, very good. 

04:15
Rich Rudowske
And then, after some training and inviting churches into partnership with your ministry, you embarked for Botswana. Tell us a little bit about Botswana. 

04:25
Kelsey Grulke
We really like living in Botswana. In Botswana, there’s about 31 languages spoken among 2 million people. Very sparsely populated country. 

04:36
Carl Grulke
The country is about the size of the state of Texas. So to give you an idea of how big it is, you can kind of imagine 2 million people spread over that amount of area. Yeah, it’s quite sparsely populated. 

04:49
Kelsey Grulke
It’s a beautiful area, though that sparse population gives plenty of room for animals and people to live together in. Know all of those beautiful African savannah landscapes you think of? They’re in Botswana. 

05:01
Rich Rudowske
Right. 

05:02
Kelsey Grulke
It’s a very stable democracy. It’s got a cool history of setting good precedents for how we’re going to use our country’s mineral wealth for the betterment of all people. Man, we could talk for about just that for an hour, but I suggest you watch the movie “A United Kingdom”, if you want a short history of why Botswana is so cool. 

05:25
Carl Grulke
Yeah, it’s a story about Botswana’s first president and how he kind of rose to power and the pieces moving around that. So it’s a really interesting movie. I think it came out in 2016 or something like that. 

05:38
Kelsey Grulke
Something like that, yeah. So we live in northwest Botswana, and most of the people in Botswana live in the southeast, so we’re up in the opposite corner of the country from where most people live, but it’s where most of the minority languages are around that area of the country. Most of the languages that still do not have any Scripture in them are in that area. So we ended up in Maun, Botswana, which we love. It’s a big enough town that there’s a school there for our kids. There’s grocery stores that have everything we need, if not always everything we want. It’s just a good place to be. Lots of fun for the family, as well as lots of Bible translation work to be done. 

06:18
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So you mentioned that you ended up going, then with five children. And what do you find kind of pros and cons about life with your family in the Botswana context? And right now you’re back in the know. What do you find pros and cons about life here versus life over in Botswana? 

06:39
Carl Grulke
Well, I mean, everything is more complicated with five. I mean, that goes without saying. When you’re trying to do anything, it just takes longer when you’ve got five kids, regardless. That’s true. And so you’re speaking from experience there, right, Rich? 

06:54
Rich Rudowske
That’s very true, yes. 

06:56
Carl Grulke
But I think even though it is a little bit more complicated, there’s a lot of joy that comes along with it. We’re able to kind of bring our kids along with us and explore this beautiful part of God’s creation. And they really like living in Botswana. They do. Which makes it, like, 100 times easier for us if the kids are happy. That just makes it so much better for us as parents to have that relief that they enjoy living there. They’ve got friends, they’ve got their school that they really enjoy and all those kinds of things. So that’s just great and really is a benefit. Additionally, just the fact that we have five kids kind of gives us a little bit of standing in the community. We’re married, we have five kids. 

07:46
Carl Grulke
That kind of raises our level in the community in Botswana as being respectable citizens. Yeah, exactly. We’re respectable citizens. So that’s been really a great bonus for us as know, there are hard parts, know that’s not all just wonderful and great. It’s challenging. And it’s not always easy to take five kids somewhere or to work out. Okay, if I’m going here, what are we doing with the kids? Or if Kelsey’s got a meeting and if we’ve all got meetings and things like that, how are we going to handle this? So we have a lot of logistical things on a regular basis that we have to think about. 

08:26
Kelsey Grulke
But yeah, I think as compared to raising them in the U.S., it just seems like kids have a longer childhood in Botswana. Our oldest daughter is eleven and she’d be in full-on tween mode in the US. And it seems like kids in Botswana, they stay kids longer, they play outside, they enjoy the kid activities for longer. And we love that our kids are getting kind of that longer childhood, a chance to take some natural risks. They’re outside so much more than they would have the opportunity to be in America. Not to mention their school is very diverse. About half the kids in the school are Botswana local kids who are from Botswana, and about half are from around the world. So they have classmates from everywhere. 

09:14
Kelsey Grulke
So aside from academics, we love that they’re learning how to get along with kids that don’t look like me or don’t think like me and what that looks like in their lives and then on into the future, we feel like that’s going to have huge benefits. Probably the biggest downside is just being so far from our families. We miss the support of grandparents and aunts and uncles as well as just being together for holidays and those kind of things, which is great while we’re back, just to have so much time around our families. It’s really nice. 

09:45
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, for sure. Those moments are so much more special when you’ve been away for a little bit. 

09:51
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah. 

09:52
Rich Rudowske
Tell us some about the work that you’ve come to do there, the groups you’re working with and some of the stuff you’re working on right now. 

09:59
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah. 

09:59
Carl Grulke
So we are working with two different languages in two different Bible translation projects. One of those languages is Shekgalagari, which you’re somewhat familiar with, Rich. And so that Bible translation project is working in the New Testament, and we are really excited about that because we’re really closely approaching our goal in publication. And so we’re working now to kind of have our final put. We’re hoping that we can kind of finally push toward publication and then in 2021 we’ll be able to launch the Shekgalagari New Testament. So we’re really excited about that. The Bakalagari people, they live mostly down in the southwest part of Botswana, out in the Kalahari desert, but they’re found all over Botswana. But that’s kind of, I don’t know their homeland, for lack of a better word, there. 

10:57
Carl Grulke
And so it’s been really great to kind of get to know some of those communities and engage with some of the speakers of Shekgalagari in those ways. We’ve been able to travel to a lot of different villages and things like that to do community checking and raise awareness for the Bible translation project. And it’s been really encouraging and exciting to see people excited about speaking Shekgalagari, to see people excited about a Bible translation into Shekgalagari. So we’re really excited about our hopeful launch for next year and then what the future holds in terms of what we might move on to in translation and what other opportunities will be available for us in Shekgalagari. Yeah, the other language group that we’re working with called the Shiei. And those people live more to the north along the Okavango Delta. 

11:46
Carl Grulke
And so that language group is located a little bit farther north. They’re mostly there. And we’ve been really blessed to be able to work with them as well and also to kind of have some local leadership there in Botswana kind of been able to raise up some local leadership there in Botswana to help us in managing that project and thinking about how we can do these kinds of things and work in these projects. It’s been really neat to kind of think about those things. That project is a little bit farther behind Shekgalagari, which is fine. I’m not comparing them or anything like that. 

12:21
Carl Grulke
But, yeah, it’s really neat to see the progress that’s being made there as well, especially trying to reach out to those local communities and villages and things like that, where Shiei is spoken, to reach out and make those kinds of connections. It’s so important for the projects to have those connections because it really promotes community ownership and speaker ownership of not only of their language, but of this Bible translation project as well. 

12:50
Rich Rudowske
Yes. And so I think our listeners have or believe that they’re familiar with Bible translation. They’ll hear that term and expect that’s part of the work. And then Kelsey’s role is to come alongside churches and language communities to develop some scripture engagement strategies. So let’s talk a little bit about that. First of all, what do we mean when we say scripture engagement? 

13:11
Kelsey Grulke
So the goal of scripture engagement is that the translated Bibles aren’t just sitting on a shelf, that they’re in people’s hands and in people’s hearts. Part of that scripture engagement work, to me, what I call the boring stuff, but is super necessary and has to be in place first are things like sustainable distribution systems, as well as making sure that the availability is correct. So we need to make sure that if we’re developing scripture resources, whether it’s videos or Bible study materials or even the book itself, that it’s acceptable to the community, that there’s not something that sets them off or something that I wouldn’t necessarily understand cross-culturally that would make them say, oh, no, this is not our resource. This is your resource. So it doesn’t really speak to them. 

14:05
Kelsey Grulke
For example, the Kalanga Bible in Botswana, the full Bible, was launched in 2018. So they have their full Bible. Somewhere along the line in the project, they did a dubbing of the Jesus Film, which has been dubbed into a couple of thousand languages. It’s an evangelistic tool that a lot of different people have used all over the world. So they did this big project to translate the script of the Jesus Film, and then they get it dubbed over. It’s a big project. And I was asking someone about it and she said, “Oh, yes, we did that. And all we have it on is these big boxes and we can’t watch it.” Okay, so they’ve got it on VHS. No one has a VHS player. No one even has a DVD player. 

14:53
Kelsey Grulke
If we want that to be a resource that’s in use, it needs to be on a micro SD card so people can play it from their phones, which most people, or many people have smartphones, or it needs to be available to stream from something that doesn’t require their data, because phone data is expensive. So part of scripture engagement is figuring out what will be helpful to people to really come to know the story of Jesus better and in the deepest parts of their heart. We’re finding a lot of places. Hearing the Scriptures, rather than reading them helps people understand them better. So we’re working on audio recordings of the translations as well, with the goal that those are available at the same time as the published print book. 

15:38
Kelsey Grulke
Most people will want both that you have the book because it proves that it’s God’s Word and you can see it on your shelf. But to be honest, I think most people will interact with scriptures more through an app on their phone or through the audio version. So that’s one of the things I’ve been working on in scripture engagement is making the audio available through an app as well as the text through awesome resources we have, like Scripture app builder that makes building apps possible for people who have less tech experience, like me, but just all those different ways of how do we help people understand that this book has something to do with their lives and that it’s transformative. It’s not just something awesome in their language, which it is. 

16:28
Kelsey Grulke
And it’s not just a huge project that gives them status as a language. If this is, for example, the first thing printed in their language, it’s not just something that raises their prestige or gives them a sense of community pride, which those things are great. But it’s also, this is God’s word that transforms lives. And we want to make sure that whatever resources that are needed to help people make that shift into God’s Word is life giving, that whatever resources are needed for that are available and are easily accessible for the people that need them. 

17:10
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. Yeah. I think if we think about the work that Lutheran Bible Translators does with our churches and partners, it’s to help equip the church, especially to remove barriers to the Gospel, especially those that arise from lack of understanding of the Scripture or lack of availability of the Scripture in a language more easily understood. So, in the one sense, then, at sort of a broad sense, even Bible translation itself is Scripture engagement. But then there is a need to talk about it in this sense as well, in terms of strategy, distribution, product selection, whether it’s at the time of the translation as it’s going on, or, as you mentioned, the Kalanga one. That’s already done. Now, let’s start talking about, well, how else can this be used? 

17:56
Rich Rudowske
So, yeah, scripture engagement is broad and narrow and really digging deep to equip the church and the people of God to engage that scripture in a transformative way. 

18:06
Kelsey Grulke
Exactly. 

18:08
Rich Rudowske
So you are working on a Master’s, right? On and off. Yeah. What a blessing that distance education is the thing, and that’s how it was. And now that’s how a lot of education is going on. So, for your Master’s program, you wrote some about your experiences, Kelsey, in Botswana, and you suggested that the implications of translanguaging should be considered in planning scripture engagement strategy. So tell us a little bit more about that. What does that even mean? 

18:38
Kelsey Grulke
Sure, I’ll do my best. I’m still learning myself. 

18:41
Carl Grulke
Okay. 

18:41
Kelsey Grulke
But what the understanding is, this whole idea of translanguaging is that we, from cultures that tend to be more monolingual, have kind of described multilingualism in terms of- we usually talk about code-switching. So we almost think about it as, let’s say I have my English box, and from that box, I choose my English words and I speak English, or I could switch into my French box, and I could choose my French words and speak French. Or I could choose my Setsuana box and choose my Setsuana words and grammar and speak Setsuana. So as myself, who grew up in a very monolingual culture, that’s kind of how I think of language and how until recently, most linguists have thought about language in terms of and when I switch, we call it code-switching. 

19:31
Kelsey Grulke
So in my brain, I’m going from my English box and then I’m switching to my French box. But as more people who are not from the more monolingual cultures have been studying linguistics, they say that’s not the actual lived experience of multilingual people. 

19:47
Rich Rudowske
Okay? 

19:48
Kelsey Grulke
Multilingual people have one linguistic repertoire, and it might include grammars and vocabulary from many different languages. And the best way for them to engage, whether that’s in education or in church or in studying the scriptures, is in a situation where they are free to use all of their linguistic repertoire. 

20:11
Rich Rudowske
Okay? 

20:11
Kelsey Grulke
So a lot of this research has been done for primary school education and how much better, for example, Spanish-speaking kids do when they’re welcome to use their Spanish and English language repertoires, which is all one in their brain, and if they’re welcome to use more of their full linguistic repertoire, they’re going to be more successful in learning and the same is true for engaging with the scriptures and learning about God and worshipping God. If people are more free to use their full linguistic repertoire, they’re going to learn better. It’s going to connect deeper to their hearts. That’s a little bit different than the way we kind of talk about it in Bible translation. A lot of we need to translate Scriptures into people’s heart language. 

20:59
Kelsey Grulke
The challenge in that is we’re assuming that each person has only one heart language, which if you’ve ever worshipped in a language different than your own, you know that you can connect with the Lord in a language that’s not your mother tongue, the one you learned first, necessarily. So it’s this notion of we can only connect with God in our heart language, or we can only connect best with God in our heart language that’s being challenged. 

21:27
Rich Rudowske
Okay? 

21:27
Kelsey Grulke
Now, that doesn’t mean we don’t still need scripture engagement or Bible translation in minority languages. The full Bible translation projects are still very important for scripture engagement and for the communities themselves and for the church. But as we talk about how are we going to help people get these Scriptures into their hearts and into their lives, we have to recognize that the world is not monolingual. Most people are going to be worshiping, are going to be studying are going to be most comfortable conversing about and conversing with God in more than one language. Sure. One time I saw this really in action for us was in our church in Botswana. We attend the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Botswana. 

22:19
Carl Grulke
Mound Branch Mound Congregation. 

22:21
Kelsey Grulke
Mound congregation. So when we go to church, we have speakers of many different languages. In church, there’s English speakers, there’s Setsuana speakers. There’s people whose mother tongue would be Shekgalagari and Herrero people, Swahili speakers. There’s all kinds of different mother tongues or heart languages in our congregation. Now, some of the hymns, some of the songs we sing are in Setsuana, some are in English. Occasionally they’re in those other languages as well. When that congregation sings in English, there are certain songs that don’t go well. Like on Reformation Day, we tried to sing, “Mighty Fortress”… It was really bad. 

23:09
Carl Grulke
Oh, my goodness. 

23:10
Kelsey Grulke
The melody just did not translate. The words were difficult. Even in Setsuana, even in the translated version, were slogging through that song. 

23:19
Carl Grulke
They could just not connect. 

23:20
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah. 

23:21
Carl Grulke
Turns out people who live in southern Africa have a hard time with a melody and a tune and words from a 16th-century German monk. Weird. 

23:31
Kelsey Grulke
Well, in some cases, that’s true, but in other times, when I hear that congregation singing, “How Great Thou Art” in English, you can feel that it is their heart music. I can’t say because this was not your first language, because it’s not your mother tongue, you’re not connecting with the Lord as deeply using this song. That’s not my place, and that’s not what it sounds like. You can tell that the Holy Spirit is at work in each of their hearts singing this song that is not from their traditional music style. It is not in their traditional mother tongues or heart languages. But they are worshiping the Lord in spirit and in truth, using that English hymn. And we, even though we don’t understand it all, we worship deeply in the Setsuana liturgy. Sure, we know what’s going on. It touches our hearts. 

24:27
Kelsey Grulke
We feel like we can commune with the Lord using that, even though it’s not our home language. So in scripture engagement, especially in how global our world is today, we have to think a lot about multilingualism and how we can help people engage with scriptures, not just in the first language that they learned or even in the language they’re most comfortable with. But how do we help them engage in scriptures in the same way they talk in normal life, which is going to be translanguaging in a lot of cases, switching back and forth between languages using English words within Satswana grammar or vice versa. And that’s how people are speaking and how people are understanding the world around them. And we want to make sure that they’re free to understand the scriptures in the same way. 

25:15
Rich Rudowske
That makes sense. So without putting you on the spot, if a scripture engagement strategy, if a church or a community has called on you to help them think through some things and you’re thinking through the implications of translanguaging, is it at least in part, just a matter of not saying, well, let’s only use this one language, that the availability and all resources that are available in multiple languages are then on the table? And that would be a shift actually then in scripture engagement strategy from what may have been thought before. Is that basically it? 

25:49
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah, that sounds fair. I think especially in more urban areas, you’re just not going to have a monolingual Bible study. In most cases, there might be times that only the Shekgalagari speakers would get together and would have a Bible study in Shakalahadi and down where most people are Shekgalagari first language speakers, they might do more of that, but especially in more urban settings, how do we honor each person’s linguistic past while still helping everyone be able to engage together in God’s Word? 

26:23
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, and that’s really fascinating because that also then speaks to another assumption in the Bible translation end of things, which some could understand to be done really in a vacuum and not thinking about the fact that when people have these Bibles and are using them, they’re going to sit with other people that have a different language Bible, or maybe even yourself could reference two or three. So now these versions are getting compared, and you have to think that through even in the translation process is how are people going to look at this and see how does this compare with language versions that we already have access to? There’s some implications to think through when even in the translation process there too. 

27:05
Kelsey Grulke
Definitely, yeah. 

27:06
Carl Grulke
And it’s been really good to kind of be able to have this kind of, in our minds as we’re doing translation, to kind of think about, to be able to think a little bit of those things, like think ahead, so to speak, to be thinking about the scripture engagement stuff before the Bible, so that it’s part of the Bible translation project, not what happens after I publish. So that we’re thinking about these things as we’re doing the project rather than trying to tack it on to the end. It’s much more valuable for the translation. So that we can anticipate those kinds of things, but also for the engagement, that we’re already thinking about how we can do this engagement stuff before we even have the Bible sitting there. 

27:49
Kelsey Grulke
So along with that, while we’re translating, when we’re doing community checking, when we’re out reviewing what the translators have done, most people in those community review sessions are at least trilingual. They speak some level of English, some level of Setsuana and Shekgalagari. If we’re in that project, working with that project, and that means they are referencing the Bible in different languages as we’re checking, which makes things take longer but ultimately ensures a better translation. 

28:30
Carl Grulke
Sometimes they’re doing it mentally where they’re like, oh, if I remember that verse from the Setsuana Bible or the English Bible, and it doesn’t seem like we have the same meaning or we have the same thing there. Sometimes they’re actually like, they’ve got the other Bible out on the table and they’re looking at it while we’re going over the verse and comparing, which is good. And it’s also challenges…sometimes because we’re trying to focus on other things when we’re doing the community checking, but it still shows. It’s just an example of how that translanguaging, that multilingual mindset is there even for people for whom this is, Shekgalagari is, their primary language. 

29:17
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. So, Kelsey, your paper also dealt with a little bit with multilingualism in conjunction with urbanization, which is a huge field of study that a lot of folks have touched. But just curious, what are some factors that you see leading to urbanization or culture shift in Botswana that you’ve observed in your time living there? 

29:36
Kelsey Grulke
A lot of it has to just do with economics in bigger cities. That’s where the jobs are. And it’s becoming more and more necessary for people who maybe have been farmers to have some kind of outside income. So it might be people tend to live more with their extended families and in closer relationship with their extended families. So while they might traditionally have been subsistence farmers, it’s becoming more and more necessary to have some money so that your kids can pay their school fees and you can be engaged in the larger community so you can buy data for your cell phone. People have more monetary needs than maybe in the past. So more of the family is moving to the city where they can get more jobs like that. I think that’s the primary one in Botswana. 

30:22
Carl Grulke
The city where we live in ,Maun, is a tourist area so a lot of people will come to Maun because they know that they can get a job working for some sort of safari company or a lodge that’s there or something like that, where they know that they can get a job. And then also for a lot of them, they have a chance to work on their English so that they’re able to improve their English skills, which hopefully will allow them to kind of move up or to find other employment that relies on them being fluent in English. Again, that’s just kind of part of life in a tourist town is that kind of figuring out how to work around those tourists and how we can engage with them and kind of tap into that economy, so to speak? 

31:10
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah, I think the other big factor is just the globalization, how much more connected our world is. 

31:16
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. 

31:17
Kelsey Grulke
People know more about how other people in other parts of the world live and work, for better or for worse. And it is for both. There’s good things that come out of it and there’s bad things that come out of it. But they see how other people in other parts of the world live and they might want parts of that. They might say, you know, the way that Americans do this part of life, I really like that. I’d like to do more of that. And in the urban areas are where they can be more global citizens or live more of a Western lifestyle, for better or for worse, like I said. 

31:51
Rich Rudowske
So as you’ve spent some time in Botswana, what do you think the church here in the West can learn from some of the folks that you’ve worked in your missionary service? 

32:00
Carl Grulke
I think one of the most important things that we want people to know about the church, especially, I mean, in Botswana and even around the world, is that the church is alive and well in Botswana. 75% of the people there identify as Christians. And there are churches, vibrant churches in every single village I’ve been to in Botswana, there are pastors who are very talented preachers who are very engaged with their local communities. I mean, the Lutheran church in Botswana has evangelists as like an official role where they have people who are called and sent out to do evangelism in like, I think that is an important thing for people to realize. There’s this idea that as missionaries, we’re the ones that go and share the Ggospel with all these people who don’t know it. 

32:54
Carl Grulke
And in fact, that’s like the opposite of what we do. We are not like front-line evangelists. That’s not what we’re there to do. We are there as support people. We want to help translate the Bible. We want to help put the tools into the hands of the people who are doing that work so that they can do the best work that they are called to do. To have that Bible translation in the language that they’re speaking so that they can evangelize in it, so that they can share the know. I am incredibly thankful for the church there and the passion that they have for reaching all these. The Shekgalagari Bible translation project started as an outreach of the Lutheran church in Botswana. As we want to reach this people group, how can we do that? Well, translate the Bible into their… 

33:48
Carl Grulke
So, you know, realizing that and knowing that the church around the world, the church in Africa, the church in Botswana, I think a lot of people in the West have a warped perspective of what it looks like when in fact it is very vibrant. It is full of people who love God, people who are passionate about Scripture, people who are passionate about the Gospel. And it’s so incredibly refreshing to experience that. To see that passion and to see that joy that people have is just a wonderful thing. 

34:26
Kelsey Grulke
I agree along those same lines. The kingdom of God is going to be just fine right as the church is in a time of shift in the Western world or decline, sometimes people talk about being afraid of the death of the church or being a post-Christian nation, and those are big scary things to throw around. But the kingdom of God is fine and it will continue to grow. God will be just fine. Even if for some reason every single church and Christian in America were to go away, God’s kingdom will still come and God is still at work in the world. As we see kind of this global shift of Christianity to the south. 

35:13
Kelsey Grulke
As Bible translators in particular, we feel like it’s our responsibility to share with our brothers and sisters who are taking up the mantle of church leadership in the world and to give them the best possible resources to be the leaders of the global church. So we have so many amazing commentaries and Bibles and all kinds of amazing resources in the West to help people learn the gospel and to know about the Bible. Our job as Bible translators is to make sure that our brothers and sisters in the global south have the best possible resources as they kind of take over as the leaders of the global church. 

35:57
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. Excellent. As you look ahead, what are you most excited about in your work? 

36:03
Carl Grulke
Well, as I look at the translation side of our projects, I mean, I’m excited for a launch of the New Testament. It’s going to be an exciting thing. We’ve been working on this translation with this New Testament translation project for years now, and we’re really excited to kind of reach that milestone of being able to launch and publish the New Testament. And so we’re really excited about that. I think it’s going to be a great thing for a lot of the Shekgalagari speaking communities where they’re able to see, to have something in their language. I think it’s going to do a lot to really boost the church and the excitement that people have for it. We’re hoping and planning that we’ll be able to continue into the Old Testament. And so we’re starting to think about, okay, well, what does that mean? 

36:54
Carl Grulke
The Old Testament is twice as long as the New Testament. So that’s going to be a big undertaking. And so maybe we need to make. What kind of changes do we need to make? What can we do to get ready for shifting into a different gear, for looking at that project or for that new part of this project? And so, thinking about that are the things that I’m really excited about. The people, the translators that we work with in Botswana are just really, they’re wonderful. I love to brag, especially when I’m among people from, like, we probably have one of the most talented set of translators in maybe any LBT project. They are just so incredibly, I should, I should say who they are. Their names are Pontsho and Hanang, and they are just incredibly talented. 

37:49
Carl Grulke
And we’re so blessed by their skills and abilities that they have not only just in Shekgalagari, but also in Shiei. The translators there, Kiane and Sele, are excellent translators as well. And so it’s just such a joy to work with people who are good at their jobs and care about their language and really are invested in these projects just as much as we are. 

38:11
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah, I think I’m most excited about the untapped potential in Botswana. There’s a lot of very smart people who are educated and who care a lot about the Bible and care about the church and the Lord’s message going forth in Botswana. And we are positioned to be able to help them reach their potential as far as education or jobs or places, plugging them into places that they can use their skills and their gifts to spread the gospel to their own people. And there is so much potential there that I’m just so excited to explore. 

38:54
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. As your family continues to work in ministry, what is the role of the Bible in your lives, and how does that speak to the way you approach your work? 

39:06
Kelsey Grulke
Okay. For me, studying the Bible cross-culturally and honestly engaging with Scripture when we’re talking to people who have a different, entirely different lived experience of the world means that the Bible isn’t what I thought it was necessarily. 

39:21
Rich Rudowske
Okay. 

39:22
Kelsey Grulke
And it doesn’t need to fit into my Western genres and my Western ideas of what scholarship is or what religion is or even who God is, for the Bible to still be life-changing and meaningful in my life. 

39:36
Rich Rudowske
Sure. 

39:36
Kelsey Grulke
And the way that God speaks to me and when I honestly engage with scripture thinking cross-culturally, most of what I thought I knew about scripture eventually falls away because most of what I thought about scripture is from a specifically Western point of view and from within our own culture and our own time, and what we feel like has been, oh, this is the traditional interpretation of this passage. Well, turns out it’s not. And maybe our traditional interpretation of this passage is at best 150 years old. 

40:14
Rich Rudowske
Right. Yeah. So it really opens up this idea that what if there’s more, and what are the implications of that? 

40:20
Kelsey Grulke
Yeah, it changes how faith looks, and it changes how I study the Bible. 

40:26
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. 

40:27
Kelsey Grulke
And I don’t know how to fit that into a podcast answer, and I just. 

40:32
Rich Rudowske
I think that worked pretty well. Okay, Carl, you have anything you want. 

40:36
Rich Rudowske
To add to that? 

40:36
Carl Grulke
Yeah, I think, for me, thinking, know the impact of the Bible in my life and my ministry and those kinds of things, it really has been a huge blessing to have the opportunity to live in this cross-cultural environment where you do have a chance to kind of see how other people interpret things and how other people see things and how other people’s experiences shape how they look at the scriptures. One of the things that I love most about Bible translation is that there are so many different ways that our language helps open the Scripture deeper to us. I went to seminary. I learned Greek. I learned Hebrew. And that opened up the Scriptures in a way that I hadn’t had before. 

41:25
Carl Grulke
It’s like, oh, it’s incredible to learn about the meanings of these words and how there’s all these things going on that you don’t get when you just look at an english translation. 

41:34
Rich Rudowske
Not that an English translation is bad, but it’s just because of language. It just can’t communicate. You just can’t communicate everything in every single language. And so it works that way, but then also when we go, it works the other way because we translate the Bible into these other languages. And these other languages have incredibly wonderful and beautiful ways of describing things or classifying things or explaining things about who God is and why that matters. And all these kinds of things where it just opens your eyes in an incredible way to have this multilingual experience of the Bible to see how that impacts not only the people who read those languages, but also you as you learn these things about that, it’s just incredible to see how much more there is to learn about God when we translate the scriptures into another language. 

42:37
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, absolutely. So we have folks listening who may be considering how they could get involved further in Bible translation ministry, maybe by praying or by giving financially, and maybe even some who are considering missionary service. What advice would you have for folks that are looking at next steps and how to get involved more in this kind of ministry? 

42:57
Kelsey Grulke
Step one, pray. I think that’s one of the most freeing things of becoming part of LBT. I always told God, like, I will do anything you want, but don’t make me be in one of those jobs. Where you have to fundraise your own salary. And here we are. 

43:16
Rich Rudowske
Okay. 

43:17
Kelsey Grulke
The fact that God does what God wants to do is a good thing. I think as far as, like, when we visit churches or talk to people that are thinking about supporting Bible translation in one way or the other, it is so freeing to believe with all my heart that God knows what God’s doing. And not everybody’s going to be called to give to Bible translation or to go be a Bible translator. God calls all of us to different things, and I don’t need to be afraid of that. If somebody’s not feeling called to give to Bible translation, that’s fine. God will call them to give in another way. And the freedom of that is so wonderful. 

44:01
Kelsey Grulke
Just know that God will prompt you to be involved where you need to be involved and to pray where you need to pray and maybe even to go. God’s got it. 

44:12
Carl Grulke
Yeah, I think that’s been one of our biggest experiences, is just seeing how God provides. For what God wants to happen. God will provide for what God wants to happen. And whether for us, that was every little one of those things falling into place for us to join LBT and for us, it has also been. Our, like, we’ve managed to meet our fundraising goals every year that we’ve been with LBT. It’s just been a wonderful blessing to us to have that experience and to know and kind of like that confirmation that, yes, this is what God is calling us to do because he is providing for us to do it and so that’s just been a wonderful lesson that we’ve learned many times through our lives and our ministry and those kinds of things and I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind. 

45:12
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Carl and Kelsey, so much for your time, for being with us today. It’s great to hear some about how God’s at work in your lives, and especially with your colleagues in Botswana, too. So thanks for your time. 

45:23
Kelsey Grulke
Thank you, Rich. 

45:24
Carl Grulke
Yeah, thank you. 

45:29
Rich Rudowske
Thanks to Carl and Kelsey Grulke for being on the podcast today and sharing about your involvement in God’s mission in Botswana. We pray for the scripture projects nearing completion and for the Christian church throughout Botswana as the Holy Spirit prepares the hearts of the people to know Jesus as he is revealed in scripture, with no barriers in the language that speaks most deeply to them. Thank you for listening to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. Look for past episodes of the podcast lbt.org/podcast or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow Lutheran Bible Translators’ Social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or go to lbt.org to find out how you can get involved in the Bible translation movement and put God’s Word in their hands. 

46:21
Rich Rudowske
The Essentially Translatable podcast is edited and produced by Andrew Olson and distributed by Sarah Lyons. Our Executive Producer is Amy Gertz. Podcast artwork is designed by Caleb Rodewald. Music written and performed by Rob Veith. I’m Rich Rudowske. So long for now.