Leaders in Bible Translation

00:00
Jim Kaiser
The church here will be able to really be a leader in Bible translation in the future in this region, both within the country of Ethiopia and projects outside of the country. 

00:22
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the essentially translatable podcast brought to you lutheran Bible translators. I’m Rich Rudowski. 

00:27
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. And we want to say welcome back, Dr. Rich Rudowski, to the studio. You have been gone for. I don’t know, it felt like a while. 

00:38
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. 

00:38
Rich Rudowske
Quite a bit going on. 

00:39
Emily Wilson
Yeah. He was traveling, everybody. He was over in Ethiopia. Tell us a little bit about what you were doing over there. 

00:46
Rich Rudowske
We were in Ethiopia to celebrate several milestones that all came at the same time. We’ve been working on a building project there to support a Bible translation training program and generate income for sustainability for that program. So that building was finished and we had a dedication for the building. We also had the first class in that program, a bachelor of theology in Bible translation class, four year program at the seminary. The first class of graduates graduated from that program. 

01:16
Emily Wilson
Awesome. 

01:17
Rich Rudowske
And then the mission department of the McCannie Asus Church, the largest lutheran church in the world, was celebrating Bible Translation week, their very first launch of Bible translation week, and they celebrated it in June. You’ll hear about in the interview why they chose June for that as part of their own Bible translation history. So all three of those events were going on. And after those events were over and the dust settled and we had a chance to catch our breath, I had the chance to sit down with Jim and Susan Kaiser and Chris and Janine Pluger, some of the LBT missionaries in Ethiopia. And were just sitting around their dining room table. Power was, but, and it was kind of the end of a long day and a long couple of weeks. 

02:01
Rich Rudowske
But just put the microphone on the table and said, hey, let’s talk about what we experienced there, and that is what you will get to hear. 

02:07
Emily Wilson
Well, we hope you enjoy this interview, this panel with Dr. Jim and Susan Kaiser and Dr. Chris and Janine Pluger. 

02:20
Rich Rudowske
Okay, we are here in Addis Ababa and sitting around the table talking a little bit about the events we’ve had here. So you’re going to hear the melodic intonations of Jim Kaiser. Go ahead and say hi, Jim. 

02:34
Jim Kaiser
Hi, everybody. 

02:37
Rich Rudowske
Susan Kaiser hello. Chris Pluger. 

02:41
Chris Pluger
Hello. 

02:41
Rich Rudowske
And Janine Pluger. 

02:42
Janine Pluger
Hi. 

02:43
Rich Rudowske
And I’m rich Friedowski. But you already knew that. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about what we’ve been doing here the last couple weeks, the big events, the graduation of the first class of the Bible translation bachelor in theology students and also dedication of the Helgi center for Scripture Engagement at McCannie seminary. So let’s talk a little bit about the program first, Jim. Talk a little bit about the bachelor in theology and Bible translation program. It’s been going for four years now. What’s the purpose and goal of that project? 

03:17
Jim Kaiser
Yeah, the purpose is to help train local people here in Ethiopia to be pastors who have the ability to be involved in translation projects, either as translators in their mother tongue language or as project advisors who can help out with other projects that need help with that. 

03:38
Chris Pluger
So it’s not like primarily a bachelor’s degree in Bible translation, it’s a bachelor’s of theology. And to my knowledge, my understanding is essentially we make them take all of their electives in Bible translation area. So they’re very specialized in that. But still, it’s the general bachelor of theology program, as Jim said, that equips people to be workers in their church, pastors, evangelists, whatever, to go back and have a professional career with the church, but with Bible translation knowledge in their back pocket. So at the very least, if they end up pastoring a church in an area where Bible translation work is going on, they can be an asset. They’ll know, they’ll be a promoter, all those types of things. 

04:21
Chris Pluger
But ideally, as Jim said, we pick people who can then actually actively participate in ongoing Bible translation work here in Ethiopia because the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. 

04:33
Rich Rudowske
Right. And the difference then between this and just a set of trainings for Bible translation, or maybe a massive goal to train a bunch of folks is that within the confines of the church and the seminary, there’s a goal for sustainability and something that’s in the umbrella of the church. 

04:53
Chris Pluger
Yeah. We are doing this within the framework that the church has already established for the training of church workers and people for their church body. We’re not trying to add something on that is drastically different than the way things normally go. We’re trying to contextualize our training and our program so that it fits into what the church has already been doing, which is this model. 

05:17
Rich Rudowske
Okay. And so when these guys take training, what kind of coursework do they have in their curriculum? 

05:23
Jim Kaiser
They have biblical languages, exegesis, that type of general pastoral classes, as well as then specialized Bible translation classes that teach how to translate and how to run a translation project. 

05:41
Rich Rudowske
And it’s a pilot group here. How many were in this class that graduated? Okay. Yeah. So talk a little bit about the nature of it being a pilot project. What we’ve learned, the impact of COVID in the middle of it, what we hope to see and are encouraged by with this current group. 

05:58
Chris Pluger
Yeah, there were definitely some Covid disruptions. I am new. I’ve been here less than a year. I’ve already had the chance to teach a couple of different courses. And, yeah, as I talked to the students before and after class, just kind of chitchatting that, yeah, this hebrew class was half online, and the teacher left halfway through this course, and we had to finish up online or in some kind of intensive way. The discourse analysis class that was supposed to happen first semester of last year didn’t happen as planned because the teacher couldn’t come because of some security concerns. And so I ended up teaching that class, and as a hybrid with the actual teacher in the states, 11 hours time difference. And me here, we sort of tag teamed that. So it has been obviously kind of fraught with interesting things. 

06:45
Chris Pluger
But even on top of that, which classes do we want students to take? What’s the best way, methodologically to approach Bible translation work? The official language of instruction in McCannie Su seminary is English. And so a lot of our examples and translation examples and things like that are going to be in English. But obviously the ethiopian languages, the examples would be different. The specific things that we want the students to be looking at would be different. And so there’s fine tuning to do both on the teacher side, on the curriculum side, on the student side. Maybe Jim can talk a little bit about student selection, too. 

07:22
Jim Kaiser
Yeah. We are trying to work with the church to select students from projects who will be needing Bible translation work done in the future so that we can kind of look ahead and say, okay, four years down the road when this class will be graduating, where is there a good chance that there will be projects starting or still going on that may need people to be involved with that? So we’re trying to be a bit selective with the languages there in order to fit the needs of the church more closely. 

07:58
Chris Pluger
So something that’s really interesting to me, you’re not asking a question. Yeah, go ahead and tell you anyway, is that it doesn’t really matter which language they speak. The students that I’ve been teaching are very excited about this program. They’re very excited about Bible translation. If they already have a Bible in their mother tongue, they know how important that is. And if there’s no Bible in their mother tongue, of course they’re very excited about that. And if there’s ongoing work, a lot of them have had some kind of at least tangential association with that program already. And so from the student side, they just want to be a part of this. They just want to be a part of Bible translation work somehow, some way. And if it’s not my language, it’s going to be somebody else’s. So hooray. 

08:39
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So that’s one of the three legs of the stool approach for what we’re trying to do here in Ethiopia. Is this training program within the natural way of training in the church. Second then, is Bible translation also being managed and coordinated as more aligned with the church’s vision at the heart of the church? So one of the other events that’s happened while we’ve been here together is the Bible translation week launching that, and go ahead and talk a little bit about the importance of why it was here in June and some of the ways that the church is highlighting Bible translation for the greater church. 

09:18
Jim Kaiser
Well, June 21 is Onesimus Nessib day here in Ethiopia and worldwide. I think within the lutheran church that’s observed, Onesimus Nessib was a romo man who was a slave and was purchased by some missionaries, some swedish missionaries that eventually sent him to do more Bible training, and he eventually helped to translate the Bible into his own Aroma language here. 

09:52
Chris Pluger
So because of that, the eecmy really says, and anybody you ask will tell you that Bible translation is part of the dna of the Makani Sus church. Because from the very beginning, the way that the church that became Makaniyesus really got its foothold was through mother tongue scripture. And they looked to onesimus for that as the kind of symbolic figurehead of that work. Of course, Bible translation has been going on in Ethiopia since like, the fourth century. This really is a cradle nation of Christianity, and mother tongue scripture has always been at the heart of that. And so this week was really just to highlight that, to let churches around the country and everywhere really know what a key role that plays. 

10:34
Chris Pluger
Because if you worship in your same church in the same language every week, you don’t always think about the dozens of other languages that are having worship services at the same time. And so this kind of is a way to unify the far flung Makani esus church body together with Bible translation as a mission. 

10:53
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So in Ethiopia, which is where the church is focusing first for meeting Bible translation needs, how many languages are there and what’s the scope and the goal and vision, current involvement and potential further Bible translation work? As far as we know, there are. 

11:09
Jim Kaiser
About 85 languages, I think, spoken here in Ethiopia, that’s about 110,000,000 people. There has only been. The numbers depend on whether or not they’ve been printed or not. But I think maybe eleven printed, maybe 15 that have been completed with the full Bible. Now, I think I have heard. So there are still many languages that don’t have the Bible, the full Bible available, or the New Testament. And that’s the work that’s going on. 

11:41
Rich Rudowske
Talk a little bit about the events that the church held, that we attended. Anyways, there’s a presidential dinner and another launch event for Bible Translation week. What happened there, what you may have heard from people, what you experienced yourself, especially the ladies. 

11:54
Susan Kaiser
What was particularly exciting for me was hearing the stories from translators who have been involved in translation and have begun to see the reactions of their own people as that translation process has gone on. All the stories that they could tell about, oh, this is because of Bible translation, and this is because of Bible translation. And this is because of our Bible translation. It was just really cool listening to some of those things and hearing their excitement because of that. 

12:31
Chris Pluger
Even one translator stood in front of the whole room, the whole ballroom full of fancy church people, and said, I am a result of Bible translation. I came to faith in Jesus because someone sometime translated scripture into my mother tongue. And now I’m working hard to finish the job. That was really cool. 

12:51
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, and that’s a story for all of us, really, that I remember. That is very relatable. It’s much more probably palpable to him in his own generation. But when we stop and think about it, we’re all the result of somebody crossing that cultural barrier and doing that work. And we’re able to engage with scripture that we are because somebody did that translation work. Third part of the plan here is sustainability building, which is part of the Bible translation week, and an ongoing celebration within Makani Asus Church. To be sure that the whole church body has been aware of the church’s involvement in Bible translation, how that’s affected and impacted the growth of this church. To be one of the largest lutheran churches in the world and continue to do that, but also to build sustainability through income generation projects here. 

13:38
Rich Rudowske
And one of those was completed and dedicated while we heard the Helgi center for scripture engagement at the McCannie Asus seminary, which is also where the graduation was held. So it was a building. We got to see a lot, talk a little bit about the building, your impression of the scope and size and what it does and just anything. 

13:58
Chris Pluger
Well, it’s really big when you think of a building for church work. The scope of this building does not fit that typical american stereotype. This building would dwarf any building on any christian college campus I’ve ever been to in the US, because it’s not just for classrooms and faculty offices in a room closet. The bottom half of it is for income generation. One of the things that McCannie’s church is very blessed with is real estate. Expensive, valuable real estate in the city of Audis that they’ve inherited from years and years. And so they’re really trying to maximize that. There’s nice frontage on a busy road and glass fronted shops that are for rent. And so that money is going to help sustain the programs we’ve been talking about, especially the Bible translation track at McConaugheyesus seminary. So for starters, it’s big. 

14:53
Susan Kaiser
It was cool that the name on the front, as you said, heligue center, is because of someone’s generous donations making that possible. That is just a huge thing that people who haven’t been here haven’t seen. They haven’t gotten to know anybody or anything. But still, they’ve been very motivated to help people in this way by contributing so that a building could be built and help the translation progress along. And it was not only the. There were several parts of the building that were specially named, and another part of the building was named in honor of a guy who used to be in charge of the translation projects down in the southwest synod of the church, case Bruhanu. And he was a very likable fellow. He was very helpful to the missionaries that worked down there, as well as the actual projects. 

15:53
Susan Kaiser
And because of who he was, they named a section of the building in his honor. So his wife and daughter were there to be honored by that fact as well. That was really neat too, since we knew him. 

16:09
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, for those who haven’t seen, and even if you see the building in pictures, you just can’t grasp that. So I did some figuring once, and if you put this building on a football field, it would go from sideline almost to the other sideline on a football field, and it would be half as long. It’s 50 yards long. So it is a huge building. And yeah, it has space in it for retail and other establishments to generate income. And then office space. You guys all get to move into fancy new offices sometime in the near future. And the church’s mission department, Bible translation folks will get to join us in that space, too. Some classroom space. 

16:47
Rich Rudowske
That part named after case Burhanu is where folks that are traveling from other parts of the country to come up and do some checking or other training, can stay in that section. And, yeah, a very nice conference hall facility that can be rented out for income generation. And so it’s pretty exciting and in the scope, again, of the church body here has done this, has the capacity to do this and has grown. This is probably one of the biggest projects that they’ve done. That we’ve done, certainly that we’ve done, but that we’ve done with them. And they continue to grow in their ability to generate income. And the other part of the income generation plan is a second building in a different location to generate income for the running of the Bible translation division as well. 

17:29
Rich Rudowske
So look, those three prongs, trained personnel under the umbrella of the church and motivated by the church’s mission and then aligned with the church’s mission and then sustained income lowering dependency from outside. What is the hope and dream of this vision for Ethiopia and beyond? 

17:47
Jim Kaiser
Well, I think we are hoping that the church here will be able to really be a leader in Bible translation in the future in this region, both within the country of Ethiopia and projects outside of the country in training people in sending out Bible translators, that they can pick up the baton from the west and carry it on here in this area. 

18:11
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, we heard a little bit about that at some of the presentations, some of the speakers talking about the importance of this moment for Africa. And you remember that and speak to that a little bit. 

18:21
Chris Pluger
Just that Africa can’t indefinitely plan to receive subsidies and help and all of these things, and that Africa needs to provide for Africa in a lot of ways. I see this building and even the work that Janine and I do here in, you know, well, you give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, you teach him to fish and feed him for the rest of his life. 

18:44
Rich Rudowske
Okay? 

18:44
Chris Pluger
So you give somebody a, they spend it and they need more, but if you help them create a sustainable infrastructure, then eventually you get to go back to your passport country because they’ve got this taken care of, or you can go somewhere else that needs help. So Ethiopia is a model as a leader. Their hope definitely of the EECMy is to send missionaries to other african countries, missionaries who are highly trained and skilled to do the same kind of Bible translation work that we at LBT have been doing for so long. So that’s definitely the long term goal of the three legged duel. Provide for Ethiopia’s needs and then let the overflow bless other nations and other people groups so that God’s word can be in the hands and in the hearts of people all over the continent. 

19:33
Rich Rudowske
What did you notice about in any of the celebrations, the graduation dedication or the launch that you just think, wow, this is not necessarily how we would do it in our context, but the way that they’re launching or doing something in this context makes sense or just noticed a difference. 

19:47
Chris Pluger
Does anything come to mind in a us graduation? Everyone I’ve ever been to, and it’s been like 20, they call each individual graduate’s name and the graduate has their 15 seconds to walk across the stage and shake the president’s hand and get their diploma and smile for a picture and then go, they didn’t do that here. Instead they stood up by cohort, by class, by school, and all got an applause. And so all of the bachelors of theology students stand up and they receive it together. And that just speaks to the collective success nature, I think, of the culture here in Ethiopia, not individual. Ooh, look at them and look at them. But we did this. 

20:26
Rich Rudowske
I really love that the media presence was astonishing at everything. It was just fascinating. You wouldn’t necessarily see at a church event in the United States the media production team there in as big a force as it was. So that was interesting in terms of both what will be produced from that, but also just, it feels like just setting the tone while you’re in the room that this is important because you got media people buzing all over the place. This is exciting. 

20:53
Chris Pluger
Someone’s taking a picture, someone’s shooting a video of it. Wow, that must be really cool. 

20:57
Rich Rudowske
I really love the. In the graduation they did as you said, each cohort was recognized together, but then the top two or three GPA students from each one were recognized individually and given a gift afterwards and they played great music and clapped and danced and stuff as they came up for that. And the top three bachelor of theology students were from the Bible translation track. So that was very cool. 

21:19
Chris Pluger
Cream of the crop. One other thing that might not have been done by us if were planning it was just the scale of all three of these events. 

21:30
Rich Rudowske
They were huge. 

21:30
Chris Pluger
I mean, graduation is graduation, but wow, these other events that we walked, what, 1000 people, I don’t know, 500 people up five flights of stairs in the building because the elevators aren’t functioning yet and prayed at every floor and unveiled things and gave speeches and ladies sang and paraded and these were quite the. 

21:54
Rich Rudowske
I agree, you know, I’m kind of a little bit of a history guy and I went to Concordia seminary in St. Louis. And you’d see pictures of when they dedicated the campus they have there now, and there’s like 50,000 people or something like that on the hills and stuff, and you’re just like, wow, this was a massive event. And that’s kind of how it felt here, too. This was a big deal for this group. And people came out by, I don’t know the count at all, but there were lots and lots of people had. 

22:20
Chris Pluger
Drones flying, people honking their horns on the road as they drove by. It was a spectacle for Jim and. 

22:29
Susan Kaiser
I, having worked in a couple of other countries before coming here to Ethiopia. To me, it’s the passion that the church has for Bible translation. We’ve never seen that kind of passion in any other place. And I don’t know, maybe that’s part of it, is the fact that they’ve gone through some persecution in the past. Maybe that’s raised the level of determination that they want to help other people to become christians. I don’t know, but we certainly never saw that in other places that were. So they really do have that. 

23:04
Chris Pluger
It’s another way Ethiopia can really be an example for other countries, because other countries have the same rich tradition of Bible translation or a similar rich tradition that Ethiopia has. But like you said, the people in the pews don’t recognize it. They maybe don’t appreciate it. And that’s one of the big goals of Bible week. This initial, first off Bible week festivity was, this is. This is something we do and has been done for us and that we want to continue doing, and it’s important. 

23:31
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, and I think you mentioned that we’d like to see the. As LBT, we’d like to see the church be a leader in Bible translation. And you alluded to that if they can come alongside us, then we could go back to our own country or we could pivot to other places. Why is that so critical right now to be thinking that way? 

23:49
Janine Pluger
Because we’re not just trying to build capacity in this one country. There are countries everywhere that need Bible translation. And if capacity is built and reached here, we can go further and reach other places. 

24:03
Chris Pluger
Right? 

24:03
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I think. 

24:05
Rich Rudowske
Exactly. 

24:05
Rich Rudowske
So there’s a movement in the Bible translation space to look at what are all the languages left in the world, and what would it take to get Bible translation work started in all of those languages and accomplish some amount of scripture by a certain date. But I think as LBT, what we’d like to approach that is rather than just picking out every single language community and say, okay, how do we get there? Or how do we coordinate with others to see that somebody gets there from these western agencies to stop and say, in some places there is a church that’s got high capacity and vision already, so let’s stop and invest there and invest in things that don’t look like directly. Like, okay, we sent money directly to this Bible translation program and they directly produced some number of chapters or verses or whatever. 

24:53
Rich Rudowske
But instead we invested in the capacity of this church to train and to administer and to coordinate and to have a vision for a little bit harder, to then count and comprehend the exact value of that, but to then be able to hopefully have the result, be a more equipped partner to work alongside with or instead of us while we work in other places. 

25:15
Jim Kaiser
I think one of the big values of the church here in Ethiopia is that Ethiopians are able to go to many countries that are closed to us as Americans, as people from the west. Those doors are still open for them and they’re able to go there and do things that we would not be able to do. 

25:35
Chris Pluger
Rich, I think you’re the one that told us or told me that the Bible translations that tend to stick, the Bible translations that tend to get used and reused and passed down and appreciated are the ones that have a strong partnership with a local church. So you don’t want missionaries flying over and airdropping Bibles to people in their language, right? For sure, if it’s going to work best, it’s going to come from the structures that’s already there. 

26:00
Rich Rudowske
So what do we know right now about the folks who have just graduated in terms of what they’ll be doing or what’s kind of next steps? This is a pilot program, so it’s okay to know that we’re still figuring stuff out as we go, but that’s part of being innovative. So what do we know about those folks? 

26:15
Jim Kaiser
Yeah, we’re going to be putting many of them into an internship program. Some will be interning with project advisors and learning from them how to be a project advisor with on the job experience. Some of them will be interning with scripture engagement program at SIL here, and they will be learning about how to do various activities that help to encourage the use of the Bible in the different local languages. And some will also be working with our local Bible translation office at the McCann Yazu’s church, also in kind of an internship program, but specifically targeting scripture engagement and trying to get a handle on what the needs are within the many languages here that the church works in. 

27:07
Chris Pluger
Yeah, part of the track at Mis is that students write a bachelor’s thesis. That’s kind of the thing in a lot of african schools, is a bachelor’s thesis around the 30 page range. And quite a few of the students in the Bible translation track wrote about the need for scripture engagement in their language. So my language, or the language I’m familiar with, they have some scripture already, but people don’t know about it. People aren’t using it. People have no idea what to do with it. The church is dominated by this other big language, and they’re not used to using in their own. They’re not even sure if it’s okay to pray in their own language yet. And so going from printed Bible on the shelf to word of God in people’s hearts really does take an extra step. 

27:52
Chris Pluger
And that’s what we mean when we talk about scripture engagement. So I think a lot of this first cohort, that’s how they’re going to get their feet wet, at least, is to start thinking, how can we move this word of God onto people? 

28:06
Rich Rudowske
Jim and Susan, you are our longest tenured missionaries in Ethiopia. So how did it feel to reach this point? The culmination of several years worth of planning and training and work and investment. What’s it feel like? 

28:20
Jim Kaiser
It’s kind of amazing to be at this point. Now, from when we started, that certainly wasn’t anywhere on the horizon. When we first came here, I came to work as a translation consultant and was working down in the southwest part of the country, working with teams there, and this whole vision of getting the seminary program going and the building, that all came afterwards. And it’s pretty amazing to see it go from just an idea, a very vague idea, to an actual concrete building and students graduating and all of that happening. 

28:58
Rich Rudowske
So Chris and Janine, they’re, of course, our newest missionaries here also, how does it feel to know, show up? And we’ve worked hard, too, but to show up and kind of be at this point and look to the future. 

29:10
Chris Pluger
Oh, it’s fun to ride on people’s know. I love showing up to a well established Bible translation track at the seminary where I can just say, all right, what do I teach this week? All right, let’s go. Let’s start teaching. Let’s start doing this job. And I mean, Jim and Susan, obviously, wealth of wisdom and experience for the two of us. We have past experience in another african context as well. But Ethiopia is its own kind of thing, and so it’s just fun to be a part of something this big and this quickly moving. 

29:40
Susan Kaiser
Yeah. 

29:40
Janine Pluger
As you can tell from the discussion, we had a lot of celebrations over the past week and it could be a little overwhelming. But at the same time, as a new person here, it was also really exciting to see all of the things that the church body is involved in and has a passion for and just follows through with and is successful in sharing information about the work they do and the work they want to do in the future. 

30:06
Rich Rudowske
What do you think are some of the challenges going forward from this point? 

30:11
Chris Pluger
Managing expectations? There’s a lot of things that could be happening. I think trying to do them all at once sometimes runs us into trouble. So just kind of keeping a good, sustainable pace for things is a challenge. It’s a challenge for everybody. 

30:29
Susan Kaiser
That’s one probably one would be trying to help the students that are in school get the quality of education. That would really be helpful for them to have to do a good job in translation. Because when we as LBT workers are trained, we have a lot longer and a lot more in depth coursework and stuff to learn. And I just think it’ll be a challenge for them to get to the amount. But praise God, he’s in charge and. 

31:02
Jim Kaiser
He knows, I think training people who will take our places, both for Chris and I, training people to be consultants, that still will be some years of development and further training, advanced training and helping to mentor them along, that will certainly be a challenge for the future. 

31:26
Janine Pluger
I think it’s really important when you have this big visionary concept or idea to not lose track of the details that it’s going to take to see that idea come to fruition. 

31:37
Rich Rudowske
Right? That is a statement after my own heart. 

31:43
Chris Pluger
While we even saw that in the planning for these events are huge. Talk about biting off almost more than you can chew. Okay, now who’s going to get the 10,000 invitations into each of the 10,000 Makanyesu’s congregations? All right. Because it’s one thing to have the vision of, we should tell the entire synod and then, as Janine points out, the devil’s in the details. 

32:07
Jim Kaiser
Also, another challenge is the new building that the church would like to build in order to sustain the Bible translation work going forward for the future. There’s been a lot of work, groundwork put into developing a plan for that. Now we need to see how God’s going to provide the funding for that, right? Very true. 

32:30
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, that’s something to be praying about. I’ve got a nice big packet that I’m taking home with me to put together and talk with folks about. So yeah, that definitely is a matter for prayer. 

32:39
Chris Pluger
I think it’s important to whoever’s listening. Okay, so yes, there’s a building already in Ethiopia for Bible translation. That’s for the seminary, that’s for Bible translation training. And then we have the second ongoing funding sustainable source to fund the department of mission and Theology work. So one for training, one for operations, and the two really do go hand in hand. 

33:03
Rich Rudowske
Okay, well, it’s been really privileged to be with you all here the last couple of weeks and to have this chance to talk tonight. I’m with the missionary team from Lutheran Bible translators that serves in Ethiopia. Jim and Susan Kaiser and Chris and Janine plug. It’s been great talking with you. Thanks a lot. 

33:18
Chris Pluger
Thank you. 

33:19
Jim Kaiser
Thank you. 

33:23
Emily Wilson
Well, having just listened to all of you talking about your experiences with the dedication of the Bible translation training building and the graduation and Bible week, the launch, it’s just incredible. Having not been there, but having seen all of your social media posts and just the pictures that have been coming in from our media team that they were there and able to capture all of that, but hearing all of the details and all of the behind the scenes, but also the culmination of. And how exciting to have so many people gathered together. And I especially love the idea of walking the floors and praying. That was beautiful. 

34:06
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And the word culmination is the word I was thinking of too. Just this is the culmination of several years of vision and idea and mythiological thought for what does sustainable mission genuinely look like? To equip and to partner. And these things were just dreams that seemed unattainable. And it’s just amazing to celebrate how the Lord has brought people together, brought resources to the picture. Working through a time when the world was stalled by the COVID pandemic. The seminary itself had a flood that disrupted operations there and material supply shortages and inflation and all these things. And in spite of all that, to get the project like this done in three years would be admirable anywhere in the world. 

34:54
Rich Rudowske
And it just really shows God’s hand and it’s been really great and that’s the building, but the students and their enthusiasm and the ongoing vision there. And as was mentioned by the team, the ongoing adjustment now and saying, okay, now we have this, but what are the adjustments and the things that need to be done to take the next steps and really keep on focus, could be really easy to rest on your laurels. So great time to celebrate, but also a great time to say, all right, so what’s next? 

35:22
Emily Wilson
Right? And that piece that Chris was sharing, and I’ve heard from so many of our missionaries of that we are a product of people taking the time and the task and just the loving effort of Bible translation into our own language. And that one of the students said, I’m a product of this, and I want to share that with others. And being able to have that focus of maybe it’s in my own language already, but I want to share this gift. I want to go into all of the world, and to be able to share God’s word with people in the language they understand best is just a huge gift. And we want you to be a part of it. So if you are feeling called to participate in God’s mission in this way, you can be a prayer warrior with us. 

36:13
Emily Wilson
You can be an advocate for Bible translation. You can give to support the Bible translation training program. So you can go to go lbt.org my seminary. Go lbt.org my seminary. To be able to directly support those programs and to see how God can be glorified, can be at work among his people so that his word will go forth. 

36:42
Rich Rudowske
Thank you for listening to the essentially translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible translators. You can find past episodes of the podcast@lbt.org slash podcast or subscribe on audible, Apple Podcasts, 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. The essentially translatable podcast is produced and edited by Andrew Olson. Our executive producer is Emily Wilson. Podcast artwork was designed by Caleb Rotewald and Sarah Rudowski. Music written and performed by Rob Weit. I’m Rich Radowski. So long. For now.