Together in Mission

00:01
Alvina Federwitz
I mean, I tell people you are equally as important as anyone on the field because you’re the ones that keep us there. 

00:18
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the centrally translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible translators. I’m Rich Radowski. 

00:23
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. 

00:24
Rich Rudowske
Well, before we jump into today’s episode with Alvina Federwitz, let’s talk about how you can be sure that you have essentially translatable showing up whenever you want to listen and maybe even when you don’t. 

00:38
Emily Wilson
Yeah, so I will not hold it against you guys that you haven’t subscribed yet. We’re only on episode like 59 or 60, I don’t know, but I won’t hold it against you. So if you go to lbt.org podcast, you’re going to see all of them. Maybe this is your first episode listening because you and Alvina are best buds. But trust me, she listens every other week when the episodes are released, so you will not go wrong for also listening every other week. So lbt.org slash podcast or if you have a smartphone device, definitely want to encourage you. If you have the apps of Google Podcast or Apple Podcast, Podbean, any podcast app, you’re going to be able to find essentially translatable in that search bar, and then you’re going to want to subscribe. 

01:42
Emily Wilson
And that’s when you’ll get a notification when a new episode releases. And like I said, that’s biweekly, so you get to hear all of the fun stuff happening in the world of Bible translation with Lutheran Bible translators and also guests like President Larry Rast and President Thomas Egger. Fun stuff happening with the 500th anniversary of Luther’s New Testament, so be sure to subscribe. 

02:08
Rich Rudowske
We also invite you to follow along with our celebration of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s translation of the New Testament into German. You can find there may be an event near you. Check it out at go lbt.org 500. 

02:21
Emily Wilson
So on today’s episode, we have longtime missionary Alvina Federowitz joining us, and she has such a rich history with the organization and just so encouraging as people join alongside in God’s mission through Bible translation and the power of people having God’s word in their very own language. 

02:41
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. Alvina Federwitz has been with Luther Bible translators for over 50 years. She currently serves as our mission participation coordinator. And let me tell you that if she catches up with you when she’s done with you’re going to want to participate in God’s mission. 

02:54
Alvina Federwitz
It’s true. 

02:54
Rich Rudowske
We hope you enjoyed this episode with Alvina Fetterwitz. 

03:01
Emily Wilson
So today we have the privilege of chatting with Alvina Federowitz here in the studio. Welcome to the podcast, Alvina. 

03:08
Alvina Federwitz
Thank you. It’s great to be with you. 

03:11
Emily Wilson
So our listeners, many of them probably already know you. Maybe they’ve crossed paths with you or your children, but you’ve been with Lutheran Bible translators for over 50 years now. Can you share a little bit with our audience who maybe has not met you about how you got started with the organization and our ministry? 

03:31
Alvina Federwitz
I heard about Lutheran Bible translators my last year in college, I worked nights as a nurse’s aide at the lutheran home for the aged in Milwaukee. And I got back and was looking forward to getting to bed on Saturday morning because I couldn’t do know during the weekday. And my best friend Dorothy came to me and she said, maury and Lois Watkins are speaking at Walter Memorial Lutheran Church. And I’d really like to go, but I don’t want to go by myself. Can you go with me? Well, that was kind of a hard decision because I wanted to go to bed. And so went. And Maury was a visionary, and I caught his vision. I mean, he talked about these people that didn’t have God’s word in their own language. 

04:19
Alvina Federwitz
And the idea of being a missionary was something that had been in my heart since I was four years old. But then I met my to be husband, and he’d wanted to be a pastor since he was four years. You know, you followed the way of your husband. But I just really felt Maury telling me that these people who didn’t have God’s word didn’t have an opportunity to hear about God. And it just plagued me. So as were heading to South Dakota, where my home was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 900 miles, I wondered how I was going to share this with my soon to be fiance, Dale. And so we stopped at this gas station. I remember it clearly. It was a mobile station. 24.9 is what the cost of the gas was. 

05:08
Alvina Federwitz
And I remembered that because I thought, I need to tell him about this. And so we got back on the road and I said, I need to share something with you. I know that you’re going to go ask for my hand in marriage, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to say no. And he looked at me and I said, I talked to Maureen Lois Watkins. And he said, stop right there. I said, it’s taken me 500 miles to talk to you. And he said, no, I think God has something in mind here. He said, you know, at the seminary, there’s this couple that work with Lutheran Bible translators in Nigeria. They also work with Wycliffe, and he said they came to learn Greek at the seminary, and I have been asked to help them. 

05:58
Alvina Federwitz
And he said, they’re struggling with it, and I love Greek. So I’m thinking that we should go with Lutheran Bible translators, and we’ve been on that path ever since. 

06:11
Emily Wilson
Wow, that’s amazing. 

06:14
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And after some formation work and partnership development, you were sent to Liberia, where Lutheran Bible translators was really expanding their ministry at that point. So, tell us a little bit about what life was like when you first started in Liberia way back then, the location and what it was like for your family. 

06:32
Alvina Federwitz
Well, we learned to be flexible because our call was to go to Leone. We were supposed to open up the field there, be the first translation team there, and that was exciting. We packed our barrels for Leone, and then Lutheran Bible translators called us and said, we’ve just done survey in Liberia. The Mandingo people, who are muslim people, are open to having us come and work among them. And you’re the only people that you’re a pastor that would be able to do this work. So we would like you to think about going there. So it was the first thing that we had to pray about, and we felt called there. So God called us there. We went to Liberia with the executive director at that time, skip hubby and Karen. 

07:23
Alvina Federwitz
We went with the guy who was in charge of videoing the work that was taking place in Liberia, and we all stayed in one house. It was amazing. And I remember that we did not have water. I mean, water was at luxury here. This country gets 200 inches of rain a year, and we got water sometimes 02:00 in the morning, and the whole house got up because we filled whatever we could bathtub to have water. We had two little kids, and were not used to saving water from America because we didn’t know when the next water would come on. So it was challenging just living in the capital city. And then our first place that went to was called Bakidu. That was the village. 

08:16
Alvina Federwitz
But before went there, we had to have a formal invitation from the Mendingo, which was the chief of the village. He was in Monrovia. We made 23 trips into town, and this was not a small trip, maybe 30 minutes to get down there. And then we walked in dirt to get to where the chief was. He wasn’t there. And our children were staying with other missionaries, and they didn’t know them. So by the time we left, for the 10th time already, Jonathan screamed like bloody murder. He did not want to be left. The 23rd time I told Dale, I said, you’re going to have to go because I can’t do this anymore. And he persuaded me to go that 23rd time. And the 23rd time the chief was there, and he gave us names. 

09:10
Alvina Federwitz
He gave me mawata, which was named after the headlady of the town. He was named Paseku, after the chief’s son. And he gave Jonathan the name of where he thought we should live, which was ahead of the quarter. We lived in Phoba, and Becca was called Fatumata. And he had chosen a person who had worked at the airfield. He was a Mandango person who knew some English, so Rebecca was named after his wife. So we did get to see him, and it was just God’s way of letting us know that this was not going to be an easy work. It was going to be challenging, and we just had to trust him. And yet he had to teach that to us many times. 

10:00
Emily Wilson
So you were there for how long? 

10:02
Alvina Federwitz
We’ve been there. We got there in 74. And then in 1980, we had our first coup in Liberia. And during that coup, the translators for the Kuwait people had to leave suddenly, and because at that time, yet my husband is kind of known as the chief translator because he’s his gifts in Greek. And they said, well, you would be the person that could finish up this project because they can’t come back. And so were transferred to the Koa people. So that was in 1980. So from 74 until 1980, were among the Mendingo people. 

10:41
Emily Wilson
So what was it like raising your family there? 

10:45
Alvina Federwitz
It was an adjustment. When we moved to the village, they didn’t have any grocery stores. They had market every Tuesday. So that was the only time that we could buy the produce. And most of that produce was foreign to me. I had no idea what it was. I didn’t know how I was going to use it. So it was a learning time. I would look at things and I would say, ask. Well, that was difficult because I didn’t know the language either. But I would hold it up like, what do I do with this? And there was always somebody that they realized that we didn’t know. And people would literally come to my house or take me to their house to show them how they prepared it. And that’s how I learned how to cook african food, which our family to this day loves. 

11:36
Alvina Federwitz
But it was a time of learning. 

11:39
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And so the technology. I want to talk a little bit about that because I know that you were a master, probably still are a master typist. So those of us who have the privilege to have worked in Bible translation in more recent times, we had computers. I had a program called Paritext. If I decided, if our group decided, hey, mark four, verse three, just isn’t right, we’re going to just delete that and type it again. What was it like to deal with the words, the vocabulary, and the managing of the text when you started? 

12:10
Alvina Federwitz
That would be a question you’d have to ask my husband. He was a translator, but I was the keyboarder. Okay, you’re right. And my husband took a lot of pride in making sure that he soldered the keys onto our typewriter perfectly, because we had keys that once we determined the orthography, which we did work on together, I’m the one that determined that we had. I forgot what you call it where you inhale the MB. And my husband was going to. He ended up going to meetings a lot, and so he was in Monrovia, and I worked with our language teacher, and fortunately he had a head cold, and were trying to sound the. We knew it was MB, but whenever we said it, he said, that’s not correct. 

13:04
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, okay. 

13:05
Alvina Federwitz
But because he had a cold, I realized he was inhaling. So it was know. And so I couldn’t wait for Dale to come back and say, I figured this out. So determining what the sounds were in their language, as you know, is challenging. And so, yes, but keyboarding was also challenging because you would think you had it. Right. I would keyboard it. And then we want to change it. Well, when you change one sentence, it changes the whole. You have to go back and retype the whole page because it was changed. And so I did spend a lot of time keyboarding, and it was challenging because, as you said, I thought I was a key typist. I had won the typing contest of South Dakota, but this gave me a whole lot more practice. 

14:05
Rich Rudowske
Sure. Yeah. And like you said, if there was any mistake, then you’re retyping the whole thing. Pages get lost, maybe get damaged. 

14:14
Alvina Federwitz
And when we moved into Bella area, which was in 1980, we got our first computer, and that was really exciting. But I had, by that time, three little ones, and so I had a limited amount of time. We didn’t always have electricity. It would go off. But to back up a file, which we don’t even realize happens now, took a half an hour. So you’ve typed a chapter and I remember I spent 4 hours one morning getting the book of Mark because were close to sending it in to be printed. So I spent time at our office in Monrovia keyboarding this on what I thought was the better computer. But I hadn’t backed it up because I didn’t want to take that half an hour to back up what I’d done. At 12:00 the electricity went off just before I had backed it up. 

15:14
Alvina Federwitz
And I still remember. I mean, it was like my whole morning wasted. 

15:21
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, losing your work, that was a thing with computers. Like I lost that work anyways. Yes. That is brutal auto save. 

15:30
Alvina Federwitz
All right. 

15:31
Rich Rudowske
It’s a nice thing. 

15:33
Emily Wilson
So obviously that was one change that’s happened in the 50 years. But what have you found to be the most significant change in your 50 years with the organization? 

15:45
Alvina Federwitz
I think we just talked about it. The speed of getting translation done, it’s just amazing now that you can add a whole paragraph and it just automatically goes in. You don’t have to retype everything. Technology. We never had phones. I mean, the only way that we could get a message, like when, you know, David, when he was born and my husband called his parents to let him know that we had a little boy, it was $5 a minute, and you had to go downtown and you had to wait in line to get on a phone. And then it was really scratchy. It wasn’t clear. So now when I can talk to my granddaughter, who’s working in Cameroon, I can see her and she can be even doing something else and be talking to me. I’m amazed of technology. 

16:44
Alvina Federwitz
I’m not good at it, but it’s really amazing. 

16:49
Rich Rudowske
I do want to also ask. You mentioned the Mandingo people and the Bella Kuwa people. Were you guys able to finish new Testaments in those languages? And when did they have access to God’s word? 

17:01
Alvina Federwitz
Well, we did not finish the Mandingo, which we really wanted to. That was especially hard for me because I didn’t think were going to work in Kuwait that long. I felt like, okay, we’ll just go in there. My husband will get it done. He’s a master translator. What they said it just needed to be brought to an end because they were close to being finishing. So I assumed a year while were there for seven years. 

17:28
Rich Rudowske
Wow. 

17:29
Alvina Federwitz
Because we realized that the orthography was very difficult to read, and why have scripture if they can’t read it? And so we revised the entire orthography. So we always kind of lived as if were going to be not there long. And we ended up being there longer than were at the Mendingo. And we did not finish Mandingo, which we always thought we’d go back, but then because of the civil war, we couldn’t go back. But I’m happy to say it is finished. It’s just finished now as we speak. So praise God for that. 

18:04
Emily Wilson
So all of your children have become involved in Bible translation ministry. And just why do you think that is? What is it that kind of spurred that on of the next generation? 

18:17
Alvina Federwitz
I think that’s just a blessing of the Lord. God blesses us. Prayer has always been a very big part of my life, and I’ve always asked God to guide and direct me in whatever I do, and so I have to thank him for that. But one of the things that were blessed with is that we lived in a very isolated location, and so our children were always with us. So we got to homeschool them every aspect of their life. We were involved. They didn’t have the peer pressure of other people, other children other than the african people. And they saw what we did. We involved them. Like when were printing materials, they helped to collate it. 

19:09
Alvina Federwitz
We were in a place where we didn’t have any car roads, so we had to walk to nearby villages, and went to lutheran churches, began springing up, and we would walk to those villages, sometimes three or 4 hours to get there. And then our kids had to. We do. These kids, they’ve never gone to church. They don’t know about Jesus, and they’re going to be watching you. Maybe it was putting a heavy weight on them, but I think it helped them to see that they were as important as were in sharing the gospel. And I think their involvement helped them to. When they chose the work that they could do. And they also saw people come to the Lord. We would point that out. It was something we had devotions. We’d pray for some people, I mean, certain people, their friends as well as. 

20:00
Alvina Federwitz
I think one of the things that really helped them to see the importance of God’s word is they loved Isaac Yosea and his mother was a Zoe in the village, and they would go to her farm often. Farm was a place where they grew rice. Her farm was only 30 minutes from the town, so she would sometimes come by. She loved our kids and take them, and she taught them different things on the farms that we didn’t even know how to do, but she taught them that. And so they began praying for her that she would come to know Jesus as her lord and savior. 

20:37
Alvina Federwitz
And Isaac, I mean she lived with her son and his family and one day Isaac said, I want you to come and show these people how you do devotions because he had come to our house and we had family devotions and he did that at his house and his mother would hear the translation that we’ve been doing. So they saw that this old lady was hearing God’s word and so they prayed for her to come to faith and she did. That’s awesome. I think witnessing these kind of things helped them to see how important the work was. 

21:15
Rich Rudowske
What is your greatest joy in missionary work? Thinking of all the experiences you’ve had and all the things you’ve seen the Lord do. 

21:23
Alvina Federwitz
I’ve certainly had a lot of different experience, but as I reflect back, I think the thing that brought me the greatest joy was teaching my own children homeschooling. I know you can do that here, but I felt like I was a part of every aspect of their lives and my husband was too. Even though confirmation instructions was part of the curriculum that I was using from CPH, I asked my husband to do that. We had three sons. I felt like they needed to know how to be leaders in the home and so I had him do the catechism with them. So were very much a part of that. I did a lot of medical work. We were in a village where it took three days walk to get to the closest hospital. 

22:11
Alvina Federwitz
And so God led me to began doing medical work and that was something I enjoyed because I worked with a doctor, missionary doctor, on a two way radio. I would talk with him every morning and tell him what I was facing, the situations that were coming, and he would say, treat them this way or this is what needs to be. So it was a learning time. But I guess I have the gift of helps and it was nice to be able to help the people in this way and to help them to see that God did the healing, not me. 

22:44
Emily Wilson
So you’re very passionate about getting other people involved in Bible translation ministry and they can be right where they are and that you have just a gift of being able to spur people on. So what ways can people get involved right where they are? 

23:03
Alvina Federwitz
Prayer. Prayer has brought us through so many challenges. It’s brought us through a civil war, it’s brought us through learning language, it’s brought us through just the challenges of ministry. But there’s one example that stands out in my mind. My appendix ruptured in the village. We were a twelve hour drive away from Monrovia, the capital city. And just a month before this happened, we got our first airplane. And that airplane flew into an airstrip that was about 15 miles from our home and took me down to Monrovia. The pilot took our children, too, because my husband had this very important meeting in the village. I mean, you just have to work. There are some things that just have to be done. 

23:54
Alvina Federwitz
He felt bad that he couldn’t go with me, but it was a life changing meeting of the mendingo people accepting what were doing there. And so I flew to Monrovia, and I hung between life and death, because by that time, peritonitis had set in. I was probably close to death. And I pulled through that, and a month later, I got this letter. Remember, we didn’t have phones. They couldn’t let us know. This lady says, I was out in my garden working, and all of a sudden it hit me, you have to pray for Alvina. She said, I want to know what I was praying for. And I could say, you were praying for my life. And those are tremendous situations. 

24:41
Alvina Federwitz
The other thing that I think people don’t realize, and one of the things I really encourage people now, they don’t realize that not everybody can go to Africa or to these places where people need God’s word. God sends, but he also makes a way for us to go by people praying and supporting us financially. I mean, I tell people, you are equally as important as anyone on the field, because you’re the ones that keep us there, and that’s how they can become involved. And I think people who think, well, we just put money in know there’s no sacrifice. There is a sacrifice. Maybe I shouldn’t give a name, but I’m going to give a name of Alvina Miller. She has my name. Not many do. 

25:32
Alvina Federwitz
I met her early in our ministry, and she also got involved with LBT because of Maury and Lois Watkins. She wanted to go. She couldn’t. But her husband had a way of making money and rather enjoying the good things of America they have given. Even now that he is gone and she is old, she still prays for missionaries, and she still supports financially. And I have to keep reminding her, Alvina, you are equally as important as this Alvina that’s in Africa. And now that I talk with her. And so, gifts and prayers to support the missionary keeps us there so that the work can continue to move. 

26:22
Rich Rudowske
And since your time returning from Africa, you serve Lutheran Bible translators and the Bible translation movement as a mission participation coordinator. And that’s again designed to capitalize on that passion about getting people involved. So what are some of the places and situations where you get to share about involvement in God’s mission? 

26:42
Alvina Federwitz
I get to call the new donors. With LBT, most people don’t answer their phone. I have had some people that I leave my number, they’ll call back and those that I get to talk to, it just encourages me because I get to tell them how important they are and in whatever way they’re able. Please pray for the things that came in. I said, missionaries send out prayer letters. They’re doing that so that you can pray specifically for their prayer needs, but you need to keep supporting them because there’s a lot of expenses and I just share some of the things that costs missionaries. I mean, right now you have to have Covid tests, Covid injections, flights are costing more, some flights you pay for. 

27:29
Alvina Federwitz
I know with my son in law who travels to Papua New guinea, flights are canceled, but you don’t get your money. I said, you know, getting God’s word to people who need it is costly, but with it’s everything’s so, you know, I say your part is equally important as it is for the missionaries that are overseas right now. So I love doing that. I love working with the Lutheran Women’s Missionary league. Elder male women are just, they are the missionaries of the lutheran church. I mean, I can’t go to a convention without being uplifted. I can’t talk to an Alden Mallor without saying, hearing them say how important it is for them to be involved in missions. 

28:20
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. What’s something important that you’ve learned from your ministry that you think the western church could grow in or learn from the people that you’ve got to spend time with and learn from. 

28:35
Alvina Federwitz
Relationships. People here often get so busy and they don’t spend much time relating with. Mean, I see many people go into church like, I have spent my hour now with God this week and they’re on to other things. But in Africa, a four hour service is about what they take because they spend that amount of time worshipping God, but they also spend time getting to know one another. I mean, they don’t leave church without knowing what the hurts and the needs are of their fellow people and they will be willing to do what it takes to help others. I don’t see that here. I don’t see that caring. I mean, it’s here, but I don’t see the same willingness, I mean, to help. They just are willing to drop everything and give you what they have. 

29:34
Alvina Federwitz
I mean, that was humbling for me often in that I know that they have very little money, but if somebody had a need, they were there to help. 

29:46
Emily Wilson
So as you’re interacting with people and sharing about God’s mission through Bible translation ministry, what is the role of his word in your life? 

29:57
Alvina Federwitz
Now that I am retired, I spend much more time in his word. One of the things that I really missed when my husband died. Like I said, he was gifted in languages, and he said, if I don’t use the Greek, I will lose it. So he always translated directly from the Hebrew and the Greek, and I followed along in the revised anniversion. And so when he was gone, devotions, the devotions that we had together was not the same. And so I kept looking for devotionals that would kind of give me what I was missing now, all this exegetical study and information that I didn’t have. So I plan to spend an hour in devotions, but many times it’s 2 hours. And I find new ways, new types of devotions that mean a lot to me. Being in God’s word is extremely important. 

30:52
Alvina Federwitz
And during that time also, I pray for my children and my grandchildren that, and I try to connect with them frequently, so I know where they are and what their needs are. 

31:05
Rich Rudowske
Well, how can our listeners be praying for your ministry, and for just your life? 

31:12
Alvina Federwitz
Well, I do have degenerative osteoarthritis in my back, depending on. I have to be very careful about what I eat. And the change of weather often is detrimental to me. So that God would continue to give me the ability to keep moving. I would ask prayer for that. I also will be doing three aldamel conventions in September. I ask that God would keep my back so that I can move to these, because the one that’s in Chesapeake is going to be a nine hour drive north. Then I get home, and then I head 10 hours south to Tampa, Florida. I just ask that God allows me to do that because I really want to attend these conventions. 

32:02
Alvina Federwitz
I love l damel conventions, and this summer, a rare experience in our family, because all four of my children are in different parts of the world, literally, and now grandchildren, too. We’re going to get together the end of June, and I pray that this will really happen and that we can make the most of our time together. We usually do. We do that by falling into using liberian English because that’s the language my kids spoke. And their in laws have been very gracious about letting them speak liberian English. And so I don’t know why, but that’s just sort of the key that holds us together. 

32:43
Rich Rudowske
That’s great. Well, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. We appreciate your passion for God’s mission and for sharing with others to get them involved and taste and see that the Lord is good in their lives, but also in how he’s at work around the world. So we really appreciate that and your time with us today. 

33:00
Emily Wilson
Thank you, Alvina. 

33:01
Alvina Federwitz
Thank you, too. 

33:06
Rich Rudowske
Alvina is so inspiring with how she has worked and really how the landscape of Bible translation has changed over her time of service and what it looked like when she got there and how her family adapted in very different circumstances. And just that passion is the one thing that remains substantially solid through the whole time, is that she’s been passionate about God’s mission and through all the experiences sharing that with others. 

33:31
Emily Wilson
Yeah, I can honestly say I’ve been with the organization eight years now. And Alvina was at the Aurora offices in 2014 before we made the move. And she was there because a plan had fallen apart during Ebola, the crisis. She wasn’t able to be in Liberia in West Africa, to be alongside people and sharing God’s word with, you know, you could just see how heartbreaking that was for her. At the same time, she walked alongside me as an intern and then summer worker and just encouraged again and again and really because she was in prayer with me and just also providing inspiration of the impact of the work of Bible translation that I’m still here eight years later. And she does that for so many people across the nation, sharing her story of serving in God’s mission. 

34:33
Emily Wilson
But then also that impact, that it’s not about her, but it’s about people knowing Christ through his word in their own language. So it was really inspiring to hear more of Alvina’s story and how she got involved. 

34:51
Rich Rudowske
And we have been blessed by Alvina’s continuing work to invite participation in God’s mission. We’d love for you to see any of the more than 40 programs that she supports through her work. You can see those by going to go lbt.org programs. 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. This episode of essentially translatable was produced and edited by Andrew Olson. Our executive producer is Emily Wilson. Podcast artwork was designed by Caleb Rotewald. 

35:44
Rich Rudowske
Music written and performed by Rob Weit. I’m Rich Rudowski. So long for now. Close.