Through His Word

00:00
Janet Borchard
Pray that they will grow in their faith. Those who know the Lord and those who don’t know the Lord will come to know him through his word. And people there are really excited when they hear the recorded New Testament and the rest of it. 

00:13
Janet Borchard
So we’ve done. 

00:22
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the essentially translatable podcast brought to you Lutheran Bible translators. 

00:26
Rich Rudowske
I’m rich Brodowski. 

00:27
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. 

00:28
Rich Rudowske
And before we jump into today’s content, let us talk about how you can be sure that essentially translatable is always at your fingertips when a new episode drops. Emily, how do people make sure that happens? 

00:39
Emily Wilson
So you may be listening, because this was delivered to your email inbox courtesy of Lutheran Bible translators. But we don’t want you to miss a single one. Even if you are away from your email inbox, your podcast apps work just as well. So we are on Google podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, you name it. So you’ll find us at essentially translatable. And make sure to subscribe, because then you’ll get an alert every time we drop a new episode. Otherwise, you’re welcome to go to lbT.org slash podcast, and you can catch up on all of those other past episodes there as well. 

01:16
Rich Rudowske
That is right. 

01:17
Rich Rudowske
Nice job. Very well done. 

01:20
Janet Borchard
Thank you. 

01:21
Emily Wilson
I practiced. 

01:22
Rich Rudowske
That’s good. In today’s episode, I had the chance to interview Janet Borchard when she was here at the international offices recently. And Janet has worked for 40 years in various Bible translation ministries in New Mexico, Namibia, and Papua New guinea. 

01:37
Emily Wilson
Yeah. So her context, unlike a lot of our missionaries who have served maybe in two contexts and very different cultural spaces, she’s the only missionary that I have met that has served on three continents. 

01:52
Rich Rudowske
Right. 

01:52
Emily Wilson
Not to belittle or underestimate the power of being a consultant, because that’s awesome. And to be able to travel to different spaces, but really being in and among the language community, growing in relationships that it’s not passing in and out, but really investing in the language community. So her time began as a single woman working in New Mexico with an indigenous language community in North America, and then onward. And as she’s approaching retirement, she’s got lots of stories to share of where God had led her in the Bible translation movement. So we hope you enjoy this episode with Janet Borchard. 

02:43
Rich Rudowske
All right, I’m here in the studio today with Janet Borchard, Missionary for Lutheran Bible translators. Great to have you with us today. 

02:49
Janet Borchard
Good to be here. 

02:50
Rich Rudowske
You have served in Bible translation ministry with Lutheran Bible translators since 1982, which I just did math now, and that’s 40 years, and you’ve been in some really different context on three different continents. Before we dive into those details of where you served, we’d like you to tell us a little bit about your story, how you got connected to mission, how you started in LBT, what you were thinking about before, and how God led you to serve with us. 

03:16
Janet Borchard
Okay, well, a little bit about myself. I was born in the state of Oregon, and when I was nine years old, my family moved to California. My dad worked for Sears, and he was first transferred to the San Francisco area and then later on to San Diego. And as I look back at my childhood, I can see how the Lord led me to Bible translation, even by having my family move to California. Because if we hadn’t moved to California, we wouldn’t have gone to the church in San Francisco area where we met Norm and Barb Price, who later became LBT missionaries. It was through them that I first heard about Bible translation and LBT. And then when I was in high school, I really enjoyed learning languages and learning about other cultures. 

04:05
Janet Borchard
I was involved with a group that supported foreign exchange students in our school and in college. I already knew that in Bible translation we used linguistics. So I majored in linguistics because I knew that would be needed. Then after graduated from college, I applied to Lutheran Bible translators and became a missionary in 1982. 

04:29
Rich Rudowske
So the first place you went was New Mexico. When you first started out serving, what did the work look like there? 

04:36
Janet Borchard
I worked with another LBT missionary, Corey contact, who is now Corey Scott. And we served with a native american pueblo group in the state of New Mexico, which is here in the United States. We were there for eleven years. 

04:52
Janet Borchard
Wow. 

04:52
Janet Borchard
And our situation was quite different from other people who’ve worked in Bible translation, in large part because at this indian group village where they lived, some of the people there didn’t want outsiders learning their language. 

05:09
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

05:09
Janet Borchard
And so we couldn’t speak the language with just anybody on the street, anybody that was a member of the community. We had to be speaking it only with people that we knew from the churches there went to. So that’s very different from most situations with Bible translation. And one of the workshops that went to, after went to that area, went to a workshop that there are people that were working in the United States and Canada in Bible translation. And it was to help us all with here’s ideas for how to learn language, and our facilitators for this workshop, they would say, okay, here’s what you should do. For instance, you learn some sentences in the language, and you go out and practice them with as many speakers of the language as you can. And we’d suggest maybe 50 or more. 

06:02
Janet Borchard
And then they’d turn to Corey and I and say, oh, we don’t know if that’ll work for you, but do whatever you can. And that’s the way it was for us. Language learning was an extra challenge, but we did the best that we could. 

06:16
Rich Rudowske
Very good. So, as you were a new missionary, then how did your training prepare you? Where did you find there might have been gaps as you gained experience? 

06:25
Janet Borchard
Yeah. Before going to work there with those people, I had taken three semesters of specialized training in linguistics and translation, anthropology, literacy, various things like that, and also learned how to learn a language that hadn’t been written down before. But even after going to New Mexico, we had these workshops. Like I was saying, that language learning workshop, the group that I worked with on Bible translation, the linguistic group LBT, had loaned me to another group, and that group had these people come together. So we all came together for the language learning workshop. But after that, later on that year or the next year, we had a workshop about how to write up the grammar of a language. 

07:13
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

07:13
Janet Borchard
And we had later on workshops about other things, including, like how to work with people to translate Bible stories. And so I think we really had a lot of good help because of having. We weren’t just left with the things we learned before went to the field. We had ongoing help and workshops, and we had coaches that encouraged us. 

07:37
Rich Rudowske
Now, in this community, were you the only outsiders there, or was it still kind of an integrated community? And I’m just curious about that. 

07:46
Janet Borchard
Yeah, the Pueblo outsiders don’t normally live there on the reservation, unless you were married to someone there. But the reservation is right next to the town. 

07:58
Janet Borchard
Sure. 

07:59
Janet Borchard
And so we lived in this town, and then every day would go out to work. Got you visiting people in their homes. They thought were just visiting. Oh, isn’t it nice? 

08:09
Rich Rudowske
You can just visit them. 

08:10
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

08:10
Janet Borchard
That’s just work for us. So that’s how it worked. 

08:14
Rich Rudowske
That’s great. So serving alongside a native american language community is actually pretty unique. How did that shape the way that you viewed Bible translation and the way that you see scripture? 

08:25
Janet Borchard
Well, when were there, we determined that we wanted to train the people themselves. That was part of when went there. The idea was train them to do as much as the work as they could. But, of course, first we needed to kind of have some experience doing the work with them as well. So especially near the end of our time, we focused on giving people whatever training they were interested in having. And in one case, there was a couple, Ralph and Rose, and they were very interested in learning more. For him, it meant one of us working with him to be able to read better because he had difficulty learning to read with Rose, it was helping her to learn how to write her language well. 

09:10
Janet Borchard
And then after we left, that couple actually went on and they translated the script of a video about Jesus’life. 

09:20
Janet Borchard
Oh, great. 

09:21
Janet Borchard
On their own. And an interesting thing, when we visited them later on, they were showing us how they were doing it. And then she’d take the script into the kitchen and use the microwave timer to time herself for the amount of. Because each portion of the script you have to, they might say, you have 30 seconds. So she’d set the timer for 30 seconds and then try to get it all in. It’s like, this is really good that she was doing that. That was exciting. And they did. They finished that script. Another linguist worked with them to get it all in shape, and then it was eventually dubbed into the language. 

10:04
Rich Rudowske
So was some portion of scripture finished by the time you left, like a New Testament and what might be the state of it today in terms of what’s been done in Bible translation for this language? 

10:15
Janet Borchard
Before went there, the first team of linguists, Bible translators, who went there had worked with people and did the gospel of Mark. And then when went, there was another team. Actually, were a double team. There were four of us for a while, and they had started doing so and actually did all the first drafting. So Corey and I worked with people to check it to make sure it meant what was supposed to. That people were understanding it well. So then Luke was finished and Luke was printed. 

10:47
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

10:47
Janet Borchard
But basically there wasn’t much more that was done. 

10:51
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

10:52
Rich Rudowske
Sure. So then you went to Namibia. I’m just trying to do math here. So that sometime in the early ninety s. Ninety six. 

11:02
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

11:04
Rich Rudowske
And transitioned to Namibia, the Dimba language community. I’ve actually been there. 

11:09
Janet Borchard
Right. 

11:09
Rich Rudowske
To Opuo. What was that transition like? First of all, after having spent that much time in the context you’d been, and then southern Africa is a pretty different. 

11:19
Janet Borchard
It was. It was pretty different. It was different from living in the United States with a Walmart down the street, to living in Opuo, which had a few stores. I mean, it wasn’t like were out in a remote place or anything like that, but it was a very different thing. And also for me, that my assignment there was for a year, and I stayed there a year and a half. 

11:43
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

11:44
Janet Borchard
But because I wasn’t able to learn the language very much, didn’t have the time to do that, along with the responsibilities that I had. So it was very socially isolating, because there weren’t a lot of people, hardly anybody knew very much English. The pastor I worked with, Pastor Tolu, he knew English quite well, and some of the younger people, so I couldn’t really be social with people. Yeah, that was. 

12:12
Rich Rudowske
So I don’t know if you can confirm this or not then, but I’m told that Opuo, the name of the place in one of the local languages, means the end of the road. So I don’t know if you ever heard that one before, but, yeah, that is basically what it is. 

12:24
Janet Borchard
And it can mean, like, the end of the. 

12:26
Rich Rudowske
Okay, gotcha. So, yeah. How did you grow during that time in Namibia? What do you think was the most rewarding part of your time of service there? 

12:35
Janet Borchard
I was in Namibia, as I said, for a year and a half, and there were two things that I was to do, and one was to help with a language survey, because we wanted to find out whether themba people really needed a translation in their own language or could they understand the languages that they lived interspersed with. There were two languages that language groups that they lived with. And so I learned how to do a language survey, because I’d never done that before. I’ve done quite a few things, but I worked with Barbara Cameron, who was an LBT person, and with Sue Hasselbring, another LBT survey person. They taught me and worked with me to come up with the survey, and Barbara did it with me. So that was where I grew in that kind of thing. 

13:24
Janet Borchard
The most rewarding part for me was probably that I was able to develop training materials and to train the translation team, because that was the other reason I was there, the second reason, to train the Bible translation team so they could do a better job. And then I worked with the team, and we altogether worked to train other speakers of the language, to go over the translation and give suggestions for how to improve it. 

13:49
Rich Rudowske
And, yeah, the Vimba people, their New Testament was finished and dedicated in 2012. So how’s it feel to, I guess, have had a hand in that to some degree and know that these people have God’s word in their hands now? 

14:01
Janet Borchard
Yeah, it was really nice. I wish I could have gone, but at the time, I couldn’t go, but it was neat to hear about that, and to see pictures and stuff like that they had God’s word, the New Testament. 

14:15
Janet Borchard
Yeah. 

14:16
Rich Rudowske
And then so you had a placement in North America, New Mexico, out in the southwest that’s already even a unique part of the United States. Then Namibia, southern Africa, and a remote part of that, and then Papua New guinea. So how did you get started with the ipili Bible translation program? What was your connection that took you to Papua New guinea? 

14:34
Janet Borchard
Well, I married into it. 

14:35
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

14:37
Janet Borchard
When I finished my time in Namibia, I returned to the US to speak in churches before I would go on to another assignment with LBT, the intention was that I would go to Botswana. And while I was at my parents’house in Oregon, I got a letter from Luplican, who used to work at the LBT office, our office, that was in southern California. I knew her from that. But now, in 1998, she was a church secretary in a church in Orange county. And she sent me a letter, and she says, there’s this guy, Terry Borchard. He’s a Bible translator in Papua New guinea, and his wife Kathy died last year, and he needs to get married again. So says his daughter and I. That’s what Betty Lou said. 

15:26
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

15:26
Janet Borchard
And I was like, I was 42 years old. I’d never been married single. Bible translator and if you go as a woman Bible translator, it’s not too much chance you’re going to get married after you get to the field to work. So I was in shock at first, and then I wrote back to her, and I said, yeah, I’d be interested in meeting him. 

15:44
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

15:45
Janet Borchard
And at first I said, are you sure he wants to get married? And she says, oh, yeah. So then she asked him that, and then he wrote me a long letter and said, yes, I’m very interested in getting married again. So we arranged to meet on Ash Wednesday at a church service, and that’s how we met, and it was a Linton romance. 

16:05
Rich Rudowske
Did you get married on Easter? 

16:07
Janet Borchard
No. 

16:07
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

16:08
Janet Borchard
We got engaged the Wednesday after Easter. 

16:10
Rich Rudowske
Got you? 

16:11
Janet Borchard
Yeah. We were married in August. So Terry had already been working in Bible translation for close to 30 years. 

16:22
Janet Borchard
Wow. 

16:22
Janet Borchard
And he was fluent in the epile language, and so it made sense, even though I was trained to do work in translation and stuff like that, it made sense for him to concentrate on that and for me to do all the other things that would help him to be able to do his work and not take away his time from working on the translation. So I did things like paperwork, correspondence, and helping produce items of literature for the people to use in the language. So before they had the New Testament, they’d have chance to see their language and things like that. 

17:01
Rich Rudowske
Right. And there was an ipoli New Testament. When was that one dedicated? I think it was before limbo, right? 

17:06
Janet Borchard
Yeah, it was finished, printed, and dedicated in 2008. 

17:12
Rich Rudowske
Okay, very good. So then you were around there for about ten years before that New Testament dedication, right? Yes, something like that. 

17:21
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

17:21
Rich Rudowske
So moving from the other two locations to PNG, what kind of situation were you in living there, and how was the different culture and location? 

17:32
Janet Borchard
The living situation was on what we call a translation center. 

17:37
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

17:38
Janet Borchard
So it was where? Because in the country of Papua New guinea, there have been a lot of people working on Bible translation, and this organization has a center there. And once again, I was loaned by Lutheran Bible translators to this organization, and so it was kind of a very international community, and it wasn’t because of the situation, the epile situation, weren’t able to live in the area. Terry had lived there many years before. 

18:10
Janet Borchard
Oh, wow. 

18:11
Janet Borchard
Okay. But in the epile area is one of the largest gold mines in the world, and it’s sort of like the wild west. It’s really. There’s no way that Terry would want me living out there. And even he just being out there, it was not safe. Very safe. So that’s why we lived on the translation center, and we would have equally people come to work on the translation there. 

18:40
Rich Rudowske
Very good. And, yeah, just, I guess for folks listening in, you compare and contrast, like a new Mexico or a Namibia, big, wide open spaces. And even though you lived very isolated, you could drive there from a long ways away. But in Papua New guinea, it’s a small island, but travel is pretty difficult. 

18:59
Janet Borchard
Right. 

18:59
Rich Rudowske
You’re in this translation center, but if you go to different places, you’re taking planes or going through jungle or. How does that. 

19:06
Janet Borchard
Well, actually, the epile situation, where the gold mining is at the end of what they call the Highlands highway. 

19:13
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

19:14
Janet Borchard
So you can drive. 

19:15
Rich Rudowske
You can drive. 

19:15
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

19:16
Janet Borchard
It’s about a day and a half drive from where we lived on the translation center. You can also fly there. And then the other more rural part of the Ipoli area, you pretty much need to fly there. 

19:27
Rich Rudowske
All right, so what was exciting to you about the program or unique about the ipili situation? 

19:33
Janet Borchard
For me, the unique thing was that it was the first time that I actually helped to finish a New Testament translation, because it didn’t happen in New Mexico, and I wasn’t there for the end of the Namibia one, themba one. And as we said the equally New Testament was finished and dedicated in 2008. And then the next year, the New Testament was recorded with different voices used for different characters. And then a year or so later, a film about the life of Jesus was dubbed into iply. And then also later, several years later, a film about HIV AIDS, which was a big problem in Papua New guinea, was also dubbed in the language. 

20:20
Janet Borchard
When we had people in to record the New Testament, they saw this video about HIV AIDS that the 7th day adventist church had done, and they said, we need to do this. And so they were the ones that said, we need to do this. So we eventually did, and then we also started work on the New Testament. 

20:39
Rich Rudowske
Okay, so in this situation in Papua New guinea, how were you stretched? What were the challenges you faced there? 

20:46
Janet Borchard
Well, the biggest challenge that I faced was that my husband, Terry got cancer and he died in 2014. He was diagnosed in 2007. But were still able to go to Papua New guinea for several of the years and stay there for six months at a time. That was good. But after he died, then I took over as being the advisor, because before he died, I talked with the main translator, Pastor Mondida, and he and I both. Terry, Terry’s not going to be here forever. And we both said, yeah, we will commit to continue working. So that was a stretch for me because I didn’t know the language, but I was able to learn a lot about how it works by using this program, that translation program we use called paritext. But that was the most stretching thing in that situation. 

21:40
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I imagine so. And so as you’ve continued to work then, so you used paritext to sort of learn about the language. Are you able to speak it or you know it well in the written form, which is completely serviceable for Bible translation. But is that kind of how it works? 

21:57
Janet Borchard
Yeah, I don’t speak it at all. 

21:59
Janet Borchard
Okay. 

21:59
Janet Borchard
But, yeah, because in paritex, there’s a program that you can put, like, the meaning of each word. 

22:05
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, right. 

22:07
Janet Borchard
And so by doing that, and also the parts of the words you can put in the verb system in iply is very complex. And so I was able to learn especially that, but everything else, too. This program called Paritext was a big help. So I can look at it now and I can pretty well tell what it means, or at least I know that I think there’s something wrong there, or I think that’s right, but I think there’s something missing or something’s been added. I can pretty well, yeah. 

22:41
Rich Rudowske
So it gives you what you need to have a dialogue with the translation staff, and then I ask questions from it up. 

22:47
Janet Borchard
Sure. 

22:47
Rich Rudowske
Great. So in recent years, then, you’ve worked with the program remotely. How’s that compare with living in country in terms of just the process and how you go about the work and what’s a typical day look like? 

22:59
Janet Borchard
Yeah. So the process was, again, we use this program paratext, and it’s really neat because you don’t have to be in the same country as the people you’re working with, although it is much easier and more pleasant if you’re sitting right next to each. So, say, Pastor Mondide would work on editing the draft of the translation, and then he would send that via the Internet. We call that doing a send receive. And he would send his work and receive my work or my questions, because I can put notes in there and say, what does this mean? Or I think there’s something missing here. I don’t see this part about Jesus. Jesus in the Old Testament. We’re doing the Old Testament. I don’t see this. Know Moses or something. And then he would write. So basically, we work that way. 

23:55
Janet Borchard
It takes more time because it means writing a lot back and forth, but it’s possible to do it. And then there’s been sometimes we’ve been able to sit down and use, like, the Skype program, the Internet, like, zoom thing, and be able to talk to each other, and that’s made it even easier in that way. So that’s how we’ve done it. And so I’m sitting here in the United States, working in Oregon, and he’s over in Papua, New guinea. There’s, like, six or 7 hours difference in our time there. So I’m working at home. We call it remote assignment. So usually I will work in the morning on other things, like correspondence, reports, whatever, and then in the afternoon, I’ll usually work on the language stuff. 

24:43
Janet Borchard
All right. 

24:44
Rich Rudowske
And you’ve been able to go occasionally as well, then, right. And make some in person connections. I imagine that’s pretty important for the. Giving the project a boost from time to time. 

24:55
Janet Borchard
Yeah. I was able to go three, four times, maybe from 2017 to 2019, and I’d hoped to go back and stay there for a longer time, but then when Covid came. 

25:07
Janet Borchard
Yes. 

25:07
Janet Borchard
It didn’t happen. 

25:11
Rich Rudowske
Well, yeah. As you’ve served for 40 years, preparing for your retirement. So how’s that? And what’s next for you? 

25:18
Janet Borchard
I’m not sure. So I decided at the beginning of this year that I wanted to retire this year, and I’m hoping and I’m planning to kind officially retire at the end of August. But now it’s become apparent that Mondida and I won’t be able to finish the work that we had wanted to do on Genesis to get that finished by then. So I will continue to work part time when he’s able to work on that, because we want to get Genesis done. It’s been recorded, but there need to be some corrections. We’ve done Genesis, Ruth, Jonah, and the first five chapters of Exodus are finished, and so we want to get that all into one book for, like, pastors and evangelists and have them all recorded. Most of it is recorded, but some of it still needs to be. 

26:10
Janet Borchard
And so that’s what we’ll do, and we’ll see what the Lord has in store for me after that. 

26:15
Janet Borchard
Yeah. 

26:15
Rich Rudowske
What the Lord’s timing is on that. That’s great. How can our listeners be praying for you? 

26:20
Janet Borchard
Well, pray for me as I transition into retirement and pray for Pastor Mandita that he’ll be able to get to the translation center in a few months and work on the translation, that he’ll have the help, technical help that he needs to do the computer work, because that’s a challenge for him. And then pray for the rest of the people, too. It’s a difficult life for them there with the gold mine and other things. It’s just really difficult. And pray that they will grow in their faith, those who know the Lord, and then those who don’t know the Lord will come to know him through his word. People there are really excited when they hear the recorded New Testament and the rest of it that we’ve done. 

27:06
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, absolutely. Pray the Lord to speak through his word and for that word to take root deeply in the lives of the ipili people. Well, thank you for your service all these years and all these places that the Lord has led. You probably didn’t ever imagine all the places you’d go, like they say. So it’s been quite an experience, I’m sure. So thanks for sharing about it with us today, and it’s great talking with you. 

27:29
Janet Borchard
Thanks for having me. 

27:35
Emily Wilson
So that interview is just a reflection, a testimony, of Janet’s sweet, gentle spirit, her humble spirit, and that her focus has always just been on God’s word, being among his people and lifting up our partners in any way she can and supporting people. And she’s always so I’ve been with the organization eight years now, and that spirit, that focus has always been there. And 40 years she’s been a huge blessing to our organization. 

28:10
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And just three very different places and three very different types of ministry with different outcomes and different contexts of the state of the church and the availability of folks to commit to work in Bible translation or even to commit to the christian faith. And I think that listening to her tell her story about how she worked in each of those contexts and just saw the work that the Lord placed before her, adapted to the situation, did what was needed, empowered people in different ways. It’s a great testimony to a way to be incarnational in ministry. 

28:48
Emily Wilson
Right. That sometimes the work that the task, the overarching task, we go about it in different ways. And I loved how when she was talking about her experience in New Mexico, the couple that she worked with and their desire, they each had different objectives. The main goal was God’s word in their hands, but by coming at learning their language and being able to articulate it, they were able to go forward. Even after Janet had left that program and in that region, the work continued. The New Testament is in their hands, and how God is working through each of us, that we might not see the larger picture or we might not be there for that culmination necessarily. He is still moving. 

29:39
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And the work that Janet has been doing the last several years with partners in Papua New guinea is ongoing and definitely could use your prayer and financial support. If you’d like to get involved with the Ipili language community, you can go to go lbt.org, ipili, which is spelled I-P-I-L-I. That’s go lbt.org ipili. 

30:05
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.