God’s Presence Everywhere

00:02
Tiffany Smith
God is multilingual. He literally speaks every language perfectly, and He understands every language. 

00:20
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the Essentially Translatable Podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. My name is Rich Rudowske, Chief Operating Officer here at LBT. Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to help spread the word about the Essentially Translatable Podcast so your friends and family can catch a glimpse at how God is at work in the world through Bible Translation ministry. You can share a link to your social media directly from your podcast player, or copy and paste a link to lbt.org/podcast, or forward the email you clicked on to listen to this episode. On today’s episode, guest host Emily Wilson, mission mobilization coordinator for LBT, talks to Tiffany Smith, who served an internship with us in Botswana for ten weeks late in 2019. 

01:02
Rich Rudowske
An LBT internship packs a lot of experiences into a short amount of time, as you’ll hear and will, as Tiffany says, change your life and your perspective of missionary work. With no further ado, let’s turn it over to Emily. 

01:16
Emily Wilson
Thank you so much for joining us and for sharing a little bit about yourself and the internship that you experienced with Lutheran Bible Translators Fall 2019. Just to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

01:33
Tiffany Smith
Yeah. So my name is Tiffany Smith. I went to Concordia University, Nebraska for four years for my bachelor’s degree. I’m originally from Iowa, but I’ve kind of just been living in Nebraska for the last four years. 

01:49
Tiffany Smith
Currently I’m indiana. So just kind of all over the place for jobs and school and stuff. I ended up with a major in theology and a minor in English as a Second Language and kind of how I got interested in mission trips, international missions and things like that. My sophomore year of college, I went on a mission trip for about eight or nine days to Jacmel, Haiti, and then I went the following year again to the same location for about ten days with another team. And yeah, I just absolutely loved it. I loved kind of the thrill of just being in a new culture and meeting new people and helping out. Like, I did a lot of volunteer projects, but we also did taught ESL to some teens a couple of weeknights while were there. 

02:38
Tiffany Smith
And that’s what really got my attention is just because I saw it as more of like, oh, wow, this could actually be a career rather than just, oh, a short term mission trip where you go help out at an orphanage for a week or whatever. I really saw how those seeds could be planted with the people you’re working with far past the amount of time that you might be there. So that’s what really got my interest in going into missions. Yeah. 

03:08
Emily Wilson
So can you tell us a little bit about how you first heard about Lutheran Bible Translators and then what made you decide to pursue an internship with us? 

03:18
Tiffany Smith
Yeah. So Lutheran Bible Translators was an organization that I was familiar with because I grew up going to a Lutheran church. So occasionally my church would support Lutheran Bible Translators, and I’m pretty sure I met a couple missionaries here and there. I couldn’t tell you who they were. I was pretty young at the time, but then they would visit Concordia because Concordia is a Lutheran university, and sometimes they would come set up a booth at the student center or, my freshman and sophomore year, I went to mission conferences. One was in Nebraska, my first year going, and then the other one was in Portland, Oregon. So that was pretty cool. But LBT always had a booth at one of those conferences as well. So finally, at the one in Oregon, I went and sat in on an LBT session. 

04:09
Tiffany Smith
It was like a keynote speaker type of thing, and it really got my interest because it seemed to just be centered around everything I was passionate about at the time and still am, like, languages, and I’m not multilingual by any means. I wouldn’t consider myself multilingual, but I just really love learning or trying to learn new languages. I really like the detail and structure behind languages and stuff. It just really fascinates me. It’s a ministry, international ministry at that. And so that really caught my attention as well. And so I kind of kept my eye on LBT for a while after that, and then it wasn’t until my senior year that I decided, I think I really want to look into this as a possible career someday. 

04:57
Tiffany Smith
And so that’s when I asked about, I’m pretty sure it was you that I contacted about internships and if that was possible and what exactly I could do just to help myself see if that’s something that I want to actually pursue full time or not. 

05:18
Emily Wilson
It’s good to see, like, a little backstory and fold over the years. So can you share a little bit about the actual internship? And that looked like, yeah. 

05:32
Tiffany Smith
So I went to Maun, Botswana in September of 2019, so not that long ago, and then I was there until about the first week of December, so altogether, it was about ten weeks, and I served with the Grulkes. So Carl and Kelsey. And as I was thinking about these questions, I tried to remember my language teacher while I was in Botswana taught me how to introduce myself to people, and I’m probably going to butcher this, because it’s been a long time since I practiced, but I think, “Ketusa, Ebora, Groki Carl, Kelsey,” is what I would say to people if they ask, because that means, “I’m here assisting the Grulkes, Carl and Kelsey.” So, yeah, fun little Setswana lesson for you there. 

06:23
Tiffany Smith
But, yeah, like I said, I was there for about ten weeks, and I worked with Carl, who is basically the translation advisor for a couple of the projects going on in Botswana. And then Kelsey is more focused on Scripture engagement. And so with Carl, I met translators and the advisory committees for the Shia Bible Project and the Shekgalagari Bible Project. And then with Kelsey, I traveled to Francistown for a week and met some of the leaders from the Kalanga Bible Translation project committee. And the Bible for Kalanga has already been published and everything a couple years ago. But Kelsey went. We went to go tell them about how you can make a Scripture app on your phone and just ways to distribute it, which also really, I can get into that a little bit later. 

07:17
Tiffany Smith
But that also really opened my eyes into another whole part of what LBT does. It’s not just about Bible translation. It’s also about distributing the Bible once it is published in that language and getting it out to the community and making it known that they have a Bible available in their own language. So, yeah, I got to see two sides of the coin there, which was really cool all within, just like, one couple in ministry. So that was really cool and changed my perspective a little bit on what I thought I was going into initially with that internship. 

07:49
Emily Wilson
That’s awesome. An unexpected sort of joy in that. Awesome. So could you tell us a little bit about what life looked like on the everyday as an intern? And that can range from what the work looked like, but also what everyday life looked like in Botswana. 

08:09
Tiffany Smith
Yeah, sure. Well, first off, I lived in a complex, which is just a closed neighborhood with a gate and everything. I lived in a little apartment on one side of it, and then on the other side lived the Grulkes. So basically, every day, I would just get up. We agreed to meet at 09:00 a.m. Every morning, I would walk over to their house and sit down, have coffee with them, talk about what the day was going to look like. Sometimes that would take a couple of hours, depending on what we wanted to do or work on at that moment. Sometimes it took ten minutes, and then either we would go somewhere to do more, or I would just go home and work on my own little project that they assigned me. And then there were some days that they said, you know what? 

08:51
Tiffany Smith
Take a break and just take the day to yourself. Go explore. Go do whatever you want. Make yourself feel at home here. That was really the first, I would say two or three weeks of my internship was them just saying, before we really dive deep into your job, just feel free to feel at home here and kind of explore a little bit. Obviously, with caution and being careful and everything, but just try to get used to the environment. Maybe go to a restaurant or a coffee shop or the store or something like that. So they really held my hand for the first week or so, and then after that, I kind of started to branch out a little bit on my own. I think it was the second week I started taking language lessons, and so I would meet my language teacher by myself. 

09:38
Tiffany Smith
Her name was Beauty, and we would just meet at a coffee shop two or three times a week. And so the first couple of times, I took a taxi, and then I had a car. And so once I kind of practiced driving on the left side of the road, because that’s how they drive there. I would just drive myself. But on the days when I would work with the Grulkes for long periods of time, it was usually me and Kelsey trying to get into detail. Checking the Scripture app for the Kalanga New Testament, I would go through and just make sure that the voice that was reading the Scripture on the scripture app, you have the option to play it out loud, and it’s someone reading it. 

10:21
Tiffany Smith
And so my job was to go through and just make sure that the voice and the highlighting on the words was all synced up, which sounds like very tedious and minuscule work, but it’s definitely necessary. And it was really interesting because as I listened, I recognized more and more words in Kalanga as I was reading it, like, oh, this one’s popped up a few times. This means forgiven or whatever. And so it was kind of cool to do that. Every Sunday went to church, I went with the Grulkes. There’s only one Lutheran church in Maun, and it’s pretty small at that, but it was nice going to the same church every single week and seeing the same handful of people. It was something that just became very familiar and comfortable for me by the end of the ten weeks. 

11:15
Tiffany Smith
And, yeah, church was one of my favorite parts of the week. It was long. It was about 3 hours every week, sometimes longer than that, depending on if it was, like a special church holiday or something. But, yeah, I know for the Grulkes, it was probably hard to sit through 3 hours with five kids. I can’t imagine. But for me, I didn’t have to worry about that so much. But it was nice to just sit there. 

11:38
Tiffany Smith
And even though I couldn’t understand half of the service, if you’re familiar with a typical Lutheran church service, you can kind of pick up, oh, I think they’re talking about they’re doing like Confession and Absolution right now, and now they’re doing the Lord’s Prayer because everything just has the same kind of cadence and sound to it, no matter what language it’s in, which is kind of cool. Other than that, just a typical weekday was usually meet at 09:00 a.m. Talk for a while, plan something, work, or do my own thing for the whole day. And then I would usually go over for dinner at the Grulke’s house, too, and play with the kids and read them bedtime stories or whatever, just try to help around the house. 

12:20
Tiffany Smith
I felt that was also kind of a part of my job, or maybe I just made it part of my job, I don’t know, but to help them out as much as possible, because I know I grew up in a big family, I know how hard that can be raising a big family. So just tried to do my part there. And it also made me feel more at home because I have younger siblings and stuff. It really made me feel at home to be with the kids there. So that was some of my highlights of my internship, was just hanging out with them, definitely. 

12:54
Emily Wilson
I know that the Grulke family really enjoyed you being there and missed you quite a bit when you go back in December to the states. So just wanted to ask what did you find yourself learning along the way in the internship? Because really the intent for internships within Lutheran Bible Translators is mostly a learning experience rather than here have all of this experience under your belt so that you’re an asset to the team, your presence is an asset, your learning is an asset, but we’re not looking for people to be experts. So along the way, what is it that you learned and how did you find yourself growing? 

13:40
Tiffany Smith
Yeah, so I could probably go on all day about this, but I’m not going to. So I’m going to try and summarize it in just a couple of different categories. First off, the environment, the culture, what I learned from that because I think that’s definitely something that you miss on those shorter mission trips. I personally tried to just soak it all in, like when I went to Haiti and stuff because that was just something I’m very passionate about. I can still tell you, even though it was almost like four or five years ago since I’ve gone, I could still tell you the little details that I remember about those mission trips, but I know that’s not the case for everyone. 

14:16
Tiffany Smith
Sometimes people just go and you’re kind of like, have this tunnel vision of just, let’s just do our job, what we’re here to do, whatever it might be, and that’s fine, too. But I knew going to Botswana, I was like, okay, I’m only going to be there for, like, ten weeks, which sounds like a long time, but even when I left, I felt like it was a very short amount of time. And you’re always learning something every single day. And so I really tried to soak that all in while I was there. Culturally, some of the things that I learned, it’s just like that a lot of little things go a long way. 

14:51
Tiffany Smith
And so whether it’s like how to properly shake someone’s hand in a respectful manner, because in some countries, you can’t just walk up to someone and go right up and shake their hand or whatever, it’s a very respectful thing where you hold your left arm on your right arm and shake their hand. And I know that might be something very specific to Botswana, I’m not entirely sure, but it’s just little things like that can go a long way because people who are local there notice that. And not that it’s all about putting the spotlight on you. Like, oh, look how cultural I am. But it’s more about building relationships because Botswana is a very touristy area. There are safaris. The delta is Okavanga Delta is only a couple miles away, basically, and Victoria Falls is a couple hours. 

15:47
Tiffany Smith
There’s just, it’s a very touristy area and so a lot of the locals don’t think twice when they see a white person walking around, just because normally it’s someone there on a vacation. But when you can pick up those small details from the culture and implement them into your everyday life, people really notice that. And it starts conversations when they see you again at the grocery store for the third time that week. They’re kind of, are you, do you live like, why are you here? So, yeah, I tried to pick up on little things like that. So it was like shaking hands or saying hello, goodbye, talking in Setswana. That’s why I took Setswana lessons, even driving. So, like I said, you already drive on the left side of the road, which is kind of strange, but for Americans. But even driving. 

16:34
Tiffany Smith
The traffic is very heavy in Maun, and so you have to be courteous, and there are signals and things that you can do with your lights or your horn or whatever to let people know they can cut in front of you, or, hey, wait, I’m turning. And so picking up on all of those also helped. But I could go on all day about all the little tiniest things that make a culture, but those were some things that I picked up on, and people would point out to me once in a while, like at church or something, like, hey, your set swan is getting really good. Or, hey, I noticed even some of my friends at church from the youth group occasionally would point out to me, like, hey, don’t do this. 

17:18
Tiffany Smith
But they were so nice about it, and so they were there for me. They got my back, oh, we don’t do that here. But it wasn’t like they were saying, oh, my gosh, you’re going to be..don’t make a fool of yourself. But they were just letting me know, like, oh, hey, this is what we do here. Don’t hold your arms like that, or whatever. I don’t know. Yeah, culturally, I just tried to immerse myself in the culture as often as possible. That might not be the case for every intern. I’m pretty independent and brave, so I wasn’t afraid to go out to the grocery store by myself. Starting, like, week two or three, I would go out to a restaurant or go to the coffee shop or whatever, but I know that’s not the case for everyone. 

17:59
Tiffany Smith
But whether or not you’re willing to do that when you are out in public or when you do go to church or go meet with a translation team, whatever it might be, just try to pick up on those little things that the locals are doing. And it really does go a long way when you’re building that community and building relationships with other people. Yeah. Some things I learned about translation itself and Scripture engagement is that there really is so much detail that goes into translating, and it might seem like a really long and tedious process, because it is, frankly, but it’s still so fascinating. And once in a while, you just have those Holy Spirit moments where I was sitting in with Carl and the Shekgalagari translation team, and were going through the book of, I think it was… 

18:54
Tiffany Smith
I can’t remember if it was Romans or Galatians, but there was one verse that I know well in English that I’ve heard it a lot, and then they were explaining it in Setswana, how to best translate it or into Shekgalagari, how to best translate it. And they used a word that basically encompassed what the whole verse was saying, but it was a concept I had never really thought of before. But once they said it helped me understand the whole verse in a whole different way. And so it was just so fascinating, and I don’t know if that makes much sense, but I guess you just have to experience it. Maybe if you speak another language or learn another language or something, you can understand. 

19:38
Tiffany Smith
So it was moments like that broke up the whole, like, oh, my gosh, this is so long, and just drawn out process. But then you’d have moments like that, like, oh, this is so cool. I love this. And it just kind of blows your mind, like, wow, I never thought of it that way, or this totally changed my understanding of or brought back to life the meaning of that verse for me, because you’re learning. It’s like you’re hearing it for the first time, but it’s just in a different language. So it was really cool. And what else I like about translation and what I learned about it is that and Scripture engagement is the reason for doing it is just so inspiring. 

20:19
Tiffany Smith
It’s like you’re just working to put the Word of God in the hands of this entire nation and in every nation, in every tongue. And that’s the goal of LBT, which I really love. And I saw that not only in translation, but then, like I said earlier, with Scripture engagement, you’re carrying out that mission. You don’t just stop at translation, because if you stopped there, yes, it will get into the hands of maybe a church or the committee or whoever in their families, but to truly try and spread the Gospel, because those people are already believers, right? And so that’s why they want to translate the Bible. They want to have it in their language so they can go and continue to carry out that mission and tell people about it. Scripture engagement, really? 

21:15
Tiffany Smith
I learned a lot from that because it’s like, that was all about carrying out that mission. Once the Bible has been translated into whatever language it might be, then you go and you put it in the hands. It’s like physically putting it in the hands of the people, which was really cool. And so, yeah, even though it takes a long time, it can be very tedious at moments. It’s just like every single minute detail, and it can take years, even. 

21:45
Tiffany Smith
But what I learned about it is that it is worth every single minute, because you never know what’s going to happen along the way, either you’ll spiritually grow a lot, or maybe the people you’re working with spiritually grow a lot, or you end up crossing paths with someone who has never heard the Word of God before, and suddenly when they hear it in their own language, their eyes are opened, and it’s so cool. Yeah. And then so kind of transitioning into my next few comments, what I learned spiritually and how I personally grew spiritually, I learned that God is everywhere. And I knew that before because we learned that God is all powerful and he’s everywhere all at once. But that’s kind of a concept that is hard to really picture unless you travel far away and then you still see God working. 

22:43
Tiffany Smith
It’s like, oh, yeah, God truly is everywhere. So He’s here with me right now as I sit here answering these questions. He’s with you in the office listening. He’s with the translators right now in Botswana or in, you know, He’s everywhere. And His Spirit not only goes with us wherever we go, but He Himself is just like in the, Like, it’s just so cool to think about. And so I witnessed that while I was there because especially at church and talking to some of the translation teams and stuff, God is multilingual, as in, He literally speaks every language perfectly, and He understands every language. And so, like, going to Botswana and going to church and hearing them all pray to God in Setswana, or whatever it was, it’s like God hears their prayers just as well as He hears my prayers in English. 

23:42
Tiffany Smith
And just as hears someone across the world speaking Mandarin or whatever, praying to him, it’s like He just understands every language. And I don’t want to get on too much of a tangent, but I remember thinking at one point while I was over there, I was like, I think oftentimes we think that God translates in His head when people are talking to Him into English, but what if God translates my English into Setswana? Or what if He’s translating Mandarin into Russian or whatever it is, it’s just really interesting to think about. It’s like, maybe God’s not English necessarily, but hears all of them the same. And that was what was really cool. That’s kind of how I grew spiritually, was just knowing, like, wow, He truly is everywhere. 

24:25
Tiffany Smith
And I told the church family when I was leaving, it was my last Sunday at church. I kind of gave a little bit of a speech in front of them, like, thank you for having me. Thank you for welcoming me. And I said, it’s so encouraging, and it still is to me. To think about, like, it’s so encouraging knowing I have brothers and sisters of Christ over there as well as here at home. And I was like, I know you guys are going to be praying for me because you’ve told me that I’m going to keep praying for you. And it’s just so cool how we can have that connection over the Atlantic Ocean, just having that commonality or whatever the word is of being brothers and sisters in Christ. So, yeah, definitely. 

25:09
Emily Wilson
It’s really exciting to see that process of growth. I mean, that you were there for ten weeks and seeing how much you’ve grown through that, through those experiences. So what would you tell someone who was thinking about pursuing an internship with Lutheran Bible Translators, knowing what you know now? 

25:31
Tiffany Smith
Yeah, I would say if you’re considering it, do it. It was definitely worth my time, and I know it would be worth anyone else’s time. If it is something that you are genuinely interested in, it will change your life. It will change your perspective of missionary work and ministry as a career, basically. Because when you’re there for more than a week or two, you do end up hitting those ruts and those lows in life, just like you would here at home. But that’s kind of what’s cool about it, is that you just get to truly experience life and overseas or what it would be like to live in that culture and stuff. And for me, I did hit some of those ruts once in a while, naturally, but for the most part, I was consistently very happy living there. 

26:27
Tiffany Smith
And I don’t know if it was because I knew I was only going to be there for ten weeks or what, because that can make a difference if you know you’re going to go home soon or whatever, but it was just exciting living there because you never knew what was going to happen or who you were going to meet. It was just truly a whole new world of possibilities. And every day I got to learn something new with translation or Scripture engagement or the language or whatever. And so there was always something to learn and something to gain for experience later on in life. 

26:59
Tiffany Smith
And I think that’s what was so encouraging about it is that I knew no matter what experience I have, it’s going to change my life and I’m going to be able to use this in the future and teach others about it or tell others about what Lutheran Bible Translators is doing or what the lutheran church in mound is doing. So it was really cool. So if you are considering it, yeah, just know that you’re going to be meeting some amazing people, you are going to learn new skills, maybe new languages. You’re going to eat new things, see new sights, and you’re just going to end up experiencing God and what he’s doing in a whole different light than what you’re probably used to. 

27:45
Tiffany Smith
And so even that alone is just worth going because I learned a lot about God and how he’s working in places other than just my own life. Places other than just Iowa or Nebraska or whatever it might be. Yeah, I would say go for it. And I actually recommend going for longer than ten weeks because by the time I left, I felt like I was just getting started. So, yeah, if you have the time or if you want to pursue that, I would say go for six months or even longer than that, a full year, if you’d like to tackle that, because, yeah, I can’t imagine what more I would have gained and learned if I had stayed for ten more weeks. But yeah, it’s worth it. 

28:32
Emily Wilson
Thank you so much for your time, Tiffany, and we really appreciate your service as an intern with us in Botswana. 

28:41
Tiffany Smith
Thank you for giving me that opportunity. It was truly amazing and I really appreciate it. 

28:50
Rich Rudowske
Thank you to Tiffany Smith for joining guest host Emily Wilson on the podcast today. As the program’s director for LBT, I can tell you that while the church is growing and maturing in Africa and Asia, church leaders still tell me that there is a need for all hands on deck in service to the Gospel and that missionaries from the west still have a vital role to play. If you would like to explore further whether career missionary service with LBT would be a good fit for you, please contact Emily at recruiter@lbt.org or go to www.lbt.org/go. Thank you for listening to the Essentially Translatable Podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. 

29:29
Rich Rudowske
We welcome your feedback on this episode via email to info@lbt.org look for past episodes of the podcast lbt.org/podcast or on Apple, Google, iHeartRadio, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Lutheran Bible Translators on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Or go to www.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 the Essentially Translatable Podcast was hosted by Emily Wilson and edited and produced by Andrew Olson. Executive producer is Amy Gertz. Music written and performed by Rob Veith. I’m Rich Rudowske. So long for now.