Mission Then and Now

00:00
Ruthie Wagner
The Bible is already relevant. How do we make it so that it’s also relevant in their language? And that’s a huge question that comes up regularly in our training. To produce a translation that they feel confident, is natural, is relevant to their community. 

00:25
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. I’m Rich Rudowske. 

00:30
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. And as you know, we are in the “More Than Words” comprehensive campaign for scripture impact. And we had Ruthie Wagner and Eshinee Veith on the podcast talking about…that God’s Word is more than words, and we are working alongside local leaders, ministry entrepreneurs, to launch Bible translation movements right where they are. So being able to see how three new language community programs are emerging, but then also continuing on with an existing Bible translation program and seeing how there is an information resource learning explosion happening there. 

01:15
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, it was really a great interview. We’ve got Ruthie and Eshinee, and they both were on the same trip, but doing some parallel activities. And Ruthie is focused on the Kerewe language project. That’s an existing, ongoing project. That was our first partnership with the Lutheran church in Tanzania. They’re east of Lake Victoria diocese, and so that’s been established for a number of years. But as they’ve continued to work and grow and learn, they continue to build their capacity. And Ruthie is an ongoing partner with them in that she’s based in the United States and doing some innovative things to reach out and work with them. But this was her first chance to actually go and be with people in person, which was pretty exciting. 

01:58
Rich Rudowske
And then Eshinee is our training coordinator, and she was there primarily to work with three other language communities who are launching their own Bible translation movements. The southeast of Lake Victoria Diocese of the Lutheran Church has identified that Bible translation work in these language communities is a key for reaching the language communities with the Gospel and has invited Lutheran Bible translators to partner alongside their ministry entrepreneurs to put God’s Word in their hands. And so that’s what Eshinee was there to facilitate the beginning of some of that work. So a couple different things going on there. We hope that you can catch all that as we interview, but it’s a great conversation with both Ruthie and Eshinee, and I think you’re going to really love it. 

02:46
Rich Rudowske
All right, we’re on the line today with Ruthie Wagner and Eshinee Veith, who both recently spent some time in Tanzania with our crew and our partners, doing some awesome stuff. And we’re here to talk about that and unpack it a little bit. So welcome to the podcast. 

03:00
Emily Wilson
Welcome. 

03:01
Ruthie Wagner
Thank you. 

03:02
Eishnee Veith
Thank you. 

03:03
Emily Wilson
So, for a little bit of a background for our listeners, Eshinee, you’ve been on the podcast before, but Ruthie, this is your first time. We want to give our listeners a bit of a backstory for you guys. Neither of you are new to Bible translation ministry, but this trip that you were just on in Tanzania had a little bit of a different take, a little bit of a newness to it. So a little bit of background for our listeners. What roles did you serve in previously before this trip to Tanzania in your new roles? 

03:40
Ruthie Wagner
I served with Lutheran Bible Translators in Sierra Leone for about six years as a translation advisor to the Themne Old Testament Project. 

03:47
Eishnee Veith
And I’m the training coordinator now. But prior to that, I served for ten years with Lutheran Bible Translators in Botswana as project coordinator and exegete for the Wayeyi Bible translation project. 

04:01
Rich Rudowske
And then Ruthie, of course, has a lot of overseas experience prior to that too. Just tell the listeners, since it’s your first time, on, a little bit about your background and where you came from. 

04:11
Ruthie Wagner
Sure. I’m a third generation missionary. My parents and grandparents were missionaries in Bangladesh. And so I felt the call to missions while I was in Bible school and joined LBT back in 2007 and have been with LBT off and on since then, and so served in Sierra Leone for several years and now am working remotely from Minnesota. 

04:37
Rich Rudowske
So Ruthie has the distinction of being the one person still in Lutheran Bible Translators who went to school at the same time as me and as the Lutherans got assigned to projects altogether. So we had a lot of fun back in the day. But yeah, great to have you on. 

04:50
Emily Wilson
So your previous roles, both in Sierra Leone and in Botswana, you had a relationship in the community by living in the community. And things have shifted a little bit as you are now both located in the US. So as you were preparing for this trip to Tanzania, what kind of work did you need to do beforehand regarding maybe relationships or just preparing for the content of the workshop? 

05:18
Eishnee Veith
Well, for me, the main thing I had to do was remind myself that I haven’t built a relationship with these people and just be prepared to go in as a guest and as a learner. I’m used to…in my time in Botswana, I did a lot of training with various groups in Botswana and from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. And with those groups, I worked with them for years as a guest lecturer with the Word for the World at translator training there. And so I had a relationship with those students I had spent at that point. Like, by the end of it, I had gotten to know them over the course of years. 

06:02
Eishnee Veith
And so there were things that I did in my teaching with those students that were based on the intimacy of that relationship and the knowledge of their languages that I had gained over those years. But this was completely fresh and completely new. And even though two of the languages that were involved in the workshop that I was a part of were Bantu languages, so there were some similarities with languages I’d worked with before, one of them was not. And so I really had to come in with the humility of a learner. 

06:32
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And I think we should mention this was, for both of you, the first time in Tanzania. Right. I mean, Ruthie, you’ve been working with the crew a little bit. Right. But had not been to Tanzania before. 

06:42
Ruthie Wagner
That’s right. 

06:43
Rich Rudowske
And what kind of work have you been doing with them before the trip here? 

06:47
Ruthie Wagner
Yeah. While I hadn’t been familiar with the larger Tanzania context, I have been working remotely teaching the Kerewe translation team for the past several months. We’ve been building relationships over Zoom and WhatsApp and YouTube. So this was a continuation on that teaching and the first face-to-face meeting, which was pretty fun, I met them, but I felt like I had known them already for quite some time, and there was a lot of joy in meeting one another in person. 

07:22
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. And let’s again, just to make sure our listeners are tracking with us, who were you all working with here? Who are they we keep talking about on the ground there in Tanzania? 

07:30
Eishnee Veith
We were working with the Lutheran Church in Tanzania. There’s the ELVD and the SELVD. There are two dioceses of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania, and I was a part of a workshop with three different language communities in which the church there is exploring beginning translation work, the Somboa, the Kara, and the Taturu dialect spoken by the Datoga people. 

07:59
Ruthie Wagner
And I was working with the Kerewe Bible translation project, which is on Ukurewe Island and Lake Victoria, right? 

08:08
Rich Rudowske
Yep. And the LV in those acronyms is Lake Victoria. So East of Lake Victoria diocese and Southeast of Lake Victoria diocese, which are very aptly descriptor names of where they are located and, yeah, so you guys were in the. Did you get to go on the island, Ruthie, for the…

08:24
Ruthie Wagner
Yeah, I was. I spent the week on the island. 

08:27
Rich Rudowske
Nice. 

08:27
Emily Wilson
Okay, so as you were traveling, and so you had Eshinee, you were like, okay, I’m going in as a guest, but I’ve got this previous facilitating role to draw from. And Ruthie, you were building relationships, I love you know, using what you have of YouTube and Zoom, and that it just made it that much sweeter meeting in person. But you had some foundation to work from of building those relationships. But when you got to Tanzania, your role was very specific in each of your different contexts. Can you share a little bit about what the purpose of the trip was in your role? 

09:08
Eshinee Veith
So, for the workshop that I was a part of, the goal of this workshop was to work with potential translator candidates from each of the three language communities to get to know them, to explore the concept of Bible translation with them a bit, and to allow representatives of the church to observe these translator candidates and to see who they might invite to a future workshop to further refine their list of candidates for translation work. And so it wasn’t so much a training as it was a conversation and a get-to-know-you experience. And so it was very different from anything I’d ever done before. I, kind of, laughed after I prepared the first day’s worth of PowerPoints because it was like a full day’s worth of slides, but only one of the slides contained any information. The rest were questions. 

10:12
Eshinee Veith
It was a series of questions I decided to go into this with, rather than assuming that I had information that they needed and I needed to give it to them or else they wouldn’t have it. My thinking on how translation training should happen is changing over time, and one of the things that has been sort of bubbling up in my consciousness recently is the idea that people who live in multilingual contexts spend their entire lives translating. And so they already have well-developed ideas of how translation is done because they do it. They just do it usually orally, which is fantastic. And they know what good translation is because they try to do that every day. 

11:04
Eshinee Veith
And so rather than saying, this is what translation is and this is how it’s done, and these are the things that you need to know, I decided to go in and say, what are your thoughts about these things? Because no one person knows everything anyway. I am not the source of all knowledge. Knowledge is owned by community and comes from dialogue in community. So, yeah, this was a new experience for me, and it was really rewarding. It was so great to hear people sharing with one another and learning from one another and just being able to stand back and watch that happening. 

11:48
Rich Rudowske
When you did that and sort of set the stage for this is how we’re going to do things. Was there like an adjustment period where people, kind of, came expecting that they were going to sit and listen, or did it just fairly naturally develop into the conversations you were hoping for? 

12:03
Eshinee Veith
It happened a lot faster than I would have expected. There are patterns of education that people are used to depending on their experience. And I know in some contexts that I’ve been in on the continent of Africa, different countries and different subcommunities within those countries will have different education experiences. So I couldn’t tell if what I was going to experience was that sort of person standing at the front makes everyone sit there and listen, or whether people were genuinely going to feel free to respond. And people seemed to feel really free to respond. And, yeah, it was very natural. I was really thankful for that. 

12:49
Rich Rudowske
Now, the fear that some educators may have, and I’m not asking you to speak on behalf of them, but might be like, okay, so they talked a lot, but did you learn anything or was an objective met? How do you kind of respond to that? 

13:03
Eshinee Veith
I would say the objective from my perspective was more than met. I mean, yes, there’s always a chance that someone is going to say something that you’re like, how am I going to correct that? But I find that it’s not my job to police people’s perspectives, I don’t think. And I find that if somebody says something that is not what we want people to be getting or that I would not want people to be getting, I’m not going to be alone in that. There’s a room full of people who will feel free to also say, I’m not sure that I agree with that. And so there was very little of that, but there was some of that. 

13:47
Eshinee Veith
But the thing that, I’m going to give you an example of something where things went far beyond what I would have anticipated, but it was fantastic, starting with just what is a quality translation? So we typically, and by we, I mean myself and some of my colleagues that I know about have typically gone into a situation, a translation training, where we say these are the qualities of a good translation. And usually there’s a short list of, it’s ABC, accurate, beautiful, clear, or it’s clear, accurate, natural and acceptable. And it’s like we’re telling people, like we’re telling them something new. And I decided not to do that. I asked the question, what is a good translation? How can you tell when a good translation has happened? What is a good translation? 

14:44
Eshinee Veith
And so people’s hands were popping up and they were saying all sorts of stuff, and I took a picture of what we wrote on the board from that. First of all, they said all of those things at one point or another, but they said other things that I would not have said myself. And when I looked at what they had said, I kind of went, yeah, they’re saying something that we don’t normally say, and not only that, the focus shifted from the quality of the translation to the quality of the translator. 

15:21
Rich Rudowske
Wow. 

15:22
Eshinee Veith
Because they were talking about, rather than saying the translation is understandable, which people did say, or the meaning is clear, which people did say. They said, “The one doing the translation is spiritual. The one doing the translation has wisdom. The one doing the translation is presentable”. I mean, there was a whole series of things that aren’t in our basic list of what makes a good translation. But their focus was on the translator, which is, as I told them at the time, I said, this has been a shift in the field of translation studies over the last few decades, where the shift is from focusing on the text to focusing on the translator. I said, so you all in 20 minutes got where it’s taken the field of translation studies decades to get to. 

16:14
Eshinee Veith
So that was really rewarding for me and hopefully affirming for them as well. 

16:20
Rich Rudowske
Now, with the “More Than Words” campaign, we’ve been focusing on the idea of equipping ministry entrepreneurs. Right. Folks that have that vision for mission and ministry. And I think that also speaks then to some of the work you’re doing, Ruthie, in terms of an existing project that’s being driven by the church with some folks with some passion that needs to be focused. So talk a little bit about what you were there to do, what you’ve been doing remotely, and then your in-person objectives. 

16:51
Ruthie Wagner
Yeah. So it was my first time in Tanzania, and so for the first few days, I was there to get to know our partners there, the church, the pastors, and the various leaders that are involved with the projects. And of course, observe Eshinee as she facilitated the three-language workshop, which was a pleasure. I got to teach one afternoon there, which was fun, but my primary role was with the Kerewe team onUkerewe island. So I am officially a remote translation advisor in that project, and my primary task is to develop and teach a course that I’ve called relevant Bible translations, and with that, I’m also working to mentor the exegete on the team to hopefully work into a translation advisor role for his project and possibly others. 

17:53
Rich Rudowske
So how far along is that project then, and where are you, kind of, stepping in with them as they’re on their journey? 

18:01
Ruthie Wagner
Yeah, the New Testament. They have several books of the New Testament done, the Gospels and acts, and then they have Jonah done, and they’re working on the Pentateuch. Hopefully. They’re hoping that’ll be completed next year. So it’s fairly early on in the project. It’s a whole Bible project, and so there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done. The translators are very early, actually, in their training. They had a bit of software training and kind of some basic training, but I was brought in to do some more in-depth teaching for them, for this project. 

18:45
Emily Wilson
So as you were walking alongside four different language communities and each of them having different expectations, but also this unified goal of God’s Word in their own language, and that the community is able to not only understand, but to share and be transformed by scripture. So what are some of the unique joys and challenges that you saw or heard discussed in your different conversations with these teams? What are they facing? 

19:18
Ruthie Wagner
I can speak to the Kerewe team specifically. I just see them really enjoying, kind of, a learning explosion that’s come through this course I’m teaching. It’s really cool to hear them say, wow, we were never taught this before, and our translations are going to better. It’s exciting to come in so early in the stage of their translations that we can work on these translation theories and issues and talk to them about how it relates to their project and how it relates to their work. And this is what exegesis is, and how is that going to affect your first draft and tell me how it’s going to work for you. And so it’s really exciting to see that learning happening and it’s affecting their translation work positively. 

20:19
Ruthie Wagner
During my time there, I taught in the afternoons and in the mornings they did the consultant checking for the book of John, and even the consultant was commenting on the translation of John, how well it was. It’s. I think it’s really positively helping them better prepared for consultant checking and distribution. They especially enjoy the software training, which I feel pretty excited about because that can get overwhelming for people who have never used computers prior to joining a project like this. They’ve never used computers. This is the first time that they’re interacting with software like this, and they’re genuinely excited and just wanted to know more. And I would ask, “Should we do another lesson or should we do some software training?” Oh, let’s do the software. They’re so excited, and I got to go really in-depth with them. 

21:18
Ruthie Wagner
They’ve done a few Paratext trainings in the past, but they’ve all been very kind of surface-level training of how to draft, and I was able to get them really in depth and how to really check your translation for accuracy and how to teach the software, your language so that it can come back with really helpful suggestions and you can use the tools more effectively because it gets to know your language. And on this trip too, we were able to download and set up logos on their computers, which was pretty exciting, especially at the end of it when they were like, this is great. We’re so excited to use the software. And I said, it’s not going to be too overwhelming for you to go in and find resources because it was still downloading all the resources. 

22:12
Ruthie Wagner
And they were like, no, we’re excited to finally have a resource that can provide these things because that’s a huge need in the project, is they don’t have access to good resources. And Paratext has some, the translation software has some, but nothing like a logus can provide. So that was a huge win for our time there. So in Paratext, the translations opt where there’s what you call enhanced resources, where the key concepts are linked to the original languages, and you can have dictionaries and other resources that are linked where you just click a button and then it even gets to know your language, where it can tell you that you’ve translated it consistently or not, and it’ll red flag it if you haven’t. 

23:06
Ruthie Wagner
And it’s just really powerful tool and really exciting to see them be able to use these tools in their language and in English, which is amazing, actually, because some of them didn’t know English at all when they joined the project. One of the guys didn’t know English at all, and he’s been with the team for four years, and he was fully involved in theoretical discussion on translation. It was just incredible to see him. And the consultant just reminded me not to be discouraged when I see new translators coming in and they don’t know English. That is something that is really not that hard for them to learn. They’re multilingual already. They’ve already learned multiple languages, so learning another language isn’t as hard as what we might find. 

24:09
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I love it. So that work with that established program, I love you talking about their excitement about a learning explosion, too. That’s very cool. Like just that excitement for seeing vision and new opportunities, especially as they’re already engaged in the work. So then, Ishni, you were focused on these other three communities that are in a beginning process. So listeners to the podcast may have heard us talk about co-creative processes, which was my doctoral dissertation, and we don’t expect you to remember that, but basically the general idea is you want to create space for conversations and for language communities to be able to really contribute into what’s going to happen in their language. So talk about, again, some of where those language communities are at and how that informed your approach. 

24:58
Eshinee Veith
So what we did was, as I mentioned, I had a series of questions. Rather than providing information and saying, this is how translation works, this is what translation is. I came with questions, and along with those questions, it wasn’t just myself and members of the community, or myself and church representatives and members of the community. The church provided some pastors to be scribes for this event. So the role of the scribe was to make note of what it was that people from each language group were saying in response to the question. So essentially what we were doing was exploring with members of the language community, aspects of their community, specific to their community, that are relevant to how the Bible translation work is going to be planned. 

25:50
Eshinee Veith
So it’s allowing data that’s being elicited from people in that intense context to be recorded and then used to inform decisions as the project goes forward. So for example, one of the things that we talked about later in the week was the stages of translation. So there are four basic stages that translation typically goes through. And the way that we would normally present it is, we would say at the core, at stage one there’s a translator, and then at stage two there’s a translation team, and it contains these specific people. And then at stage three, it’s the community review, and these are the people you would have at this stage. And then stage four, we would normally describe it as a consultant check, right? But I decided not to do that this time. I described the four stages differently. 

26:52
Eshinee Veith
And at each stage I asked the members of each community who they thought would be appropriate to invite at that stage. 

27:00
Rich Rudowske
Nice. 

27:03
Eshinee Veith
At the first stage, the translator, obviously, it’s a person we talked about, what are some things that are easier to do by yourself? What are some things that are easier to do together? And so it was obvious, if you’re drafting, you can’t draft with someone else holding your hand. That’s just counterproductive. So stage one you do by yourself, but stage two, where you get other translators and the exegete, you’re working together to help each other see things you might have missed. But then the external review, I asked who in the community would be interested in the quality of the translation. And they started to list different people. So the scribes were at the front and they’re making a note of everything that people are saying. 

27:47
Eshinee Veith
So rather than us saying, for your community review stage three, go out and look for these sorts of people. They now have a list of what these representatives of the community say are the people who should be invited. So it’s not just my perspective as a representative of LBT, it’s not just the church’s perspective as the managing partner in country, but it’s also the perspective of members of the community reflected through the people who were present at the workshop and then for the final stage. And this was the most exciting. I never used the “c” word the whole time. I just called it expert review and I said, “Who are the experts? What kind of expertise do you think would be helpful to someone to make the quality of a translation better? What kind of experts should we look for in your community?”

28:43
Eshinee Veith
And I did talk about people who are experts in translation because they’ve been involved with it somewhere else, but I didn’t make that the focus. That’s a perspective that we bring. We bring the idea of consultant to the community, but it isn’t the only perspective that is relevant as to who are the experts in a community or among the partnership who need to be involved in the final review process. So that’s how co-creative processes were involved in this workshop. 

29:14
Rich Rudowske
This is really a great point to emphasize for our listeners. So many folks still think about Lutheran Bible Translators particularly going to be, you’re going to have a missionary that’s resident in a location and that’s really what it takes to do it right. And so I think we want to talk some about the objectives of the trip you just finished. What happens? Is there another trip at some point? And what determines that? If you have some knowledge about that, but what happens between now and then as well, those pieces of information would be great to pull out somehow. 

29:48
Rich Rudowske
So for the trip, like, you just finished this trip and talked about some of your objectives as you went, what is next and what will determine, like, okay, we need to go back for a little bit and what’s going to happen between now and then? Again, for the listeners who maybe would just kind of think of Bible translation as missionaries, go and live somewhere and do all of this, that’s not what’s happening here. So how does this work? 

30:12
Ruthie Wagner
So for my role in particular, it’s kind of a new approach that we’re doing, working remotely as a translation advisor, teaching over WhatsApp and recording YouTube videos and sending them so I’m kind of waiting and seeing how this works and what works about it. What doesn’t work about it. We discussed it some over this trip, actually, we discussed it a lot of the difference between virtual learning and in-person learning. And the main takeaway from it was that they wanted more review virtually, but that the virtual is going well. They just like the face-to-face better. They kept saying, we’re Africans, we like the face-to-face a lot better, but we’ll take the virtual, we’re benefiting from the virtual, and we’ll just kind of see how it works. 

31:19
Ruthie Wagner
Because this training that came out, know, my husband and I were in Sierra Leone and we had four evacuations. And so it went from me realizing I’m not going to be on the ground all the time to help these translators. And so I really want to train them and help them equip them so that they can do this project on their own. And that’s really the goal here with the Kraiway team. And the training is focused less on maybe the accuracy and more on the naturalness and relevancy of the translation. Like the Bible is already relevant. How do we make it so that it’s also relevant in their language? And that’s a huge question that comes up regularly in our training. 

32:11
Ruthie Wagner
And while we have good consultants in place helping check for the accuracy of the translation, the naturalness and the relevancy of the translation can only come. It comes through the creative work of the translator and is tested by the community. The consultant really can’t test the naturalness of the translation. And so we hope that this training will equip the translators in the skills and the confidence that they need to be able to work in their roles. To produce a translation in their language that they feel confident is natural, is relevant to their community, and a lot of that is being done virtually. And going forward, we will need to continue to have face-to-face. 

33:00
Ruthie Wagner
That was clearly stated while I was there, that they want me to come back, but that I don’t have to come back as frequently as what we might think they would want a couple of times a year or something like that. The discussion is still in the works, but that the virtual is going well and that they are happy to settle with the virtual because it encourages them to own the process themselves. And the main lead in their team is a local paraway speaker. And that’s great for the team to be able to continue to own the project themselves. And while a missionary on the ground may be helpful, it’s not always possible in these difficult contexts. We found that in Sierra Leone, it wasn’t possible for us to live there anymore. 

33:53
Ruthie Wagner
And so, yeah, I’m just hoping that the translation team will feel confident and will feel equipped to translate naturally into their language. 

34:05
Emily Wilson
How about you, Eshinee? So, as you’re continuing on as the training coordinator, and your roles are not only assisting our staff members and missionaries, but also international partnerships, what’s next for you? Will you be traveling back to Tanzania again, or is it to other locations? 

34:25
Eshinee Veith
I believe that I will be, but not this year. And part of the reason for that is that the regional director who is working with our partners in Tanzania, Sarah Esla, she has a real vision for a team approach to working with translation projects. And historically, there’s been a tendency to know one missionary, one project, and they are the locus of all of the planning, and they develop these really deep relationships, and they learn the language super well, and it’s like they are the go-to person for that project. And what we’ve found over the years, there are still places where that’s appropriate. And when it works. But if Covid taught us anything, is that you can’t have everything centered in one person anymore. It’s just not good business sense. 

35:22
Eshinee Veith
You need to have a variety of people involved and building relationships and supporting one another. And this event, this training that I was a part of, there were six of us from LBT, and there were more than that from the Lutheran church. So it was a real team effort. And so for the next event, which is, Lord willing, planned for August, there will be different people from LBT present. There will be some faces that are the same, there are some faces that are different, and that helps to inject different perspectives and different skill sets and different voices into the process, and it keeps it from being a monolith of support and perspective. And so I really appreciate that Sarah is doing that, and I’m glad to plug into that when and as needed. 

36:17
Eshinee Veith
And I did have some interactions there with the head of the Bible college that was adjacent to where we were staying in Wanza about some potential future things that I won’t get into, because that’s just brainstorming. But there were some really exciting possibilities that emerged at a tea time. And isn’t that always the way? 

36:41
Rich Rudowske
That’s right. 

36:43
Eshinee Veith
You sit there with a cup of tea and a Chipotle, and next thing you know, partnerships are. Yeah, but now that I’m back from Tanzania, I’m back to some of the other areas where I’m working, and there is some overlap there with Tanzania. 

37:00
Rich Rudowske
What’s going to happen next? And is that something that was already kind of pre-planned, or it’s kind of unfolding based out of what happened this time, or what’s the next step and how did that get determined, or how is it being determined? 

37:11
Eshinee Veith
Well, what’s going to happen, as far as I understand it, between the event that just took place and August is the people who are working with the language communities from the Lutheran Church in Tanzania will be continuing to dialogue with the community and continuing to work with the people who are present at the workshop, and they will be discerning who should come to the next workshop. And so rather than making all of the decisions about who the translation team will be, they’re allowing time for prayer, for discernment, and for dialogue before making the next step. And so they will be investigating some of the things that were raised during this workshop we just held. There were a lot of things that people said that raised some questions that showed that there was further investigation that needed to be done in certain areas. 

38:04
Eshinee Veith
And so this gives the church time to really look into those before making any big decisions, such as who is the translation team going forward? Yeah, it just gives them that space to do that. 

38:17
Rich Rudowske
It’s awesome. How can we be praying for those translation teams then, as they do that work? What comes to mind? You were just there with them in person and saw what things look like. 

38:29
Eshinee Veith
I think prayers for wisdom are always good. Prayers for wisdom for the members of the church and the members of the language community who are trying to discern who the translation team should be. The translation team is the core translators and project workers that work every day of the week except the Sabbath, and also who to invite from the rest of the community to be involved in other parts of the translation work, and encouragement for the people who were a part of this process, because even though there were ten people from each language community present, you don’t have a translation team with ten translators on it. So not all of them will be invited to be full-time translators or paid members of the team. 

39:21
Eshinee Veith
So encouragement for them for the ones who aren’t selected in that role, and encouragement for them to find what their role is, because everyone in the community has a role in this. This is their translation project. God’s word in their language is in their hands. 

39:40
Emily Wilson
And how can we be praying for the Kerewe team? Ruthie? 

39:45
Ruthie Wagner
Yeah, I think pray also for wisdom for them as they go about this process. It’s heavy work and while they’re incredibly skilled at what they do, they still face tremendous challenges. Like, for example, one of the discussions that kept coming up while were there is that their Bible, their translation, would inevitably look different from the Swahili versions that are out there. And what were they going to do about it? People would be upset about it. People were not going to accept certain decisions that they were making because it doesn’t look like the English or it doesn’t look like the Swahili. And it raises concerns that they are bringing to the community and to try to make decisions. 

40:43
Ruthie Wagner
And we had good discussions about the Bible as their Kerewe Bible, unique to their people in language that this might be challenging for some to accept, but we hope that it communicates a positive message that God speaks their language and knows them and that their Bible isn’t going to look like the Swahili, it’s not going to look like the English, because their language is unique. That’s just one sort of discussion that has come out, is they’re facing not just the challenges of their translation, but also these discussions that are coming out in the community, what to do about them and how to move forward so that the Bible will be accepted and what sort of training needs to happen alongside distribution that says, this is a unique Bible. You can’t just compare it to another one and expect it to look the same. 

41:53
Eshinee Veith
Yeah. 

41:54
Ruthie Wagner
So prayer for that. And also they just got a lot of huge information dump. And while they’re excited about it’s going to take several works of review and a lot of follow-up to the workshop that we had to make sure that they’re really understanding the material and that they are getting what they want out of it. So just pray for that and pray for wisdom as I interact with them on those topics. 

42:28
Rich Rudowske
That’s great. All right, this has been a lot of fun. We’ve been talking with Ruthie Wagner and Eshinee Veith, both recently back from Tanzania, working with some of our language communities partners in the Lutheran church there. Thanks so much for being with us today. 

42:39
Emily Wilson
Thanks, ladies. 

42:44
Rich Rudowske
Well, Emily, you could probably tell I was excited to be in that conversation with Ruthie and Eshinee, both really doing some great stuff with the language communities there and investing in those visionary ministry, entrepreneurial leaders of the church. And I just really loved how both of them work in a way that creates space for dialogue and is really leaning into the leadership that’s already there, the vision that’s already there, and authentically coming alongside that to say, let’s capitalize on that to launch a Bible translation movement. That is just what this particular language community needs. 

43:22
Emily Wilson
It really is encouraging to see how God is working in Tanzania and around the world in these partnerships, to be able to see how when we partner together as a unified church, how he is working, the Holy Spirit is working in and through these ministry entrepreneurs, these leaders, to make His Word known, and we want to encourage you all that you can be part of this ministry, you can be part of the Bible translation movement, and you can find more information on Lutheran Bible Translators partnerships lbt.org/programs. You’ll see a list there. 

43:58
Emily Wilson
And we want to encourage you as God is moving that you would click one of those language programs, that you would read about them, that you would pray alongside them, that if the Lord is leading you to support them financially, that you would be able to see more details on how you can do that. So again, want to encourage you to visit lbt.org/programs. 

44:20
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/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 Rodewald and Sarah Rudowske. Music written and performed by Rob Veith. I’m Rich Rudowske. So long for now.