2013-04-15 Cooper PNG InfoBites. [Gresham, Oregon] When I left for Papua New Guinea in January, I was recovering from the "shingles" and PTL!, though there was a bit of discomfort during my travels across the Pacific and to Papua New Guinea everything went fine, and the residual effects had mostly disappeared by mid-February. Russ & the Giant Pineapple Village Checking of Acts In January we did the final village checking of the three remaining chapter of Acts which had not yet been village checked by the end of 2012,
During village-checking of Acts we were given a giant pineapple called a "Samo-samoa."
In Buhutu Samo-samoa means "a huge SouthSeas Island variety" usually said of a fruit. Â
February 2013 was one of the busiest months during my many years in Wycliffe because I was not only mentoring the Buhutu team, but also teaching Language Discovery every morning, then "making rounds" of each of seven groups to check on how they were doing on their assignments each day. Every day between supper and study hours, I also spent a half hour reading aloud to the students from a book called The Bronze Bow. Bow So--, My "prep time" for setting up my PowerPoints for the next day's LD lesson tended to be sometime between 8:30 PM and 6:30 AM! During February the teams worked on doing their back translations for the book of Acts, plus writing up language discovery examples for about ten types of independent and dependent clauses as well as writing additional stories in their languages. Upon returning to the village in March, I discovered that our 20 ft Storage Container had finally been delivered after more than 3 years of delays, so we spent a week sorting & cleaning!
2013-04-15 Cooper PNG InfoBites
reprinted 4/17/13
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Out in the village during March, Charlie Modewa and I visited the Siasiada Primary School to work with them & church volunteers in planning Religious Instruction [RI] program for the year, and while there we presented the school with 20 copies of the Gospel of Mark in Buhutu. Charlie's Uncle Roy is headmaster at Siasiada and his Auntie Margaret teaches there also. Returning back to our place at Ipouli, I worked with our VITAL team members keyboarding their final accuracy check and revisions of ACTS, (which came out of their back translation process in February) whilst another Buhutu team led by Gregory Bania went to Gabite'u village to do village checking of our JOB passages which had been translated in 2012. Here is a record of Scripture Passages worked on during Jan - Mar 2013. Summary of Scripture passages worked on during this trip (from late January 2013 to 1st week of April 2013): Total number of scripture passages worked on during this trip would be: • Newly drafted passages by Patrick Sadileutu, Gospel of JOHN = 146 verses; • Community checking of JOB portions by Gregory's Team = 88 verses; • Back Translation and Corr of ACTS by VITAL Team and Patrick Sadileutu = 1007 verses;* • Village checking (JAN) of TTC assignments from Old Testament = 283 verses; • Back translation of TTC passages = 457 verses* • Final consultant-checking of half of the TTC passages (the rest to be checked in May) (This was in progress during the 1st week of April, just as I was traveling back to USA, so I overlapped with them 1 day during the consultant-checking sessions!) This comes out to 1698 verses! –––––––––––––––––––––. *However ACTS was actually 1007 verses two times through, because every verse in Acts went through the back translation stage, plus the accuracy check and revision stage. Similarly many of the 457 verses for the TTC assignments have actually gone thru the system three times since January: once for community checking, once for back translation and again for the final consultant check.
I thought I'd contracted "shingles" again during March while out in the village, but it turned out upon my return to the States, and a trip to my doctor's office, that it was a staphylococcus infection instead, which is now subsiding under the right medications. Russ & Mary US address for personal correspondence: Russ & Mary Cooper 2800 SE 1st Street, Apt 64 Gresham, Oregon 97080 USA Phone: 503-491-8915 Email: < Russ_Cooper@sil.org>
Wycliffe USA Office for financial support: Wycliffe Bible Translators P.O. Box 628200 Orlando, Florida 32864-8200 USA
Please visit us on Facebook also. Attached is a chart showing the many stages we've worked through doing the book of ACTS in Buhutu. 2013-04-15 Cooper PNG InfoBites
reprinted 4/17/13
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