‘Long ago when there was not anything there was Father God’s child. God’s child was with God himself, and his child was the one God himself.’
Do you remember this Scripture verse from our last letter? Secretly we were hoping that many people would question this, especially the use of the expression “God’s child” instead of “the Word”! When translating, one of the problems we often encounter is that there are important Biblical terms that are very difficult if not almost impossible to translate. In this case “the Word” had a specific meaning for John’s audience, referring to a concept of God that was familiar to the Greeks. John is saying that this concept of God has found its fulfillment in Jesus. And this is the all important message: God has become man! It is our great desire that all the Samo people will be able to understand this.
MERRY CHRISTMAS! After a lot of back and forth planning we decided to spend Christmas in Ukarumpa. Clyde’s work at the school is using up most of our energy, and we want to make sure that we can bring it to a good end. Part of it is career development, part of it is a work experience program, and part of it is individual counseling with the students. Clyde is enjoying this challenge a lot.
What is also keeping us in Ukarumpa are the boys. Ben in the US and Ezy here are in the end spurt of grade 12. Ezy applied to Messiah College, and we pray that this will be the place he can go to. The whole application process was a challenge of its own, especially the financial aid form. Ezy’s family situation is rather complicated, and we are not his birth family; but we are his guardians. How can we explain our financial situation? Our income comes from at least two different continents and is spent in three, and our expenses include things like flying to our second home in Western Province and the support of children in various countries. It took us a while to get everything sorted out in a way that we could make it fit the forms! But in the end we succeeded in sending the whole package of forms with lots of additional explanations off to Messiah College. All we can do now is pray that Ezy will be accepted.
On November 5 we were able to have the big lawn mower for cutting the grass on the airstrip flown back to Honinabi*. The housing is missing though, but otherwise it should work. An MAF pilot will later fly the housing out to the Samo and put it onto the mower. We are grateful that the cutting of the airstrip should not be too big of a problem for the next few months, hopefully years! We also had a drum of petrol (gasoline) flown out, so the mower can do its work.
In January Clyde and Lesley, a plumber/carpenter, plan to go out to Boluabi* to get the house repaired and in good shape for Dan Shaw and his wife Georgia. Dan is a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and is taking a sabbatical next year. Over the course of next year he and his wife will spend some time in Boluabi, in chunks of several weeks at a time, to do some research. Dan was the first to start the translation work among the Samo back in the seventies. As you can tell, progress has been very slow due to many unexpected difficulties. Nevertheless the Samo are still plodding along with the translation work. Many things have changed in these almost four decades, and more changes will come, many of them rapidly as the country is developing its resources and technology faster and faster.
We hope to be able to arrange a get-together in Boluabi sometime in April or May for the three men who were or are involved in the Samo translation program (Dan, Soli and Clyde), and who had lost their first wives in 2005. All are now remarried. It would be interesting to bring us all together and share our experiences and God’s story together! Thanks for keeping us in your prayers and thoughts!
Please remember the troubled Aiyura valley. The wanted criminal Patrick is still on the loose and threatening to come back over Christmas. Pray for peace for the people involved in the various conflicts.
We are very grateful that Michi, who didn’t have a job for more than a year, has found work again and started in his new job in October. He really enjoys working for his small company, designing pharmaceutical machines.
And now we wish you a joyous Christmas and a year full of God’s blessings!
*In case you’re wondering, Honinabi is the name of the place where the airstrip, the translation office and the community school are. Boluabi is the name of the village where our house is. It is about a ten minutes' walk from Honinabi up a low hill to Boluabi.
