“If not for the school, we could not be here.” - Missionary parent When parents become missionaries, what happens to their children? They move to another country with their parents, but are not (and shouldn’t be) expected to be ‘mini-missionaries’. Whether at home or on the field, they need all the same things that any child needs to grow and thrive, like education and friends. One of the major concerns for missionary parents is how to provide an adequate education for their children so that they can eventually transition well into the education system in their home country. But what if the parents are serving in a location where the local schools are not suitable? Even if there are international schools there, those run on commercial lines charge very high fees. Not all families are able to homeschool, which also ties up at least one parent for significant amounts of time each day. Missionaries are often torn between their call to serve God overseas and their responsibility as parents. Many missionary families are forced to leave the field prematurely because they are unable to find suitable educational provision for their children. A solution: MK schools One solution which has been a Godsend to many missionary families is “missionary kid school” (MK school). These are schools set up in field locations to educate the children of missionaries. They may be day schools or boarding schools (often both), and fees are considerably lower than commercial international schools as the teachers raise their own financial support. These teachers are also full-time missionaries whose mission is to educate missionary kids on the field, directly supporting the work of the missionary parents. Students are able to attend school while living with their parents, or at least board near enough to see them frequently. Such schools do a lot more than just fill an educational need. Parents benefit from hearing the experiences of other parents who have been there longer, and can support one another in helping their children through cross-cultural transitions. The children get to interact with others who have been through the same transitions and face similar challenges. MK schools around the world have blessed many missionary families by providing a Christ-centered education for missionary kids, thus enabling their parents to serve wherever they have been called to. A couple whose children attend one of these schools says: “Knowing that our children's educational, social and spiritual needs are taken care of means we can do ministry while the children are in good hands.” Some MK schools in Asia are: Faith International Academy (Davao City, Philippines) Faith Academy (Manila, Philippines) Dalat International School (Penang, Malaysia) Grace International School (Chiangmai, Thailand) The great need – teachers! MK schools can only serve missionary communities if there are teachers and administrators who are willing to serve. If there is no teacher for a particular subject, the school may not be able to offer that subject. This is especially so for higher-level subjects. As one student said, “Because of the nature of missionaries - they come and go - there is no guarantee you will have a teacher, or that a specific subject will be offered the following year, or even the following term.” This can be a cause of anxiety for families as they make plans for their children’s futures. Are you a teacher, and do you have a desire to serve in missions? As a teacher of missionary kids, you will minister to their educational, spiritual and social needs, and enable their parents to serve with peace of mind. If God is calling you to use your teaching gifts in missions, contact us ! Watch this video: Traditional MK Schools

by Wycliffe UK Future generations of Lunyole speakers, like Rev Enoch Wandera’s grandchildren, will be able to read the New Testament in their language – so they will know God better, and avoid being ‘swept into the world’ as Enoch was. ‘I think that if I had been able to read the Bible in my language when I was younger,’ Rev Enoch Wandera says, ‘I wouldn’t have had all those problems in my life.’ Enoch knows that being able to understand what God says in the Bible transforms lives – he has experienced it in his own life, and he has seen it in the lives of people in his church. That is why he has poured his passion and skills into translating the New Testament into his language, Lunyole. But before the light of Jesus transformed his life, Enoch’s story had some difficult and dark years. ‘Swept into the world’ ‘I lived a very bad life before I became a Christian,’ Enoch explains. ‘I grew up in a Christian family, but when I finished school I started work in the prison service of Uganda. I thought: “I’ve got my independence,” so I got swept into the world – the world of drinking, the world of partying, the world of immorality. I drank myself out of my job.’ Enoch went back to his village, but still, he says, ‘I continued with that type of life.’ For over five years he hadn’t been to church – but one day a friend invited him to go back. That day was the first step to the transformation that God brought about in his life. ‘Later I sort of saw a vision,’ Enoch explains, ‘as if the whole of my life was shown to me as a video. And I fell on my knees and said: “Oh Lord, I’m not worthy, I need your grace.” And I gave my life to Jesus Christ.’ ‘That opened my eyes to the great need’ Enoch became a pastor and that led him to see how vital Bible translation is. ‘I was overseeing eight churches, and once when I was away at one of those churches my assistant preached from 1 John 5:12: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” But because my assistant wasn’t able to read it in his own language, he misunderstood the verse. He preached that if you don’t have children then you don’t have a place in the kingdom of God! ‘It is a dream come true to have the Lunyole New Testament’ ‘There was an older Christian in the church, a really committed man, and he was so hurt. He came to me and said: “Reverend, is it really true that those of us who have no children have no hope at all?” ‘I said: “Who said that?” And when I realized what had happened I was able to explain the true meaning of the verse to him. That opened my eyes to the great need for people to have the word of God in their own language.’ ‘It is a dream come true’ ‘From that point on,’ Enoch says, ‘I have had a passion for Bible translation. It is a dream come true to have the Lunyole New Testament published and to see people reading it in church every week. That has given us even more motivation to finish the Old Testament.’ Enoch wants to thank you for your prayers and giving, which enable the Lunyole translation to happen: ‘I want to express my gratitude and thanks to all those people and churches in the UK and Ireland who have helped us. ‘For my grandchildren, when they grow up reading the New Testament, and the whole Bible when it is published, things will be a lot different. Their understanding of God will be better than mine when I was younger.’ Reproduced with permission from Wycliffe Bible Translators UK

Why was Paul proud to say he was from Tarsus, “no ordinary city”? Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city.” - Acts 21:39 Paul had been arrested in Jerusalem for causing a riot, and was asking permission to address the people. By asserting that he was from Tarsus, Paul was implying that he should not be dismissed as a sua ku (Singapore slang for ‘country bumpkin’). Tarsus (in present-day Turkey) was certainly ‘no ordinary city’ – it was prosperous, privileged to be exempted from Roman taxation, and a leading cultural and educational centre. As a Roman citizen (Acts 22) from Tarsus, Paul was from a family of considerable wealth and status. Set in a fertile agricultural plain, one of Tarsus’ famous products was a thick, waterproof material woven from the hair of black goats. The black tents of Tarsus were used by travellers, nomads and armies all over the region. Although not stated in the Bible, it is likely that tentmaking was Paul’s family’s business which he learned as a boy. The skill came in useful later to support himself in his ministry (Acts 18).

EMDC Online conducted an online webinar, “From Media to Movements”, where various members from the Media To Movements team shared the impact of media and how we can make disciples through the use of media and technology by engaging spiritual seekers all over the world. As the internet has been growing exponentially over the years (with about 1 billion new internet users every 2.7 years globally!), media becomes increasingly significant in how it can bring people together to learn more about Christ and seek information about Christianity. They also explained the different stages enquirers might go through as they seek information about various religions and embark on their spiritual journey, and how disciple-makers can make use of media to engage with these people and lead them to learn more about Christ and the faith. Successful media-to-movements initiatives need to have these 6 characteristics: A trained core team with at least 2 or more people with a defined vision and mission A plan to catalyse prayer Contextualized branded website and/or social media platform(s) Digital conversations with seekers to understand their spiritual openness and needs A system to organize and manage seekers Trained disciple-makers ready to meet seekers face-to-face Additionally, they shared how it is critical to also use media as a way to filter out those who are genuinely interested in the faith by asking these questions: How spiritually open are they? Are they willing to meet face-to-face to learn more? Where are they located? Are they willing to share what they have learnt with others? Our team thought that it was rather interesting to learn the various ways in which media can impact one’s spiritual journey in this digital age, and we hope to be able to utilize such platforms to impact many more people in the near future. Read more about Media To Movements and their initiatives toward bringing God’s Word to people all over the world. There are also other types of courses held by EMDC Online .

Stories from the Field, 7 June 2022 To launch the first ‘Stories from the Field’ for 2022, we invited Grace Chou to share. She has served as a linguist, Bible translation trainer, facilitator, consultant and language program coordinator in Malaysia, Myanmar and other Asia-Pacific countries. She served in Myanmar for 12 years until 2016. While in Myanmar, she was based in Yangon as it was difficult for foreigners to move about the country. Her work was mainly with ethnic minority groups who already identified as Christian. Her love for the country came through clearly as she shared some ‘voices’ of the people: Voice of a friend: she remembers a local lady working as a house helper to another missionary saying that serving the missionaries was serving her people and her country. Voice from the culture: she was puzzled in the early days when her neighbour saw her eating fried rice, and asked “Why aren’t you eating rice?” She wondered, “Isn’t ‘fried rice’ also ‘rice’?” She eventually discovered that when someone asked her “Have you eaten rice yet?”, she was being asked if she had eaten a meal consisting of rice with several dishes of food. This would be a main meal cooked for the whole household. On the other hand, ‘fried rice’ was leftover rice fried with peas or lentils and onions, and regarded as only a snack! Voice of those she helped to facilitate: at one point, it was decided that the mother tongue translators of the project should return to live in their home area, and the local church leaders said: “It is our project; we will help our Bible translators.” This enabled the local community to get more involved more in the translation project. Voice of the pastor who had the vision for Bible translation in his language: This is a song he wrote in 2009. All of our people should praise our father God. Don't forget his kindness. Always remember him. All of our people should read our language. Don't forget our language. Always speak it. Please continue to pray for the country of Myanmar, the many different ethnic groups, and the difficult situations that many people find themselves in. This project is being supported by Wycliffe Singapore’s R200 Programme. To find out how you can help support this and other projects, please contact us . Stories from the Field will be held on the first Tuesday of each month. Get on our mailing list to be notified of future events.

Why did Demetrius, the silversmith in Ephesus, complain about Paul’s preaching? [Demetrius, Ephesian silversmith]: "There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty." - Acts 19:27 At the time of Paul, Ephesus was a major city in Asia Minor (in present-day Turkey). Not only was it the site of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it was also a major centre of trade, communication and Roman government. The temple also served as a bank. There had already been a ‘Lady of Ephesus’ worshipped as a goddess of fertility and childbirth there since ancient times. The Greeks had a habit of assimilating foreign gods under one of their familiar gods, and the ‘Lady of Ephesus’ was obviously conflated with Artemis (even though Artemis was a virgin huntress!) The Ephesian Artemis was not only worshipped by the Ephesians but also by the many visitors who came to the city. If people stopped worshipping her, those who made their livings by producing shrines and images to her would lose their incomes. The city would also lose one of its major claims to fame. It was no wonder that the silversmiths and other artisans opposed Paul’s preaching against idolatry.

Joint Partnership Event, 28 May 2022 After two years of no in-person events, it was really so exciting to have over 80 people gathered together for the annual Joint Partnership Event organised by Wycliffe Singapore, Wycliffe Asia Pacific and nearly 20 other entities. Guests were eager to hear about the projects that are underway in various countries and to find out how they could support the work. The keynote speaker, Rev Dr Bambang Widjaja, in a pre-recorded message , gave a heartfelt call for the Word of God to be communicated in the “heart language” of hearers so that the scripture is able to bring about life transformation. His stories raised much laughter from the listeners. Two beautiful videos were screened to illustrate the many forms Bible translation projects can take, and how lives are changed when people encounter the Word of God in their own language: “The Mosaic of Bible Translation” (7 min) “Life Transformation” (8 min) Invited speakers also shared about a multilingual education project in South Asia, and an oral Bible storying project in Indonesia. It was very inspiring to hear about the work that has been done, and the way God is working through these projects. If you would like to support or find out more about projects in the field supported by Wycliffe Singapore’s R200 Programme, please contact us .

When times get tough, hearing God’s Word enables believers to keep going. Here are a few accounts of how Bible stories have been a source of strength and comfort, and the lengths the crafters will go to in order to continue the work. Strength and encouragement from Bible stories The Oma* team started crafting Bible stories in March 2020, but since then, their work has been interrupted again and again by Covid-19 and by unrest. The Oma crafters have been forced to flee many times, and for a period, the project team (in the city) lost touch with them. One of the crafters had to relocate to another town. During this time, she gave birth to a child, and her house back home was burned to the ground. She shared that during this incredibly difficult season, she drew encouragement and strength from the Bible stories she had been crafting. And she is continuing to work on the project as much as she is able. Another two women have joined the crafting team in the Oma area. They also help the many internally displaced refugees, and have been sharing the Bible stories to encourage them. These women shared that they themselves learned much through these Bible stories during difficult times, and so they use them to minister to the refugees as well. Joy in the midst of unrest The Genera* people group does not have any known Christians, yet there is a group of them who are crafting Bible stories in their own language! In November, one of the crafters fell sick with Covid-19. This crafter shared a computer with another for studying Bible passages and making notes. They continued to carry the computer back and forth between their homes, each time disinfecting the computer to the best of their ability before each trip. Crafting of oral Bible stories in this language continues. The crafters share that when they discuss a topic and discover something new about a story, it brings them joy unlike what they had ever hoped for. One of the story crafters shared that she feels she is living a meaningful life working on the project. In these past six months, this team has completed 5 stories from the New Testament, and they are now excitedly working on 6 more. In their own language The Yam* people group is a small ethnic group who live in the tall mountains. One of the Yam facilitators was invited to preach in a village church and gave this account: As in most village churches, there aren’t enough teachers so the children join the adults in the worship service. But since sermons aren’t designed for children, the children get bored and they just want to play. When I got up to give the message, the children were playing noisily. I decided to tell a Bible story in their own language instead of reading a passage out of the Bible (which isn’t in their language). I chose to tell the story of Jesus healing Bartimaeus of his blindness (Mark 10:46-52). While telling the story, the room went quiet. The children were all completely fascinated by the story and listening intently. So were the adults. After the service, some of the people told me, “Teacher, it’s wonderful hearing the stories of the Bible in our own language. It’s so rich. It makes me more interested in the Bible and I really want to hear more stories. These stories even make me actually interested in church. In future, please tell us more of these stories in our own language!” That day, I saw the impact of hearing the stories of the Bible in your own language. It helps children and adults to better understand God’s Word. It also strengthens their worship and their faith in God. In search of a mobile phone signal Two WRK* story crafters have had to flee their homes. One moved into the forested mountains where there is no electricity. He uses solar panels to charge a battery to run his devices. To find a place where he can use his phone to contact the team, he has to hike up one mountain and down the next until he can find a place where he can get a mobile phone signal. And even then, the signal isn’t reliable. If the wind is blowing, for example, the service might vanish. He then has to keep hiking, searching for another place where he can make a phone call. He often takes pictures of the different places he has to go to work. Another crafter is now living in his parent’s village where the phone and electric towers have been destroyed. He also has to go outside the village to hunt for a mobile phone signal. Praise God that these two men have persevered working for the Lord despite these difficulties. They are actively serving the WRK community, and still crafting oral Bible stories as they are able. * For security reasons, pseudonyms are used for the names of people groups.

In Athens, Paul debated with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. What did these two schools of philosophy believe? "A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him… Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?” - Acts 17:18-19 The Epicureans and the Stoics were two of the main Greek schools of thought in Paul’s day. This event was one of Paul’s earliest attempts to evangelise a group without any prior understanding of the Jewish religion. Epicureans believed that the gods were uninvolved in human affairs. They regarded the ultimate good in life to be the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Stoics believed that there was a cosmic deity which governed the universe who also did not get involved in human life. Their conclusion was that the ultimate good was to seek virtue, and avoid suffering by overcoming destructive emotions. In this respect, they were not so different from the Pharisees! In response to both schools of philosophy, Paul presented to them a God who was not only Creator of everything, but a Father who was intimately involved in the lives of his creatures; a God who would not only be the Judge, but also gave his Son as the Saviour.

by Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance No conversation about the global Bible translation movement today is complete without mention of oral Bible translation and its impact. OBT grew from oral Bible storying, and is a strategic centerpiece in plans for every living language to have Scripture soon. First, these short definitions: Oral Bible storying (OBS): a Scripture engagement activity used to help introduce listeners to the Bible. A set of stories based on Scripture is crafted, learned, practised and ultimately shared. Oral Bible translation (OBT): Translating Scripture from an audio recording in one language to an audio recording in the target language — often with no writing required. For this article, we have combined a series of email and Zoom interviews into a conversation about oral Bible translation. Voices included are: Swapna Alexander, Lead Bible Translation Consultant, Faith Comes By Hearing Bryan Harmelink, Wycliffe Global Alliance Director for Collaboration Youngshin Kim, a YWAM leader in OBT training Let’s address this right away: Is there any sort of negative competition between OBT efforts and traditional, written Bible translation? Bryan Harmelink: No one working in OBT is trying to proclaim any kind of “OBT or nothing” kingdom in the Bible translation movement. But there are people who feel like OBT is the way the remaining translation needs are going to be met. OBT is sometimes seen as an intermediate step in a community that eventually will translate a printed Bible, right? Bryan Harmelink: Definitely. And I think there will be some places where there are restrictions on distributing print Bibles, where there may never be a widely distributed print Bible. And so OBT may be the best way in some high security situations to have Scripture available. I think there’s been a tendency in a lot of the work that’s been done on orality, and in the Bible translation world, that for a long period of time was just meant the people involved in oral Bible storying. The move toward OBT is, in a sense, pushing the oral Bible storying methodology to a level that the results can be referred to as translation. Bryan, you have said there’s a false dichotomy between what we have known as literate cultures and oral cultures. Can you expand on that thought? Bryan Harmelink: There’s a common tendency to make this kind of oral-versus-print culture or oral-versus-literate. And some colleagues I know working in these areas now are trying to talk more about multimode modality. We all deal with, and live in the midst of, a mixture of things that are communicated orally, things that are communicated in print and things that are much more visual. For some societies—and even people within what we call highly literate societies—essentially all of their interaction is oral: radio, podcasts, television, music, YouTube. But — and this is where some of the multimodality comes in — digital media already enforces or creates expectations of multiple modalities. You don’t get very far on YouTube, unless you’re just randomly clicking things, until you need some reading ability to choose the videos that you want. Same on your phone. To find certain things, you’ve got to have a certain level of using text, so to speak. But your preference may be that once you get what you’re looking for, then it’s all processed orally. Some of the literature has characterized literate people as the ones who can think in abstract concepts. I think we have to question a lot of that way of thinking. There are so many incredible abilities and capacities of those who don’t use print. Their recall, their memory and their communication ability are phenomenal. So it’s always hard to find the right terms to refer appropriately to different groups of people. Swapna, you mentioned in your Global Connect conversation with Bryan that you have found OBT to be a spiritual exercise, where written translation sometimes can become more of an academic exercise. Could you expand a little on this? Certainly, written translation can have great spiritual value as well. But how has OBT been different for you as a consultant? Swapna Alexander : First, let me apologize if in any way I hinted that a written translation project is not spiritual. That was not my intent at all. What I meant to say is that when we internalize a passage and make it our own, it talks to us in a different way than when we write it down. Internalization requires careful attention to the content in order to reproduce it orally as one’s own. The passage has to become our own, and in the process we identify with the content and it is taken to the emotional level. One of the saddest comments I heard from a written translator long ago was, “I am translating the Bible, but it does not do anything to me spiritually. I am in no way edified.” I ran the comment through a senior translator and she responded that it is true, but she is impacted when she does OBT. I was shocked, as my experience was different. Our team of translators were really engaged with the content intellectually and emotionally. I attribute this difference to the components of orality we had in our project. One of the OBT translators I work with told me, “When we internalize stories, we get into the story and we become a part of the story. This is a very enjoyable experience.” As I listen to OBT, I can feel the heart of the translator coming through. It is as though they are telling me their own stories. They themselves are surprised by the response of the people. Bryan Harmelink: In a sense, what you find through the methodologies being used for OBT is a much more immediate engagement with Scripture. And even reversing the order that we’ve traditionally had of “do translation, then people engage with Scripture.” In the OBT process — and sign languages are similar in this way — there’s a lot of discussion that has to happen around the questions that need to be answered in order to translate. Say, when you read, “Jesus wept” — the text doesn’t indicate any emotion. I mean, it has a word that indicates emotion. But when you translate that orally, you have no choice but to give it some emotional feeling. Otherwise, it’s not a good oral communication of that. And so what do you do in situations where you just don’t know what the tone of voice was? What the attitude was? A lot of things like that have to be discussed when you’re going to do an audio product. A print translation doesn’t always require that. Are we seeing a shift in translation priorities in some communities, then? Bryan Harmelink: This idea of changing or reversing the order of things is very possible. Scripture engagement is one of the goals with a group of people in a community, say, engaging with that story of Jesus and Lazarus. And out of that Scripture engagement activity, translation activity can emerge, with an almost better basis of understanding because of the level of engagement with Scripture. And so in that sense, this allows for much more direct spiritual engagement with people in the process of translation. People saw the value of oral Bible storying as kind of a stepping stone toward use of the printed. Oral Bible storying was a more immediate way for people to gain access to the Scriptures. And I think that is what Swapna was getting at — all of the conversation and discussion that is a part of the oral Bible translation process is a much more immediate spiritual experience for the participants than a few people who are capable of doing the written translation while others have to wait until the translation is made available. Can OBT work for non-narrative sections of Scripture? How would it work for, say, the book of Romans? Or for passages like the parts in Exodus that give God’s instructions for building the tabernacle? Swapna Alexander: I would say that it is possible to orally translate non-narrative sections of the Bible because people talk all the time, and they talk in different genres, not just stories. So the key to translating different genres orally is in identifying the genre and its function and understanding the content (which in Pauline epistles is not easy). Once the translation advisor does the above two, he/she needs to communicate this to the translators creatively and effectively. Bryan Harmelink calls it “conversational discovery of meaning.” While translating the book of Romans, we can start by talking about Paul’s arguments and his logic, discuss the context and even dramatizing. In the project I worked with, we decided that there is another character(s) who is questioning Paul and asking questions like “What then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace abounds?” And Paul responds, “No way!” This helped us internalize Romans well. I have not done Exodus with a team, but I would start with talking about how to, say, build a house/furniture etc. and get into the “procedural text mode” and then talk about the content of the passage, even act it out to build memory and clarify the action verbs, and then translate orally. It is not easy and it takes hard work, but it is achievable. Not just achievable, probably better translated also. Bryan Harmelink: That’s a very common question. But, sometimes I wonder if it’s not a reaction of someone who is primarily print-oriented and literate. It’s very easy for those of us with those tendencies not to recognize the incredible memory capacity of those who live in a narrative, oral world. Those of us who consider ourselves literate think, Oh, we’ve got to have all these OBT methodologies for helping people remember and memorize and internalize. I’ve heard … comments about some people who have been trained in this way. And they’re like, “Why do you keep repeating this? We already know it. You already told it to us once. Why are you repeating it three or four times?” I did participate in an experiment with part of the book of Colossians. And it was very challenging. I’ve heard that other people have done some of Paul’s letters with good success. And people have even internalized, say, the book of Galatians, and are able to retell the entire book and perform it in an oral way. It’s possible, but you do face challenges that are not that you don’t find with story. My wife was telling me about a family. Someone had found a baseball card that he had as a child. And he was shocked that he could repeat, from memory, every statistic of that player from that card that he had seen years before. Now, I’m not saying everyone who is an oral communicator is like a digital recorder and just replays everything. But yet, many people will have incredible capacity that we almost don’t believe is possible—because (we reason if) we can’t do it, then nobody can do it. What do you think accounts for the OBT momentum in these past few years? Bryan Harmelink: One important piece, I think, is Faith Comes by Hearing and the development of the software Render . Even though there have been limitations in the software, new versions are going to be much more flexible and easier to use, which is the way things normally go. In 2018 … we brought together a multi-agency group of people to talk about some of these things. Not that we wanted in this group to enforce or make everyone follow the methodology that we might be discussing. Just to come together as a multi-agency group and have a good conversation about, what is it when we talk about oral Bible translation? I thought maybe eight or 10 people would be interested in attending. Thirty showed up! And a lot of partnerships and connections came out of that week together that might not have happened otherwise. Another factor in the enthusiasm has been YWAM. There are a couple decades of history of interest there. Today (27 Sept.) is the first day of what they are referring to as the Mega OBT school. It has five locations simultaneously participating in the school. Youngshin Kim, YWAM: We have 80 students and 12 staff from 16 nations participating. We do have five countries – Papua New Guinea, the U.S. (Kona, Hawaii), Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland. We had a very good start with a big picture — the vision of Every Tribe Every Nation and what God is doing among YWAM. Loren Cunningham (YWAM founder) encouraged these students to take hold of this task and emphasized the significance of Bibles on a local level. This initiative could lead to a great spiritual awakening in the world. I think at least 70 percent of the students are in their 20s and 30s. This is certainly my highlight to see so many young people in the school! Are there other factors contributing to the OBT momentum? Bryan Harmelink: Perhaps just the realization that it’s not about acceleration. It’s more about the more-immediate access for the church to Scripture that will communicate widely to more people. And in some places, they may not even focus much on audio recording. They might prefer to have people in the churches who then go from place to place, telling these passages of Scripture. And the churches, activities and discipleship and evangelism might prefer to have storytellers rather than a recorded audio version, even though the audio version would be an important part of what the project would work on. But this is a way for there to be more direct, immediate use of Scripture in the church. So I think that’s part of the enthusiasm. Some people have talked about how the oral translation method gives us a way to make our written translation more natural. I’m not convinced that’s really the point. The real question for me is, whether translation is being done in written form, an oral, audio form or in sign language— translation is best done on the basis of as thorough understanding as we can have of the Scripture to be translated. If the translator just “kind of” thinks they understand what Jesus was talking about, his translation is probably going to “kind of” give the idea of what Jesus was talking about. And it’s not like we can have 100 percent comprehension of every part of Scripture, but (we can) develop a thorough understanding through multiple hearings and readings and discussion and asking all kinds of questions. Better translation will result from better understanding of the biblical text. In a sense, it seems so simple. But sometimes I feel like translators are sitting down in front of Paratext and beginning at chapter one, verse one, before they really have a grasp of what it is they’re jumping into. And so, the more holistically developed our understanding can be of something like Paul’s relationship with the Philippian believers, the better the translation of Philippians. That kind of thing is not found in the word-by-word pieces of those books. It’s by developing a more holistic understanding of things that even the book itself doesn’t say. But we know about Paul’s relationship or the health of the church in those locations and other things. So I think there’s great potential in some of the OBT processes in even strengthening written translation practices. Reproduced with permission from Wycliffe Global Alliance