Over a period of five days Nate and I had Bible lesson writing checks, and Nate, Maggie, and I all had translation checks. Three consultants flew to Pal and stayed with us for those five days as we did all those checks. On the first day, I did my lesson writing check with a consultant and three Pal ‘helpers’ (pictured). I taught two Bible lessons to them (Lessons 3 and 4 in our chronological teaching plan) small chunks at a time in Pal and the three helpers would give back what they could in pidgin immediately following each chunk. They would tell it back in pidgin so that the consultant could hear and see if what I was supposed to be communicating was understood.
At the same time Maggie was working with two other consultants and two Pal helpers as they checked her translation work. Her work was conducted in much the same manner as mine, except with one major difference. In checking the Bible lessons the focus is on making sure the big ideas and main points come back, but in translation the main points and every tiny little detail need to be checked for accuracy.
Two days later Maggie checked another portion of Scripture with the consultants and the day after that was my turn with the translation consultants. All in all, our team had 550-ish verses checked and 4 Bible lessons checked. There were things to correct and changes to be made but overall things went well. Nate and I have the green light to write and write and write Bible lessons, and all future lesson writing need not be consultant checked. We’re doing well on the translation side of things too, however the Word of God deserves the respect of having a trained translation consultant check every single verse we translate, so we will continue to have translation checks periodically from now until the work is done or God takes us onto something different.
When the five days were over we boarded the helicopter and flew out to an NTM center where we are now staying as we impatiently await the arrival of my parents.