Trip Report Madagasar

Tech Advance Madagascar Trip May 17-June 10 Welcome to Madagascar! If you like warm days and cool evenings than you might like winter here. Being located in the Southern Hemisphere, Madagascar has its winter in America’s summer.
It took me three days of flying to get to Madagascar and another day of flying to get down to Toliara. I went to Madagascar to participate in a Bible translation workshop. My part in the workshop was to co-lead a computer training class for the national translation teams with Russ Perry. Around 30-35 pastors and church leaders participated in the computer training. Most of these individuals had never used a computer before and really looked forward to learning what I could teach them.

The goal of the computer training is to equip translation team members with the ability to use computers in the translation process. Beyond computers, I am looking into the possibility of using Bgans (Satellite Communication equipment) to facilitate communication between national translation teams and the translation project leaders. I also want to help find ways to make Bible translation self sustainable. Hopefully better communication and the use of computers can speed up the process of Bible translation for the 20 current translation projects.

There are multiple stages to translating the Bible into someone’s heart language. The first step is usually to translate Luke and use that to create a Jesus Film translation. Once Luke is done, the other gospels and letters follow; eventually followed by the Old Testament. This translation workshop was focused on Colossians. Ten different teams were present to begin a first draft of Colossians. Each day the teams would begin with training sessions on the translation process. They would then have sessions focused on actual translation work.

South African, Irish, British, Norwegian and Dutch consultants helped train and give aid to the national translation teams; making this truly an international affair. In the third week, some of the translation teams turned their focus to polishing the translation of Luke which had already been finished. Those teams which had already polished Luke looked to begin new projects.
Meanwhile, a couple of the translation consultants, Russ Perry and I set off to the mountains. We went to test the finished Luke translation on several villages. I was excited to find out I would be able to take a helicopter to these various villages. Andy was our Helimission pilot and he stayed with us the entire trip. Besides myself and Russ Perry; two long term Norweigan missionaries and Leoni all headed inland.
We had been worried the helicopter would be an option as weather, mechanical problems and other issues had delayed other trips. Indeed we were delayed at first with a bad fuel pump. However the excellent people at Helimission drove all night and fixed the helicopter by the next day so we could proceed.

The first village we came to was called on a hill. Here a male nurse and his family worked. This nurse is a remarkable person, so I will describe what he does briefly. He came from Antananarivo and sacrificed a much more pleasant lifestyle to work in very primitive circumstances. There was no running water, or electricity or plumbing. Bjørn and Johanna had helped build him a cement brick house and small building to act as a hospital. This single man serves hundreds of square miles as the only medical option. He gives thousands of consultations and delivers hundreds of babies every year. He also is very involved with the church and sang in a choir that greeted the translation group. He and his wife have a tremendous ministry and I can't say enough about his wonderful work.

The first order of business for our team was to test the recently completed Luke translations in the local Bari language. We wanted to see if these translations actually communicated and were understandable by the people. There was another language very similar that we wanted to test to see if the Bari translation could act as a translation for them as well; or if they would need their own translation.
Over the next several days, we traveled from Mitsinjo to Mahabu, Andranosoa and Andeka. We landed and greeted the village as they came out to the helicopter. We then walked into the village and visited the school and church. We distributed Malagasy Bibles to the local evangelist while Bjørn, Johanna and Leoni gave advise and reconnected with friends. In several of these villages, this was the first time that they had received a bible in Malagasy, or that matter a Bible at all. We were excited to be able to give them these Bibles and I look forward to the day when they can have a translation in their own heart language.