Not Just Thinking and Writing but Doing

If you read this blog either online or as an email, you get insights into the things that we are reading and thinking, but we don’t say much about what it is that we actually do on a day to day basis. However, though we try and blog most days, it isn’t a huge part of what we do. For instance, this is what Sue is up to at the moment;

When we returned from Australia it was time to get back to working on Tandroy Matthew again, in preparation for my next trip to Madgascar (23 August – 12 September). At the last workshop in March we managed to check the first 9 chapters, and this time we are aiming to complete the rest of the gospel. It helps that the team have already worked on the other 3 gospels, so we can compare lots of parallel passages, but Matthew is long (28 chapters in all) and has a number of incidents and parables that the other gospel writers don’t include. So I’m going through the Tandroy translation, verse by verse, (with the help of a back-translation in French) trying to spot any omissions and research any potential exegetical and translation issues, so that we are ready to discuss these face to face. The team are also making final preparations, trying to improve style and clarity as they go. We will be working at a seminary in Fianarantsoa which is around a 12 hour drive from the capital. (They can house us because it is not term time and most of the students are away.) It is on the central plateau, so at this time of year it will be fairly cool (going below 10 deg C and no heating). I would appreciate your prayers for safe travel, for good communication and patience with one another as we work long hours and try to finish Matthew, and above all for unity and wisdom for all the tricky translation decisions to be made.

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