Excerpts from the Martins' Memos - December, 2013

Martins' Memos

Duncanville

Texas, USA

December 2013


Family News

Lenore and I are having so much fun being grandparents! Joel, Rebecca, Mari and Sam are spending Christmas with Rebecca's family in the Phoenix area.


Sam and Mari

Jason, Anne, Torin and Kaya spent Christmas day with us. All three families will be together for a family holiday over New Years in San Antonio, Texas.


Anne, Jason, Kaya and Torin

Adapt It Reports

The Adapt It software is being used by translators in a number of places around the world. Although the Adapt It team is constantly seeking ways to improve how Adapt It assists the translation process, the desktop version is now a fairly mature computer program with (happily) few bug reports coming from the field. We make Adapt It freely available for download by anyone from the Internet (www.adapt-it.org), so we have very little idea of who uses Adapt It unless they contact us after encountering a bug or a problem. Recently we received a message from one of our team members (Erik Brommers) saying, "Susy and I had dinner with a couple from our church. They work with Wycliffe, and coordinate translation efforts in the Middle East. When I mentioned that I work on Adapt It, he said, 'You guys are my heroes! We have a group that just finished the T. language translation using Adapt It, and another group that is in the planning phases for doing a similar project'"

In our previous newsletter we reported about the  successful Adapt It workshop that we conducted in PNG for 12 mother-tongue translators from Manus Island. Charles Kowak not only recruited the Manus translators that attended the workshop last summer, but he has been busy helping those same translators and recruiting more!

Our friends and Wycliffe colleagues Jerry and Susan Pfaff - who work in the Nali language group on Manus - recently sent us a report about their first visit to Manus after the Ukarumpa workshop. Jerry told Charles that he and Susan could spend their first week in town (instead of going straight out to the Nali village where the Pfaffs work), and that they would love to connect with any of the Adapt It students from the workshop who wanted some help, review, consultation, etc. Jerry writes:

"So Charles went to work inviting people to come.  He wrote letters and invited all 12 course participants. Then he invited people from other language groups. He invited people who had no former knowledge of computers. Then, by way of the public radio station, he basically invited anyone and everyone in the whole province to come to a 'workshop' in the first full week of October ... and I was to be the workshop teacher! That's when I started breathing my 'Help!' prayer.


"Fortunately, there were only about 22 participants in the ‘workshop’. Nine were ‘graduates’ of the June-July course. Another dozen were new people, some from language groups that have never had a translation program going in their language ...


Participants paired off so that an experienced person sat
with a new user, translating scripture verses together on
the computer – some of them had never done either one
of those things before!  Jerry enjoyed watching Nali translator
Thomas Pohonum, stand up front and teach the opening
session on basic computing. He has been training Thomas
in computer skills for several years.

"And do you know what’s great? Seeing discipleship happening. People who were functionally illiterate on a computer 4 months ago are mentoring and teaching computer skills to others in the 'workshop' that Charles pulled together in just four weeks. We didn’t cover in 4 days what took 4 weeks at Ukarumpa. But Charles had planned that all of us would go to the marketplace in town on the final day. He had reserved the 'grandstand' area so these students could publicly read their translation (Mark 1:16-20). And they did it!! In a dozen different languages! "

Hearing reports like these are encouraging to our small team, and we trust to you also who pray and contribute financially to the Adapt It project.

Solar Systems and Printers Delayed

We are grateful that the Lord has been providing for computers and solar systems to help the Manus translation teams. After the workshop this past summer we assumed that a coastal shipping company would be able to take passengers as well as the first 4 solar systems and 2 laser printers from mainland city of Lae by sea out to Manus Island, so we sent most of the workshop students and the initial lot of solar equipment from Ukarumpa to Lae by road expecting that they would be able to travel by ship back out to Manus Island. However, because of some political disputes, the ship that previously transported people, store goods and cargo to Manus was delayed for 3 months in sailing from Lae to Manus Island. Most of the students had to adjust their plans and fly back to Manus, and the first load of 4 solar charging systems and 2 laser printers did not get into Manus until late in December and won't get into the hands of translation teams until after the holiday season.

Because of the problems with sea transport, we helped fund the cost of air fares for many of the students, and now we realize that to get the 8 additional solar systems and 4 laptop computers out to Manus we will need to send them by a different and much more expensive route - air freight. Please pray that the Lord would provide funds for the unexpected air fares, and additional air freight costs for the solar and computer equipment. The extra cost was $2,500 for the student air fares and expected to be at least $2,800 in air freight and customs/duty for the solar and computer equipment.

May you be truly blessed

The LORD bless you and keep you
The LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you
The LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace!

We trust you are rejoicing in the goodness of the Lord. We thank you for your prayers, gifts and encouragement.

Yours in His grace,

 “And God is able to give you more than you need, so that you will always have all you need for yourselves and more than enough for every good cause. (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Praise Items:

Prayer Items:

þ We were able to release version 6.5.2 of Adapt It on December 18th with improved features for helping translators prepare for consultant checking

o Pray for the national translators who are now using Adapt It. Pray that they will have great wisdom in translation, be well supported by their local communities, and continue to grow closer to the Lord.

þ We praise the Lord that the follow-up workshop out on Manus Island generated so much interest in Bible translation.

o Pray that the Lord will provide the funds to get all of the remaining computer and solar equipment into the hands of the Manus translation teams.

þ We Praise the Lord for our kids and grandkids. It is wonderful to see them follow the ways of the Lord and serve Him.

o Pray that our grandchildren will come to know the Lord early and learn to Love Him with all their hearts.

þ Praise the Lord for providing us and our families with good health and that Lenore has been cancer free now for almost 3 years.

o Pray for our dear friends Robert and Katherine. Robert recently had to have emergency abdominal surgery and is still in the Hospital recovering.

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