We have definitely learnt a lot in the last couple of weeks, about life in Tanzania in general and about Bible translation and language development here in particular. At the same time we’ve been trying to prepare ourselves for the long trip out west to our new home – Mpanda – at the beginning of March. This has meant buying various things for our house including some kitchen equipment, making sure the car that we’re borrowing is in good condition for the trip, obtaining Tanzanian drivers licenses, and meeting with various people to discuss the work we’ll be doing in Mpanda.

In the midst of all the busyness we’ve also really enjoyed visiting with people here in Dar, and one or two nice times of relaxing on the beautiful coast!

On Saturday we’ll be making the 7-hour trip inland to Iringa, where we plan to stay at a Swahili language school for a month before moving on to Mpanda.

We’re really grateful for those of you who have been praying for us since our arrival in Tanzania. We are thankful for your support in this way, and have seen many of your prayers answered as we have settled in well and generally been very healthy. Please continue to pray for us in this time of transition, especially that we would be able to get everything done that we need to this week, and for a safe drive to Iringa on Saturday – thanks!

Learning about different types of food...

Laura being a good student...

Dagaa - very small fish!

Some colourful fabrics being sold in downtown Dar es Salaam

Laura relaxing on the beach

Related posts:

1. Tumefika! We have arrived in Tanzania…
2. Our flights are booked… to Tanzania!
3. Engage Orientation Weekend

A friendly tarantula welcomes us on our first night

We are currently staying at the main SIL office in Dar es Salaam, where we are in the middle of three weeks of orientation. We’ve been learning about a wide range of things, from food preparation to cultural differences, from organisational governance to how to stay healthy and not get malaria.

Us outside the office

At the end of next week we plan to travel to Iringa, where we’ll spend a month at a language school for Laura to learn Swahili. She has made an excellent start already, and is learning more and more each day! But we hope that the four weeks of dedicated time will give her a good foundation that she can continue to build on when we move out to Mpanda (in Katavi Region) at the beginning of March.

Preparing a red snapper for dinner

Thanks for all your prayers and support for us! We are extremely excited to have finally arrived in Tanzania, and grateful for all the supporters who are joining with us in this new stage of our life and work. We are looking forward to continue to partner with you as we prepare to head out west in the coming weeks, finally meeting the church leaders you and we have been praying for, and seeing our friends and colleagues again!

Laura studying hard

Related posts:

1. Our flights are booked… to Tanzania!
2. Orientation and preparing for the next stage…
3. We’ve Arrived in Oregon!

The last week has been a whirlwind visit to Mark’s family and our supporters in our other home country, England. New Year’s day we flew into London Heathrow airport very early in the morning and were met by Mark’s happy, sleepy parents. It had been a year and a bit since I’d seen them and about 7 months for Mark, so it was a very happy reunion!

The next few days were sleepy ones with few events planned except a dentist check up. On Wednesday evening we were able to attend a prayer group for Mark’s home village Semington where we shared a bit about what we’ll be doing in a few days time. It was a very encouraging time as we caught up with supporters, including our friend Sarah who has been working in the United Arab Emirates and has very interesting stories about life in Abu Dhabi.

On Thursday we took a trip to Burnham on Sea to visit Mark’s grandparents, hearing their amazing stories of growing up in rural Wiltshire in the 1920s, with no electricity and getting water from the well outside.

Friday was our 5th wedding anniversary, so we wandered around the lovely city of Bath for a couple of hours, stopping at a little tea shop for a nice break. And then on Saturday it was great to see Mark’s sister, brother and sister-in-law (as well as cousin, cousin-in-law and cousin’s-daughter-probably-something-once-removed) who came over. It was a good time of catching up, and Mark even managed a quick game of tennis with his Dad, brother and sister.

Then on Sunday we had the privilege of speaking at two of our supporting churches, Cornerstone in Thame, and Queensway in Melksham. It was really encouraging to see many friends again, and to be prayed for as we look ahead to the next few weeks and months in Tanzania!

This week we have a couple more family visits, one immunisation, re-packing our bags, and then it’s off to the airport on Thursday evening!

Laura with Mark's grandparents

Speedy knitting...

Mark's brother and sister-in-law

Mark's sister and parents opening presents

Related posts:

1. Trip to England in May
2. A Family Visit
3. Christmas in Wiltshire

Much as we are looking forward to arriving in Tanzania, we will be sad to leave friends and family here in the US. One of my enduring memories of our time here over the past year or so is the 4-week “soccer festival” that our church hosted for kids from the local neighbourhood last summer. Here’s a great little video from the festival made by Stephen, which will help to bring back some great memories when we’re on the other side of the world…

Related posts:

1. Taking a step back from Our Story to see God’s Story
2. Oregonian Summertime
3. Back to Work

The most striking part of the movie is the absurdity of the war. When the men meet up at Christmas they realise they have a huge amount in common, and yet on every other day they are trying to kill each other because that is what their commanders, and their nations, have ordered them to do.

In many ways the First World War was the height of modernity, with the European nations accepting without question the narrative of the unstoppable march of civilisation and progress. In reality the nations at war had a great deal in common – shared histories, similar languages and cultures, and apparently a shared religion. And yet their narratives of progress, despite their similarities, could not co-exist but clashed leading to the loss of millions of lives.

As the soldiers socialise and share stories on Christmas day the absurdity is obvious to all. They have no hatred for each other, in fact they realise they have a huge amount in common. Their sole reason for being on the front lines is to carry out the orders of the generals, and the political leaders, who are in a totally different world. The ridiculous nature of it all is brought home on the day after Christmas when it is left to the priest to convince the soldiers that they are in a holy war, that they are God’s children and that it is their duty to kill those in the opposite trenches who are God’s enemies.

Watching the movie it is easy to see how the First World War was the start of the end for modernity and the myth of progress. The post-modern suspicion of metanarratives, controlling powers and absolute and abstract truth divorced from personal relationships, is the only natural response when you are commanded to put your life in danger in order to kill others, simply because the colonising ambitions of your countries are incompatible.

And yet while post-modernity is an understandable and vitally important critique of the absurdity and supreme arrogance of the modern Enlightenment project, it poses more questions that it answers, deconstructing good and bad alike, and pointing eventually down the road of hopelessness and despair.

If Jesus was on the front lines in 1914 I think he would have ridiculed the grotesque empire-building ambitions of the European nations and their arrogant myth of human progress. But I think he would also have warned against the descent into despair where all meta-narratives are viewed with suspicion. Maybe he would have pointed towards a new story, that starts with a child in a manger. Here we see the claim of absolute truth which is not abstract and detached, but the person of God himself. We see the claim of a universal story, but it’s a story not of power or control, but of God coming in humility and service. The victory and climax of this narrative comes not in military victory but in the child who grew up, living a life of humility and self-giving love, suffering and dying at the hands of a great and cruel empire, forgiving those who killed him before eventually being raised to life.

What does it mean for us to live out this story this Christmas time?

Related posts:

1. The Truth Project, part 2: Actions speak louder than words
2. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
3. Bible engagement in oral communities

But despite the inevitable controversy, it is extremely exciting to see the impact that the translation is already starting to have:

Our pastor, he’s sitting on the side of the street with the boys, he speaks like they speak as equals, so he meets them on their level. It’s the same thing with the Scripture, it’s as if Jesus is right here with us, and speaking with us in the same way.

Take a couple of minutes to watch the video below and read the article on the BBC website, to see the impact that the Bible is having in Jamaica this Christmas!

Related posts:

1. Being drawn into the story of Jesus
2. Look at Jesus
3. Which parts of the Bible would Jesus leave out in your church?

When faced with criticism it is easy for us to become defensive. In reference to the supposed “war on Christmas” here in the US, I have heard several people comment in the last few days that western society values tolerance of every religion and belief, except Christianity. Is this fair, and is it true?

Reading Lesslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society has been a challenging but enlightening experience for me. He makes the point that western culture makes a sharp distinction between the private sphere, of personal beliefs and values, and the public sphere, of scientific facts and universal truths. While western society has a high value of pluralism, and tolerance, in the private sphere, there is extremely little room for tolerance in the public sphere (you won’t find much acceptance for your belief that the earth is flat).

When Christianity is practiced as a personal private faith there is a great deal of tolerance and acceptance of it. But the message of Jesus and of the Bible as a whole is not one that accepts western society’s division of life into private and public spheres, agreeing to stay quietly in the private part of life. Rather, it claims to rely on objective historical events, and to have universal relevance for all people and cultures.

This is where the conflict with modern western society arises. True Christianity refuses to be confined to the tolerant private sphere of personal beliefs, and insists on being heard in the public sphere of facts and universal truth. At the same time, the historical facts upon which it relies are notoriously difficult to prove in a scientific way (which is what western society’s public sphere requires). Certainly there is much evidence that can be debated, but it will always be impossible to prove scientifically that God exists, or that he created the world, or that Jesus of Nazareth was God, or that he was dead and came back to life. Not only this, but even when the evidence seems to support the claims of Christianity (as N.T. Wright for example argues in his exhaustive three-part series about Jesus and the early church), the conclusions drawn, that God became a human, that God died, and that he was raised to life, are so surprising and unintuitive to us that it is virtually impossible for anyone to believe them purely on the basis of the scientific evidence alone.

So where does that leave us? Newbigin concludes that

Almost everything in the “plausibility structure”  which is the habitation of our society seems to contradict this Christian hope. Everything suggests that it is absurd to believe that the true authority over all things is represented in a crucified man. No amount of brilliant argument can make it sound reasonable to the inhabitants of the reigning plausibility structure. That is why I am suggesting that the only possible hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation which believes it. (Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, p232)

Newbigin, without denying that the gospel does rest on firm historical facts and truths, and hence that Christians must engage with these objective questions when they arise, nevertheless believes that ultimately these debates on their own are unlikely to convince anyone of something that goes so totally against the way our society thinks and acts. At the end of the day the most effective witness to the truth of the gospel is the transformation of the lives of a community of people who are following Jesus, humbly loving, giving up their rights and putting others first as they seek to follow in the footsteps of the one who has brought God’s victory through what seemed to be the ultimate defeat.

I really like Eddie’s article about how the story of God becoming man is for people of all nations and languages. But I think he would agree that unless the people we are engaging with are able to see in our day to day lives the truth of the gospel of love, humility and service as we take up our cross and follow Jesus in the power of his Spirit, they are always likely to be hostile to our strange and revolutionary message.

Related posts:

1. Newbigin on the Gospel and Western Economics
2. Did Jesus preach the gospel?
3. Positive Pluralism: How to be Engaging Gospel Tourists

Our colleague Michael Nicholls has again taken some excellent photos of the dedication event last month, some of which are below:

Related posts:

1. Luke translated into Ikoma, Kabwa and Zanaki
2. Ikizu Bible translation: Hopes and Challenges in northern Tanzania
3. After years of perseverance…

The big-name Christian apologists are, basically, modernists. Their method of apologetics is to show that belief in the God of Christianity is entirely compatible with human rationality. In other words, they are accepting the proposition that human rationality is the standard against which God is judged. This may not be particularly glorifying to God but it certainly glorifies human rationality.

They might say that they are accepting this proposition as a starting point because it is the mindset of those that they are going up against, and hey, we’re into contextualization and starting from where the other person is coming from, but you can’t be a Christian and leave that starting point unchallenged. The Christian starting point is that God is the standard against which everything, up to and including human rationality, is judged.

This is why I have no interest in debates between prominent atheists and prominent apologists. They both place their ultimate faith and authority in the human capacity for reason and logic and in the need to make rationally defensible choices. In that sense, they’re both arguing the same side.

Worse, if you do go down that road, what kind of a God can you end up with? A God who is rationally defensible may be the clockwork god of the Deists but not the surprising, challenging and sometimes confusing God of the Bible. Read more…

I have to say this is exactly the issue that I have with The Truth Project, which I have written about a couple of times. By trying to defend what is true merely through rational counter-arguments and modern logic we can end up actually pointing away from the truth of the God who, as revealed in Jesus, is challenging, surprising, and not at all what our limited human logic would lead us to believe an all-powerful God would be like.

Simon’s thoughts tied in very well with a paragraph I read recently from N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, which pretty much sums up what I have been learning over the past few months:

The Maccabees had denounced, as no better than pagans, those Jews who had compromised with Antiochus Epiphanes; Jesus denounced, as no better than pagans, not only those who compromised with Caesar by playing his power-games, but also those who compromised with him by thinking to defeat him with his own weapons.

Wright goes on to describe what he refers to elsewhere as Jesus’ revolutionary way of being revolutionary:

His kingdom-announcement, like all truly Jewish kingdom-announcements, came as the message of the one true God, the God of Israel, in opposition to pagan power, pagan gods, and pagan politics. But, unlike the other kingdom-announcers of his time from Judas the Galilean to Simon ben Kosiba, Jesus declared that the way to the kingdom was the way of peace, the way of love, the way of the cross. Fighting the battle of the kingdom with the enemy’s weapons meant that one had already lost it in principle, and would soon lose it, and lose it terribly, in practice. (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p595)

When we depend merely on rational defense of God’s kingdom through combative apologetics and debates, maybe we are fighting the battle of the kingdom with the enemy’s weapons. When we insist on our rights as Christians to have our faith play a central role in public life, or try to pass laws forcing people to behave according to our own standards, maybe we are again fighting the right battle but with the wrong weapons. When we see Christianity as a territorial religion, trying to protect what we have while sending missionaries to make inroads into enemy land, maybe we are missing the point. When we build huge Christian empires in order to have as much influence as possible in society, maybe we are using the weapons of the kingdom of wealth, fame and control to fight the battle of the upside-down kingdom of God, and consequently have already lost the battle in principle.

Jesus on the other hand explains that the victory of God in and through his suffering and humiliating death using the following analogy:

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. (John 12:24-25)

What does it mean for me, and us, to embrace this revolutionary way of being revolutionary, fighting the battle of God’s kingdom with the weapons of love, humility and even defeat, in order to see God’s victory and a plentiful harvest of new life?

Related posts:

1. A missional reading of Matthew 20:1-16
2. A missional reading of Matthew 2
3. Turning the world upside-down: Luke 4:14-30

Recently the project was featured on BBC World Service, and on the BBC website, with the website article particularly focusing on the Shanjo people and their language, ciShanjo.

“It’s like a miracle,” says Hastings Sitale, recalling how he felt when he saw a booklet written in ciShanjo, a language he had only ever spoken before.

 Mr Sitale, who describes himself as “just a farmer”, is part of an estimated 20,000-strong Shanjo community in Zambia’s remote Western Province.

Over the last few months, he has been part of a group of amateur linguists, mostly fellow farmers, who have been creating a spelling system for their mother tongue.

For the first time stories passed down through the generations by word of mouth are being written down.

“We decided to do this so, as the older people die away, the younger people will see the language,” Mr Sitale told the BBC World Service.

‘Sheer excitement’

Mr Hastings and his team of village translators are one of five teams developing a written language for their tongues in the Western Province.

They attend translation workshops in the regional capital Mongu – a round trip which can take up to 32 hours, travelling by oxen, car and bus.

“They call us people from the bush or forest people,” says Carol Mushali, who is the only woman on the ciShanjo translation team.

She sees the potential for primary school lessons using ciShanjo now that siLozi and English can be translated in written form because, many researchers say, children learn best in their mother tongue.

There are also benefits for adults learning this new form of their language.

“Once they taste a bit of knowledge they want more. It opens up learning to take place – a foundation that teaches them to read and write opens up the mind to further learning of every type,” says Ms Mushali. Read More…

Read the rest of the BBC article to hear more testimonies from the Shanjo people of what it’s like to read and write their language for the first time. You can also read a couple of posts that I wrote when I conducted a workshop with the team last year, and visit the project website for regular updates on their progress.

Related posts:

1. “A Dream Come True” as Zambian Translators are Chosen
2. Luke translated into Ikoma, Kabwa and Zanaki
3. The Impact of Local Language Scriptures Throughout History