Back to Africa Translating Romans

I'm back in Africa - Karen / Nairobi, Kenya to be specific - with another team of men translating Scott Gilchrist's teaching through the New Testament book of Romans. Scott is senior pastor at Southwest Bible Church (SBC) in Beaverton, Oregon. In May 2014 Dr. Rick Calenberg, International Director of the Romans Project, arranged for Scott to teach through Romans at a conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to 250+ pastors. The conference was translated  into the Amharic language and thus started the translation efforts to provide those sermons from all 16 chapters of the book of Romans into numerous African languages of the countries where the Romans Project ministers. In addition to Amharic, we also have translated into Oromo, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, French, and Hausa.

I arrived on Sunday September 13 to the Resurrection Gardens outside of Nairobi in a region called Karen. This is a new facility for us and thus far seems to be suited well for our task. The compound where our facilities are located is huge and encompasses a large garden with several walking paths and numerous benches throughout offering people places to sit and pray. Our facilities are at the top of the hill near the gate and the translation team is spread out throughout the three towers of dorms.

The tower on the far left is where Edwin and Alex have their rooms. The rooms are equipped such that we can also do our translation and editing work right in our rooms. I'm on the ground floor in the middle tower and Yohannes is on the second floor of the tower on the right.

Edwin is from Uganda and translates in to the Luganda language.

Alex is also from Uganda and translates into the Luo language.

Yohannes is from Ethiopia and translates into the Tigrinya language. Yohannes is also the voice in Tigrinya for Jesus in the "Jesus Film" produced years ago by "Cru" (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ).

Our work got off to a slower start than expected as Alex's bus from Kampala, Uganda caused him to arrive at the Resurrection Gardens around 10 a.m. on Monday. We had orientation before lunch and then I issued the men computers throughout the afternoon. We worked through a few kinks with the computers and helped to familiarize them with the recording program.

As I write this first blog entry, Edwin has finished session 01 in Luganda and is well into session 02. Yohannes just submitted his session 01 in Tigrinya before lunch, and I still need to help Alex with a few last details for him to wrap up session 01 in Luo. I have fully edited Edwin's session 01 and sent it off to Dave Martini at SBC where Dave checks each recording and compiles them into folders to be added to mp3 players for distribution.

PLEASE PRAY that the men would get accustomed to the computer, recording program, and the mechanics of translating and recording. Edwin seems to have found his stride and I think that Yohannes is about there. I think Alex is still working to see things come together. The goal is to get all 18 teaching sessions translated - and edited - by October 4th or 5th. That's three weeks in all and thus means an average of 6 sessions per week.