1/4 Goodenough Island Survey

Compilation post about this beautiful survey trip – helicopter, tropical island, wonderful people, win-win! – with daughter Anya, teammate Kristy, and translators Denis, Simon, and Christabel. From Sep 2022.

3/3 Muratayak Survey (Apr’22)

We enjoy telling stories on FB, but when one trip get spread across 33 posts – actually, 34 – the narrative gets a bit chopped up. We’ll combine original posts in three compilations here. Enjoy!

Between the Past and the Future

It was not yet dawn. The subtle sibilance of bare feet on trail was the only evidence of a man in front of me. His dark skin disappeared, but there was enough light to see irregularities underfoot – a dip, a stone, a root. But bare feet perceived more than eyes, this hour.

River crossings had a dim glow, trees unable to touch hands above the river’s expanse. The sound of water over rocks testified to shallow fords. Even in daylight, feet play a large role in negotiating underwater obstacles. Doubly so before sunrise!

The man ahead left a smell in the air – in no way unpleasant, but definitely human. I left the same smell; I’d eaten the same food and washed in the same rivers in the days preceding.

The trail followed the river’s calm but persistent journey to the sea. The team had a boat to catch to reach the airstrip to board the plane to fly home to family. Home: where security lights dim the stars – earthly concerns, however relevant, concealing heaven’s glory.

In that moment on the trail, my body desired nothing more than to walk the dim forest eternally, without fear, without thought, without knowing the passing of time. In the dark, I followed the man who knew the trail without seeing it. This was his ground. I was accorded the privilege of enjoying the profound present with him, in silence.

But time did not stop. Someone adjusted the light setting, ever so gently, revealing browns, greys, and the dark greens of the jungle. Eyes found more upon which to alight, more in which to delight. With my eyes’ awakening, the brain grew busier, and my body’s pleasure in the present faded.

The man I followed was now more than a shape. He became a young man who sometimes went barefoot and sometimes wore flip-flops; they were stored in his bilum as needed, along with very little else. His shorts made river crossings straightforward. His t-shirt prophesied the day’s coming heat. His hat and shaped beard showed attention to style.

Paradoxically, on this primordial ground at this hour of the day’s birth, the young man in an ancient world carried on his shoulder a Canon Pixma printer. It was being transported to our center for repair.

And thus the people of this land live between. Between the Past and the Future. Between depending on the generous earth and a fortnightly wage. Between wise, gnarled hands tending crops and savvy, city hands handling paperwork. They are masters of transition, of seeking to draw the good from each opportunity, leaving the bad. But evil is sticky.

Much of my life is in the Future; we move too fast to risk not focusing on what is coming at us. And so my feet remember that dark trail with longing. Perhaps I can find the grace to be Present, even here.

Carter Action News! – Nov12

Sadly, the girls were disinclined to be enthused about news today, though immediately after the video, Anya and Mira started racing up and down the bridge…

We’re looking for 19 partners in 43 days! Sounds impossible! Then again, we serve a God who sent his Son to earth for you, me, and people from every nation and tongue.

Partner with us!

Partnership opportunities graph below video if you prefer that.

Carter Action News! – Nov5

Our girls were quite a bit younger when we started Carter Action News. It typically airs when we want to share life from their perspective – which would be valuable to do more often! For those who’ve seen our presentations in-person, you know we like to give the girls a chance to share.

The update below includes our financial partnership status as of Nov 5, see video starting at 0:54. Partner with us!

People and Opportunities

Language research is about people. It’s easy to talk about the adventure – the heat, the bugs, the mountains, the mud. Or about the work – facilitating group discussions on language vitality, collecting wordlists. But ultimately it’s about getting to know the people and discover opportunities to serve them.

A 2012 survey was particularly memorable, being more adventurous than most trips. Here are a few of the people we met along the way:

  • The people of the first village, so remote in their river valley that we reached them by helicopter. Only women, children, and a few old men present. Most of the working men were two days’ walk away at a mine. Those remaining in the village were timid, uncertain about how to handle their foreign visitors.
  • Children – We’re conscious of our ‘bling’ factor on survey. We have to carry papers and pens for research, water and food for sustenance, something to sleep in, medical supplies. Very quickly this begins to look like a great deal of wealth to rural PNGans, and, relatively speaking, it is. I pulled out the GPS to mark our location, the kids watched me curiously. In 2012, smartphones were very rare in the rural parts of PNG, and the GPS must have looked doubly strange.
  • Guide – Lazarus, the man who volunteered to guide us on a path so seldom used that – many times that day – I could be standing on the trail and not be sure where it went from there. We later learned that Lazarus didn’t know the path either, but his jungle literacy was far better than ours. As he scouted far ahead to discern the path’s direction, he would leave sticks pointing the way. In a jungle full of sticks, our ability to read the sign he’d left was at kindergarten reading level, at best. Lazarus had to come back to show us the way.
The famous “bai yu pundaun!” most visitors hear as a warning from locals. “You’ll fall!”
  • Armed local – Two of the surveyors were battered by falling throughout the day on the tricky trail, one a bit delirious. We descended a precipice after dark and were met be men with a rifle. They were afraid of retaliation from a nearby tribe with whom they were in conflict.
  • Dead daughter – An old man asked for conversation with a female surveyor. We were mystified, as this is culturally inappropriate. It turned out that he thought she resembled a dead daughter of his. He wondered whether our colleague was his daughter, returned from the grave with white skin.
  • Boatsman – We floated downstream in a forever-long dugout canoe, all four surveyors crowded together on a small bench in the middle. Bumping sideways over hidden logs, trying to remember if everything damageable had been sealed tight. The man with the pole at the far end of the canoe looked on with amusement.
  • Translation enthusiast – A man accompanied me around a village, assisting with information about the language use habits of residents. At one point he asked, “There were three ladies that came in 1990. We thought they were going to begin translation. Why has no work begun?”

These people remain without vernacular Scripture. They are family, or could be. Some need a clear invitation. Probably best to give that invitation in their language!

For groups like this one, our research’s conclusion is clear: they’d benefit enormously from the Bible in their language! Pray that people would answer God’s call to serve this group and many others like them.

72 days until our return to PNG!

Dream Pig

Fire-side story time! I wrote this story in 2015 imagining one PNGan’s life and his perspective on Bible translation. How different PNGans see and experience Bible translation varies widely across PNG.

Imagining life from another’s perspective can aid in relationship-building, especially across cultures. Of course, such imagining is inevitably imperfect; assumptions and conclusions should be checked and rechecked.

Dream Pig is also flawed, and there are things I’d change about it now, 6 years after I wrote it. If there weren’t things I’d change, I’d be concerned, as that would indicate I’ve stopped learning.

Dream Pig

Call to Action

[Mail recipients, please go to the webpage to see the video.]

In our first post, we invited you to tell us what you want to see here! That invitation stands.

Also in our first post, we said, “[Surveyors] write reports, but we aren’t fully satisfied when readers are just informed. Our research is intended to be applied, acted upon – in the survey context, this means language communities being served as a result of our research into their needs. Likewise, we’d love for you to act on what you see here by praying, becoming part of our team, or getting involved in a more direct way yourself! Jesus’ call to “Go!” is for all believers.

This week, instead of adding to the word count, I want to invite you to action, or to conversation. So, today, I’ll share highlights from posts to date. They’re organized by our call to action: Pray! Give! Go!

Watch the video or read the text below, they are nearly identical.

Pray! – there are many in PNG without Scripture in a language that communicates best

We answered “What is Language Survey?” with “We do applied research, desiring that those we study would benefit from language development.”

We recounted a 2011 survey and defined language survey as: research the sociolinguistic situation to identify needs and desires and suggest strategies for meeting them.

When a Language Dies – the story of a grandma who was the last speaker of her language – explained, “A language is an artistic system to express all of the meanings deemed valuable enough to articulate verbally. A collaborative effort to explain the world. A tug of war between new words striving to find acceptance and old ones reluctant to be forgotten.”

Pray for those who’ve lost a language they loved, to find identity as God’s children. For those losing one to understand its value and to have wisdom to respond. Pray God’s message would be clear, regardless: “The heavens declare the glory of God… Day after day they pour forth speech… they have no words… Yet their voice goes out into all the earth” (excerpts from Ps 19:1-4).

After telling the second half of the 2011 survey, we noted, “Though there is translation work going on nearby, Mur Pano people haven’t been able to partake in a significant way. If you were one of the residents of the village, how would you think about the possibility of Scripture in your language? Would you judge it worth the effort? Will speakers of Mala and Mur Pano be among the “persons from every tribe and language” singing “You are worthy!” to God? (Rev 5:9).”

Pray for the 70 language groups we’ve researched in the past decade! Consider playing a part in researching and advocating for other speakers of minority languages by partnering with us!

Give! – your partnership enables research, which enables strategic Bible translation

As in the canoe described in Furlough & Partnership – Canoeing Sideways, we aren’t steering on furlough… YOU are. God uses you, his Body, to care for cross-cultural workers, send them to their place of service, and support them while there. Without the Church providing transport, overseas workers get dumped in that muddy river.

Furlough is a faith-growing exercise for cross-cultural workers. We do what we can, then wait trustingly – balancing the while – for the Church to say, “Yes, we want to make that happen!” (If you’re ready, get in touch, go to Partner, or ask us for suggestions about work that aligns with your interests.)

In Is It Dangerous? we asked, “Why do we do it?” Here’s one way to look at it:

  • Problem: people without any Scripture in the languages that communicate best
  • Solution: experts translate the Bible, guided by research (that’s our job)
  • Outcome: people engage with Scripture in their languages, better able to know and follow God

Would you go to an event if your invitation was written in a language you don’t know well? “If this is really for me, why isn’t it in my language? I’m not entirely sure what this is about.” God invites people from every nation and tongue to his table. Translating the invitation – the Bible – makes it clear and cogent.

By last count, there were close to 2000 language groups in Oceania, Asia, and Africa about which not enough is known to categorize translation need with confidence.

Solution: RESEARCH! Understanding what type of translation is beneficial and where is the first step towards meeting the needs of these people who are, in some ways, “the least of these” (Mt 25:40, 45).

Research guides translation experts to where they are needed, and often provides strategic information about how to work with a particular people group. Those translation experts do the heavy lifting, often investing 10-30 years working alongside local people to complete a New Testament.

The outcome is wonderful: another people group with God’s Word clear and attractive. “God speaks my language!”

I’m a strong proponent of long-term relational engagement across cultures, walking with God and pursuing him together, using all the languages we speak. Your part in this is pretty special, and critical. Without you, most cross-cultural Bible translation work – and the research that guides translation – just doesn’t happen. You provide the financial, prayer, and relational support needed for translation and research experts to do their jobs in those thousands of languages which remain Scripture-less.

Go! – many skillsets contribute to Bible translation

In What Just Happened? – multicultural teamwork, we stated that our organization in PNG includes staff from 15+ nations and tens of language/culture groups from around PNG. One of my goals as Chief Communications Officer role is to facilitate communication that builds relationships and team and enables collaboration within our organization and with partners. Pray for our staff as they navigate the complexities of multicultural teamwork and build relationships.

Languages and Mountains spoke of how we’ve served in a variety of roles as we see needs we can meet. What skills could you contribute? In PNG, a wide range of professions are needed!

We’re all ordinary (if anything created in God’s image is). All followers of Jesus have received the same call. Read how Tikvah responds in Obedience-Based Faith. How are you responding?

In Multi-part Harmony, we described how “[The Wheel of Vitality’s] primary purpose is to assess intergenerational language transmission, [enabling us to] make estimations about [the language’s] future. Since Bible translation is often a multi-decade endeavor, it makes sense to have some confidence that the language will be spoken when the translation is completed!”

While we were there, it felt like we, the translation team, and the local folks were singing a multipart harmony joyfully and beautifully. “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (Ps 133:1) But our tale in Milne Bay has a twist ending: the translation team moved to a different role a few years after this trip, so translation has slowed since. Pray that all the “singers” needed for effective harmony can be recruited.

A Walk on the Survey Trail: And then I arise [from the river], feet finding purchase among the stones, lungs breathing deep, life’s ebb and flow renewing. It’s time for another village with a different language, time to connect with a new set of beings made in God’s image. The Living Word seeks to be incarnate through Scripture in their language. He is already present in Spirit, but his message is not yet clearly and fully expressed in their tongue.

We’ve met many people in Papua New Guinea who would benefit from having the Bible in their language, enabling them to better know and follow God. There are many other groups whose need is unclear. Answer God’s call to make disciples! Pray! Give! Go!