The Challenge of Japanese
This week I spent a lot of time working on a translation of a Spiritual Gifts Inventory for the next Discipleship Retreat. Keiko is a big help in this department. Actually, she translated and I helped her. We are going for a dynamic equivalent. I read the English and tell her what it means in various forms and she puts it in Japanese. Next step, Keiko will read the Japanese and explain it to Susan and Susan will compare it to the English original. Hopefully we will end up with something worth using. So far I haven't been able to find any tools like this available in Japanese. After the retreat, we will get opinions and look at any problem questions, edit again and then send a copy to 5-6 churches with missionarie or national pastors. Once they have a chance for input we will "finalize" it and make it available to everyone. What a job! I have ideas for several projects like this but I am not sure that I am the one for the job.Susan and I are chafing at some of our self-imposed limitations. We came to Kikuyo with the idea of trying to do only what would be considered reproducible by a Japanese church planter. This means setting some ministry finance limitations as well as some creative thinking about our methods of making contacts. I t is turning out to be just as difficult as we thought it would be! We are forced to wrestle with some very real problems that have no clear answer that we can see. Examples include finding a place to use to meet for a Bible study, affordable printing for flyers, how to distribute flyers, how to break through the barriers that society has placed between people and build life-changing relationships. The list goes on but you get the idea. All of this is made somewhat more difficult by the fact that our Japanese is not perfect, there is still much we don't understand about the culture, and we are in a new city.
On the brighter side, we are confident that God is able to accomplish HIS work here. Even as I am struggling to meet people and seek out people interested in learing about the God of the Bible, HE is working elsewhere and last week brought a man to our house who is seeking God. Wow! I am still learning to be more aware of where and how God is working. I am SO glad that we are not in this alone! Thanks for you prayers.
posted by Norman @ 10:56 AM
1 Comments:
It's so good to read and find out how you guys are doing. (I've been checking in with your blog periodically since you were in Pville last Feb.)
Good to hear you're getting settled.
How wonderful that God brought a seeker to you last week.
I loved reading about how you, Keiko, and Susan are translating the spiritual gifts inventory. Look forward to sharing that with the girls. (We just finished reading a William Carey biography and learned about all his translation work.)
Pretty funny about the horse meat too. :) Guess it's a character that Susan will remember. :)
Don't know if you heard, but the weekend you left and arrived back in Japan, a tornado hit our area and took out our garage. God is good and worked mightily through it all. We were out of our house for a few month but are home again and enjoying all the updates. We just laughed when we thought about the difference a week makes and were thankful it was the Sunday after you guys were here and not the day you were here.
Please greet Susan, Keiko, & the kids for us.
In His love,
Ryan, Tina, & the girls
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