A visit to South Goulburn Island

Give thanks that Susanna and I made it to South Goulburn Island and were able to do some work with three Mawng Bible translators there.

I figured if we just found out where they were at with translation and continued to build relationships, that would be a successful trip. So the fact that we actually did some work was a real bonus!

Mawng is the main language spoken on the island, and has about 400 speakers. It is still a strong language, being spoken by children, but like most small languages it is changing rapidly. I thought that Mawng only had the book of Mark translated, but we found out that quite a number of Bible stories were translated up to 50 years ago. Unfortunately, there are words and constructions in them that are not used anymore, and some even use a different spelling system, besides the fact they look very dated!

We were able to help the translators make some resources for religious education classes at school based on one of the old publications, and they updated the wording of the Lord's Prayer and looked at what else they can update. So we were pretty pleased with how the week went.

If they had someone to work with them more often, and could get the funding, they would love to work on Bible translation full-time. So please pray for more workers to support Aboriginal Bible translators.