What are you eating today?  We had a great opportunity to eat some Liberian food last week: Rice with greens mostly, with the “heat” left out for our stateside taste buds.

Much more than that, we had the unique opportunity to meet some Liberians who craved the truth of Scripture.  They had heard much through the filters of Reformed and Pentecostal teachers.  As they recognized the falsehood there, they invited WELS’ representatives to bring the truth.  Matthew Cephas is a Liberian from Holy Trinity Congregation in New Hope, MN, where he is currently taking the course for pastoral ministry through our Pastoral Studies Institute.  The PSI program is headed by Prof. E. Allen Sorum at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary.  Prof. Sorum worked through Pastor Dennis Klatt there at Holy Trinity to train Matthew for this unique opportunity for ministry.

Matthew organized the place and the food with his friends there in Buchanan, Liberia, so that Prof. Sorum and Pastor Klatt could accompany him to meet One Africa Team representatives John Hartmann and Dan Kroll for a solid week of teaching.

Who taught what subject is not important here.  What is important is the response of eager students, many of whom are already in leadership positions in congregations in Liberia.  My list says 33 in number, but some came later in the week, so I may have missed a few.  It’s the rainy season in Liberia now, so as many as 20 others were not able to make it due to the condition of the roads.  We understood the challenges of travel in Liberia during this time of the year after we got caught in one of the downpours on our afternoon walk.  Again, we were amazed to hear heavy rain each of the four nights we were in Buchanan.

But these people were hungry!  Seeing those who were able to dig into the Scriptures with us with many challenging questions reminded me of the words Jesus spoke in his Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).  The people here at Buchanan were reminded that true righteousness is found only in the Word of God – in the substitutionary sacrifice of our precious Savior Jesus Christ.  They were happy to hear that salvation does not depend on their decisions and good works, but that forgiveness is their own through faith alone, and that good works are naturally produced after sins have been forgiven.  A young man named Chinyung Peygar commented with joy about our common foundation in the truth of Scripture: “You have given us the food of your eating.”

They could not get enough – they all want more.  Pastors Hartmann and Kroll from One Africa Team will come back in November to introduce the Liberian Christians in Buchanan with another group of Liberians in Monrovia this November.  It will be their job to unite these two groups, following God’s invitation found in the book of Isaiah: “Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2).  In verse 6 of the same chapter Isaiah speaks to all of us: “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.”

We’ll be eager to see what the Lord will do here in Liberia.  Until then, we encourage all of you to continue feeding your own soul with the “richest of fare” – the truth of Scripture – and keep these people in your prayers as they continue in their quest for the truth, so that they find it clearly in the message of the Bible.

Dan Kroll serves as missionary to Cameroon and currently resides in Lilongwe, Malawi

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Go to this link to learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts  https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

I’m a nervous traveler. You only need ask my wife, Sue. She will roll with the punches of long lines, negotiating at the airline counter with overweight luggage and messed up children’s tickets or slow immigration/customs officials.  I’ll insist on being at the airport at three least hours ahead of time even if it means we end up spending two hours and fifty minutes of it sitting in the departure lounge twiddling our thumbs. You would think after 27 years of living overseas I would be more relaxed.  Sadly, experience has only left me worrying more about all the things I know potentially can go wrong in travel—particularly on the African continent side.

Take for example my first trip to Rwanda for One Africa Team (OAT) mission exploration almost a year ago.  The whole airport experience was carefully choreographed and went splendidly.  As my associate and I walked out of the Kigali, Rwanda airport terminal at around 5:00 a.m. There was even someone there Johnny-on-the-spot to meet us holding up a sign with my first name on it— “Philip.” We hopped into a waiting taxi and were wended off to a nice hotel in a very posh district of Kigali. We checked into our rooms, showered, and even took naps since we had both been up most of the previous night. By around 11:00 a.m., however, I began to wonder where the Rwandan pastor contact was I was to meet up with who had arraigned all of this. It was around noon I received a frantic call from him through the hotel front desk. He was asking why we were at this hotel!? I still don’t know how he located us in the multitude of hotels in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali with a population of almost 750,000 people.  He had been at the Kigali airport since around 5:30 a.m. and we had not shown up.  Now it was revealed to me by the hotel desk that the hotel staff had realized they had picked up the wrong “Philip.” They had made another trip to the airport to pick him up.  Sadly, the staff had not bothered to mention it to this “Philip” until I asked what happened after receiving the pastor’s phone call.  180,000 RwF or $214 lighter, we checked out the hotel after a half day stay.  We had finally met up with our Rwandan pastor contact and were finally on our way, a half a day behind an already tight schedule.

Those thoughts and others crossed my anxious mind as I sat my usual two hours and fifty minutes in the departure lounge of the Lusaka Airport this past August waiting for our Rwandair Express flight to arrive. This would now be my second trip to Rwanda to visit Lutheran groups.  Playing on one of the airport’s waiting room TVs was an English Premiere League football game (“soccer” to most Americans).  This is some of the most topflight professional sport you can watch this side of the world.  It is big time stuff, bigger and far more popular than American “football” (the misnamed sport where they carry the ball and only rarely kick it).  Most any African male, be they from Angola, Rwanda or Zambia, know well the English Premiere League standings as good as or better than any American male can cite the American NFL standings. The teams playing this game were two of the top-flight teams in the top tier English Premiere League, Arsenal and Manchester City.  It was a good diversion.

Then something caught my eye in the game.  I asked Pastor Simweleeba, an LCCA Zambian pastor accompanying me this time on my trip to Rwanda, if he saw it.  It was a pink armband all the Arsenal players were wearing.  I thought my eyes were deceiving me but it looked like the words “Visit Rwanda” were on the armbands.  A couple of slow-motion replays later it was really there and I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.  “Visit Rwanda,” wow!  Rwanda is trying to become an international tourist travel location and here I am at the airport flying off to Rwanda!  Some of my travel tension immediately eased.

To put this into perspective let me again tell you a little about my first trip a year earlier to Rwanda.  One of the big impressions of Rwanda of a year ago were all the police out and about.  Obviously, you can see police in every African country but the Rwandan police looked particularly serious and there were a lot of them.  These guys were carrying the newest and state of the art automatic weapons while walking around their regular street beats.  In Zambia most all police carry automatic weapons as well, very dilapidated and antique AK-47s. In Rwanda it’s only the lowly traffic cops stuck carrying AKs to police traffic stops.  In Zambia our traffic police use orange cones to do the same thing. Not surprisingly Rwandan AKs, even though they are not orange, do seem to catch your eyes better than the orange traffic cones Zambian traffic officers use.

It is less than 25 years ago, 1994 to be specific, that Rwanda suffered a terrible genocide throughout the country.  A strong police presence is a remnant of that bitter piece of Rwandan history.  On a positive note the Rwandan government is doing all in its power to mitigate the country’s terrible tragedy and try to bring back a level of normalcy to its citizenry. Among them is reducing or at least keeping more out of the public eye its very serious looking police force.  This trip I did not notice them nearly as much if at all.  Rwanda is a lovely place. “Land of a Thousand Hills,” they call it.  It has at least that many hill and valleys and they are green and lush even in the driest part of the dry season when we were visiting Rwanda in August between its two rainy seasons.   It makes sense to publicize this beauty and encourage tourism.

I had a chance to speak with my wife on the phone my second full day in Rwanda.  Interestingly we both had stories to share about Rwanda.  I wanted to tell Sue about how I saw the “Visit Rwanda” armbands on all the Arsenal players and how happy it made me feel.  She wanted to tell me about how Rwanda was in the news for their new advertising campaign encouraging Rwandan tourism, since I had just taken off to the place.  It seems as though the campaign was creating a bit of controversy.  Advertising like this doesn’t come cheap.  Rumors were the Rwanda Tourism Ministry spent in the area of $33 million dollars for a three-year “sleeve sponsor” advertising program with the Arsenal Football team.  Certain British Members of Parliament particularly were incensed at this campaign as it was revealed that Britain gave Rwanda $65 million in education aid this past year. Now it appeared, at least to some disgruntled British MPs, $33 million dollars of that aid was being spent supporting an English Premiere Football team whose home stadium is just down the road from the English Parliament building (Arsenal is a London based football team named after the famous Tower of London’s old government arsenal you can still view which is stored in the Tower).

The Arsenal football team is Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s favorite team.  It also happens to be everyone else’s favorite football team in Rwanda. Over 30% of the English Premiere League is made up of players from Africa.  It is every African kid’s dream to make it in the big leagues of European football and every Rwandan kid’s dream to be an Arsenal “Gunner.”

My informal poll among Rwandan Lutherans was they all liked the idea of being promoted so nicely on one of the world’s stages. It made everyone whom I spoke with in Rwanda feel very positive about their country. I know it did for me.  It was rather coincidental that the first day of this trepid traveler’s trip to Rwanda, they would begin a tourism promotion, as it seemed, for my personal benefit.  I won’t quite call it a sign from God but another indicator that God’s gracious goodness is always present even when some don’t necessarily act that way.

Missionary Philip Birner

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Go to this link to learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts  https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

Did you know that at the Lord’s Supper, Jesus gave his disciples “banana bread” and “beer”?

If someone in America said you were “soft in the head,” you’d think they were insulting you. However, in Central Africa they are giving you a compliment because of your ability to learn things quickly.

If you “shiver in your liver” you might think you need a blood transfusion. Among the Uduk people of the Sudan however, “to shiver in your liver” means “to worry.” Likewise, if “my stomach sits with you” it doesn’t mean that I need to hit the gym. That’s how the aboriginal people of Australia say, “I believe you.”

Human communication is amazingly complex, and there are enormous challenges involved with translating messages from one language to another. Thanks to a generous grant from WELS Multi-Language Publications, 24 people from 8 countries visited the campus of the Lutheran Seminary in Lusaka, Zambia for the first ever Translation Seminar held in Africa. Our presenter was Dr. Ernst R. Wendland, who has served as a WELS missionary in Zambia for half a century. He has been involved with several Bible translation projects in Africa including “Buku Loyera,” the newest Chichewa translation. The workshop participants have various degrees of experience in translating books and tracts. It was our goal to give them tools to produce better translations of Christian literature from English into their local languages, so that their countrymen might have an even greater understanding of God’s love.

Translating is a very difficult task. The English word “translate” comes from a Latin word that means, “carried across.” The work of a translator is to carry a message across the divide of culture and language. However, it has been said that a translator must “cross the river twice.” In other words, it’s not enough to just choose a word or a phrase, you also have to explain what you mean. For example, the first missionaries to Africa had to find a word in the local languages for “God.” Often they chose the name of the god of the local religion who was the creator, father, or highest of the gods. Then they had to explain the difference between the pagan god and the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A translator must not translate from one language to another in a literalistic way. For example, in Matthew 5:2 the Greek says that Jesus, “opened his mouth and taught.” Some readers might ask, “Why did Jesus open his mouth? Was he yawning because he was tired?” A famous hymn says that “Christ is the way, and Christ the path,” but Jesus did not come here to build literal roads. A missionary to India illustrated the concept of “standing on the Word of God” by putting his Bible on the ground and stepping on top of it. In the eyes of the people of that culture he was showing great disrespect to the Bible, and it caused an offense that took years to overcome.

There’s an Italian phrase, “traduttore, traditore” which means “translator, traitor.” A translation must not be literalistic in its form, but it must be faithful to the original content. Sometimes that means that translators must be creative. How do you translate, “I am the Good Shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me” (John 10:14) into the language of people who do not raise sheep? What word do you use for Noah’s “ark” in the language of a people who live in a landlocked country and do not use boats? Christian translators have long debated among themselves how to translate the word “God” into Arabic, because there is no other word to use other than “Allah.”

“Behemoth” (Job 40:19) is a Hebrew word that literally means, “large animal.” If we are translating for an African audience and use their word for “hippopotamus,” is it a faithful translation? The Bible often uses the phrase, “white as snow” but there is no word for “snow” in many African tongues. Some translations say, “very white,” “white as a bird,” “white as flour,” or “white as fog.”

In the account of the Last Supper, the translators of the first Chichewa Bible chose to translate the word “bread” with the word “mkate,” which originally was a flat cake made from plantains. Grapes do not grow in Central Africa, so there is no local word for “wine.” The Chichewa word “mowa” means fermented drink made from grain (beer). Are you beginning to understand the challenges that face translators?

And do you understand how important it is to get it right when translating, especially when working in a culture that is hostile to the Gospel. The Koran says that Allah has no family, so to say “Isa bin Allah” (Jesus Son of God) is blasphemy. Some Arabic translations of the Bible use the phrase “Jesus beloved of God,” although this can also be misunderstood.

Christian translators must not only know the languages they are working with, they must also understand the doctrine of the Bible. The phrase, “keep the unity of the Spirit” (Eph. 4:3) could mean, “unity created by the [Holy] Spirit,” or “[Christian] spiritual unity,” or even “the Spirit’s unity.” It most certainly does not mean, “unite the [ancestral] spirits,” which is how a literal translation of that phrase is understood in Swahili.

“Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) God communicates to us through the Bible, which is written in human languages. If it is so important to understand God’s Word accurately, why did God mix up the world’s languages at Babel? Here is a partial answer, proposed by Dr. Wendland at the Translation Workshop and one that I can verify from personal experience: when you translate from one language to another, you are forced to work harder at understanding what the text is saying.

The Amharic (Ethiopia) word “atereguwagom” (meaning: “translate”) literally means, “to break into pieces.” Translating forces you to break down a text into its most basic meaning before you can reconstruct it in another tongue. Language is God’s gift to the human race, and each language has its own “genius,” i.e., its own unique way of describing reality. Its only fitting that the infinite Creator of the cosmos would give finite human beings a multiplicity of ways to communicate the multi-faceted beauty of his love.

Missionary John Roebke lives in Malawi and serves as the Communications Director for One Africa Team

Learn more about the work of WELS Multi-Language Publications at www.wels.net/mlp