Pastors and church members have very little teaching literature available to them in Lodja, either in French, the official language, or in Otetela, the language of the people. Timothy works with a small group of translators who are engaged in translating from English into Otetela various works of Christian literature. Among their projects are an exposition of tithing and the church, a book on the godly purpose of music, an analysis of the Biblical concept of covenant, and a study for men on rightly relating to their wives. The translators have also translated worship song lyrics and patient hand-outs for the Clinique Lukumu L’Ololo.
For the first few years of their work, the translators worked long-hand in school notebooks with Bic pens, and a typist transcribed their work with a manual typewriter. This year we were able to wire their small office for electricity (coming from a portable generator), and introduced a desktop and a laptop computer, so that work can be done directly to a disk which will later be sent to the publisher. Timothy spends some time almost every afternoon discussing content, concepts and phrasing with the translators; Sharon now helps out with on-going typing and word processing lessons.
