August 20, 2019
The Next Language 6, “Toward the Last Language”
As The Next Language moves toward the Last Language there were significant developments the week of August 12-16.
We held our third board meeting of the year. The board members seemed encouraged and supportive as this was the first board meeting since I was named Executive Director.
The following day we hosted a contingency from Bibles for Asia We spent several hours talking and praying over how to finish recording the languages in Vietnam and the surrounding region. We look forward to working together in accomplishing this task. During that discussion it became apparent that we soon need to carefully define our training and fix a curriculum. That will no doubt be the subject of a future blog.
Look here for what we are looking for in recordists. We are looking for a five-year commitment from recordists, the first two years designated for training.
We will be working closely with our International Training Director, Jon Rulison, to develop this. The concept of two-stage recordists came up and seems to have merit. Training recordist technicians that can professionally do the recordings is an initial level and then training for another skill level that would include direct involvement in the translation process would be a graduate level. The translation skills will be necessary for a large percentage of the world’s unrecorded languages.
The next day I visited a point of distribution down at City Heights in San Diego. This outreach to immigrants was started by Gerry Gutierrez. CD’s are given to immigrants and refugees once their heart language is determined. Most of the time in this market you would not guess you were in the USA because of the foreign dress and faces.
The local support for this weekly farmer’s market outreach is Pastor Jakamo who works with Spanish, Burmese, and Swahili congregations. He was immediately sobered to know that there are still over 3,000 languages which still do not have the first word of the gospel. On hearing our plan to recruit at least 80 new recordists, he immediately suggested challenging the Swahili congregation with whom he works. He pointed out that a Swahili/English speaker could work all over the northern half of Africa. We will be providing promotional material for him and are already planning a mass meeting with multiple migrant churches in the San Diego area to challenge them with this need. Keep praying. . .
God Bless,
Larry DeVilbiss | Executive Director
Global Recordings Network USA