The Turtle and His Shell

In a land where the people tend to be pretty shy and slow to speak what’s on their minds, it can be desperately difficult to know what’s going on around you and what the people, with whom your are in conversation, are thinking.

Stony faces, inaudible muttering amongst the audience and l-o-n-g periods of silence can be most disconcerting.

Yesterday was like that. We had seventeen people in the hut out of doors, and they represented eight different mother tongues into which we have the aim of helping them orally translate and record the Gospel of Luke.

I do not speak nor even grasp 20% of the bridge language of these shy folk before me, and it was a daunting task to lead the discussion and present the first story to be translated.

Added to the complexity of language in front of me, and the innate shyness of the audience, was the issue that no one wanted to say anything and to appear foolish.

A dear old Papuan saint and Bible translator consultant, with years of experience in translation, likened the situation to “trying to get the turtle to come out of his shell”.

Trying most of the day to move forward, it took a very creative idea of telling a simple real life story (someone’s short testimony), and asking everyone to repeat what they heard, to finally get everyone talking.

It was then that joy hit and, by the day’s end, we had five of the eight languages telling the Bible story I brought them.