OCT ' ^ 1984

VZ3

Pryors'Prayers

PIONEER BIBLE TRANSLATORS

m
FIELD

Praises

ADDRESS:

FORWARDING

AGENTS:

David W. & Sharran O'Brien Pryor

Kevin L. & Donna J. O'Brien

Box 997

c/o Pioneer Bible Translators

Madang, Papua New Guinea

PO Box 24593

Indianapolis. IN 46224

Volume VIII, Issue 2

March - August 1984

PROGRESS REPORT
It has been a while since we have given you an update on our work, so we will do that
in this newsletter. Many aspects of our work involve long tedious processes, and the
progress is slow. If we reported on these each newsletter you might tire as much of
reading "We are still working on , . ." as we would tire of writing it. By spacing these
reports a bit farther apart it is more encouraging to us, and hopefully to you, too.
Church

Growth: Last

year

at

this

time

attendance for Sunday morning worship was so

low that men, women and children could all fit
in the small church building at the mission
station. Now the men, women and children who

are either pre-school or past sixth grade meet in

the large recreation building at the station, and
the school age children fill the church building
for their own service. Last year at this time
Sunday night services were held in the village

interested in preaching and teaching for any of

the services. Now we have seven other village
men besides the pastor and myself who rotate
with us to share the preaching and teaching
load. (Our son John has also started preaching
now, and in my prejudiced opinion which is
shared by the people ~ he does quite well.)
Cooperation by church members for
presiding over the services, serving
communion, etc. was done by a few with

and cancelled if it had rained within the hour

reluctance and without enthusiasm. Now there

before the service, Wednesday evening prayer

are enough volunteers to take care of every

nightly prayer meeting and the services on
Sundays for a full month and still not have used
everyone who is willing to be used. And all of
this is happening eight months after the revival
started, after things have settled down to a more
even pace, and only the committed remain.
The church is now in a period of growth that is
so essential to their maturing faith. This is the

meetings were off and on and attended mostly

by children. Now Sunday evening services are
held in the recreation building rain or shine, and
prayer meeting services are held every night of
the week. If it rains, we meet under someone's
house.

For years it has been difficult to get anyone

besides the village pastor or myself to be

time when the miraculous is not an everyday

occurrence, so that their faith can be tested,

internalized more fully, and strengthened.

Though things appear outwardly calm, it is very
evident that the Holy Spirit is at work in the lives
of the people.
Literacy: The spiritual growth of the church
has produced a tremendous interest in the lives
of the older men and women of the village in

learning to read.

In the early days of the

Australian Church of Christ work among our

people, the older men by virtue of their age
alone assumed leadership positions. Over the
years, though, their children have had the
benefit of schooling and learning to read in
Pidgin and have thus gradually taken over the
leadership roles. According to their culture,
this Is not ideal. And with all that is going on
now. they are even more motivated to learn to
read and have the scriptures in their language.
For

these

reasons

we

have

committed

want the Bible in our language. We do not

understand what is taking David and
Sharran and their helpers so long. But
whatever it is that they do not know or un
derstand yet, help them to learn it quickly
so we can have our own Bible and all of our

people will know how to read it, and your

church can grow in all of our villages."
We do appreciate your prayers in this regard,
too. In fact, we do have some real progress to
report along these lines.
Translation: Before our three language
helpers went to the second year course for
national translators last April through June,
they had completed the translation of Ruth,
Jonah, Esther and sixteen chapters of Acts.
Since they have come back from the course
they have completed the back translation of
these portions, and as of yesterday, August 3rd,
we have completed our preliminary checking of

ourselves to teaching the older men and women

Ruth. This means that it has been checked for

first to read and write in Kire. We have our first

accuracy, fidelity to the original, spelling errors,

proper transliterations, proper discourse
features (as much as possible at this stage) and

pre-reading book about half completed and

hope to start the class about the last of
September or early October.
Then

from

mid-November

until

mid-

December we will be back in the highlands for a

primer construction workshop. During that
time we hope to complete the greater portion of
the first Kire primer. And, if all goes well, our
first literacy classes with the primer will begin in
the spring of next year.
It is encouraging and exciting to see the
interest of the older people in learning to read. I
can't

remember if

I have shared

this

in

previous newsletter, or not, but three of the

older men in our village have made trips to
Madang to get glasses so they will be able to see
to read. That really touches us.
We are also deeply moved by prayers we have
heard at prayer meeting that go something like
this:

"Great Father, we are really happy about

what is happening in our church. So many
have given themselves to You. and we are
all wanting to know more about You. We
have the Pidgin New Testament, but we

naturalness. This is a real milestone for us.

Next comes the checking with the village

committee. This. too. is an important test. The
translation will be read to them portions at a
time, and they will see if it sounds like good Kire
or is too unnatural and awkward. Their input on
how it could be expressed better and more
naturally will be received. We will also quiz
them on the important points of each portion to
ensure that the message has been accurately

translated for their understanding. Then during

the last week of August a consultant from the
Papua New Guinea Translation Association will
meet with us for the final checking.
You might be asking why we are translating
these books for our first projects. Here are the
reasons.

Since we first began our program we have

wanted to train our national helpers as fully as
possible and stretch them to their full potential
knowing that this would yield a better
translation and hasten its completion. We have
not only sponsored them in the first and second
year courses for national translators

(conducted by the Papua New Guinea Bible

Ethnic research: Sharran has taken over the

Translation Association, the Summer Institute

monumental

of Linguistics and Pioneer Bible Translators),

but I have also worked at furthering their
training in translation principles during our
time in the village.
One of the first steps is learning how to
translate a simple narrative (simple is perhaps
an overstatement). These books mentioned are

the observation and research notes that we

narratives with little didactic material in them.

Clearly establishing the discourse story form

and translating it will help immensely when they
begin translating the gospel accounts.
Too, simple stories are the easiest for new
readers to read with understanding. So having
these

narratives

purpose

for

our

translated

serves

translation

and

dual

literacy

task

of

assembling

all

of

have gathered over the years relating to the

culture of the Kire people. As she gathers them
and writes them up in the form of a research
paper, she is able to find all of the gaps in our
knowledge of the people's customs and beliefs.
This of course will lead to further research and

additions to our data. The end of this project

will culminate in finishing the paper for

publication and/or storage in the PBT/PNG

branch archives.

It will also mean one more

requirement out of the way putting us one step

closer to total time being spent in translation
and literacy. The target date for the completion
of the paper is May of next year.

programs.

Training: Speaking of training, we have

trained Namput in using our Radio Shack TRS80 portable computer (made possible by a
special gift from Mr. and Mrs. Jon Stevens). He
types the first draft on to the computer and
transfers it from the computer to a cassette for
storage.
Then, after we have made the
necessary corrections on a chapter, he puts
each chapter file back on the computer, types in
the corrections and puts the corrected file back
on the cassette tape. When the checking and
corrections are completed, the work that he has
done -- in addition to putting in all the appro

priate field markers to tell the computer what to

do -- makes the book ready tor the computer

print-out that makes the book picture ready for

printing and publication. If his ancestors could
only see him now!

Darampu is the next to be trained on the

computer. That will mean four of us (counting
Sharran and myself) who can use the computer

to enter and manipulate all of our data for

analysis and scripture portions. But having
Namput and Darampu able to take care of a lot
of the busy work frees us for the areas of our
program which they cannot handle and
speeds the total program along.
Besides
that, it gives them a greater feeling of ful
fillment being more a part of the work, and a
feeling of achievement for mastering
something so technical.

Linguistic Analysis: We are nearing the end

of this stage of the analysis of the Kire sound
system. We have nearly 75% of all the sound
alternations (such as "s" becoming a "z" sound
when the plural suffix "-i" is added as in the
word for bushknife: kos + i becomes kozi)

accounted for, having discovered the environ

ments and processes governing these changes.
We are working now on some of the more
difficult ones that we think are governed rather
than classed with irregulars.
John Clifton, the SIL consultant who has

helped so much in the analysis, is going to

spend part of his vacation with us here at Garati
to try to wrap up as much as possible at this
stage. We have resigned ourselves to the fact
that some of the mysteries of the sound system
will not be resolved until we get further into
literacy and get some feedback from the
people.

But we are, at least, far enough along to begin

our literacy work. By the time our literacy
classes begin next spring we will have
accounted

for

90-95%

of

the

sound

alternations, written a paper describing it

all, and will have achieved "approved ortho

graphy" status. This will allow us to begin

publishing up a certain percentage of scrip
ture.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers.

I think I can see the light at the end of the

tunnel.

Testament as well. But having the bulk of that

term for translation with Sharran, myself, and
our three language helpers all working
together, we should be able to complete quite a

YOU ARE COMING

BACK WHEN?

bit of translation.

We recently made a decision to extend this

term from four to five years which means we will
not be coming back to the States until the
Spring of 1987. There are two main reasons for
this which we would like to share with you.
The furlough timing as relates to John's and
Amy's schooling is one factor. John is still
holding to the desire to stay with us in PNG for a
year after he finishes high school and help us
translate. He is taking a New Testament Greek
course now.
I'll be teaching him some
translation principles, and he will work with one
of our language helpers to just give it a try and
gain some experience.
Not only would this help our program, but it
would also make it possiblefor Amy to stay with
us till her last year of high school which she
would then take in America while we are on

The only major drawback to extending this

term is that it extends the separation time
between us and our families and friends in

America. We continue to miss you all. Inthiswe

have but one consolation: eternity is coming
soon.

We trust that you also see the wisdom and

practicality in this, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and continued
expression of confidence and love.

THIS FURLOUGH
WILL BE

furlough.
We

would

enroll

John

in

Johnson

DIFFERENT

Bible

College during August of 1987 and stay to see

Amy's high school graduation in May, 1988
following which she will also enroll in Johnson
Bible College. Our third term would then be just
a three year term which would get us back for
John's graduation, and then before returning to
PNG we would be able to attend Amy's
graduation from JBC, too.
The other reason for extending this term
relates directly to our translation program. By
extending this term for another year, there is a
good possibility that we will get the vast
majority of all our linguistic requirements out of
the way before furlough in 1987. This would
mean that we could concentrate almost entirely
on translation and literacy work.
As you can see, this means that Sharran and I
will return for our third term by ourselves.
Sharran would no longer have the responsi
bility of teaching correspondence to the
children and would therefore give her full time
to translation and literacy. Though the children
will be greatly missed and the "nest" empty, we
will be thankful to have her assistance as we

have committed ourselves to translate the Old

Last furlough we traveled all year long in a

motor home, the children traveling with us and

continuing their correspondence school while

we traveled. This next furlough we will need to
locate in one place to allow Amy to finish her
final year of high school in a more settled
environment. Too, David will have to continue

his graduate work. This will reduce the number

of speaking engagements we can have since
engagements will be limited mostly to
weekends.

We would appreciate your prayers for

guidance as to where to settle during that
year. It will need to be in the same town
as, or near a seminary, have a good high
school for a teenage girl who will undoubt
edly be undergoing culture shock, and
be "conveniently" located near the geo

graphic
churches.
to meet

center

of

all

our

supporting

We sure need God's leading

all of these qualifications.

Three different areas are under considera

tion already.

preacher, husband and father. He needs

God's wisdom daily to fulfill all these roles
well.

Sharran as a homemaker, supervisor for

John's and Amy's school, anthropologist,
wife and mother. Many days seem to be
consumed in breadmaking, etc., so she
needs God's wisdom to help balance all her

Please Join Us In:

Praise

roles.

For the progress we have made this year

For the growth of the church

For the people's Interest in having and being

able to read the Bible in their own language
Prayer for

Namput as he works with us. He has by inher

itance the position of village headman, but
so far because of his belief in God he feels

that he cannot accept his position. Never

theless he faces constant pressure from the
village to take this role which many of them
don't realize entails performing a magic
ritual.

Waisi (Darampu) as he works with us. He

preaches quite frequently in the village
besides working for us, and the villagers
demand a very high standard of his
Christian life.

One small mistake makes

him subject to great criticism.

Palau as he works with us. He seems to often

be pulled away from the work due to his

involvement in many other things. He is

trying to build up a reputation as a "big

man" which is mainly done by giving away
food. That requires having a very large

garden and much time to work in it. Pray

that God will help him to set his priorities
as God would lead him.

David in his roles as translator, linguist,

Advisory

Committee

member

for

the

PBT/PNG branch administration,

consultant for our three co-translators.

John as he completes 10th grade. Besides

school he preaches, sings and plays his
guitar and writes songs. He also speaks the
language best of all of us.

Amy as she completes 8th grade. She

recently contracted a really strange virus
that affects the nervous system. God has
used this to really help her realize how
important her life in Christ really is to her.
Pray for her as she tries to find her talents
and ministry among our people.
Yourselves that God will continue to impress

upon you how thankful we are foryour love

and prayer support, and how vital these
really are to our ministry.