Our Long List of Projects

Recently things have been picking up with projects that need to be done. B and I are working on translating the hymnal into Chewa, a deacon here is translating booklets into Chewa and Tumbuka (which I then type up on the computer), I'm hoping to finish the camp video by Feast time, and, speaking of the Feast, we're in crunch time to get all the Feast planning done! Along with visits, car work, and housework, we've been rather busy recently.

For the hymnals, so far we have around 15 of them translated, edited, set to music, and printed. There's a small Chichewa hymnal that one of our friend's had, but it had no music notes and a few errors. Brennan and I, using Gimp software, have been taking the music from the English songs, erasing the English words, typing up the Chichewa words, breaking them into syllables to fit with the notes, then taking them to the office to be edited. We have a great edit team- Juliana and Chimwemwe! We'll go into he LifeNets shop for Chimwemwe to read over the song, fix errors, and then sing it to make sure it flows and the words are fitting with the notes properly. Often times, people stop by the shop and ask us to sing more songs because it's rather novel to see two white people singing in Chewa! I am so thankful for Brennan's God-given musical talent- it makes creating the hymnal much easier and faster! 

The Chewa and Tumbuka booklets have been a big desire of mine. I am passionate about languages and making sure information is accessible to everyone (hence why I was studying to be an ASL interpreted), and now we're finally getting the church's study booklets translated into languages that are widely understood across Malawi! Although English is one of Malawi's official languages, it's only really spoken in school (and even that is starting to change; primary schools are stopping English lessons) or government. The average person doesn't speak enough English to understand a doctrinal study paper. It's my goal that when we go out to villages, we can hand out Chewa or Tumbuka booklets, and in the future, even translated Beyond Today magazines! Thankfully we have some very talented translators and a great editing team. 

Summer camp was a blast- I'll upload a blog about it soon. From camp we have so many pictures and videos. I have video editing software on my computer so now I'm working on creating a camp video to show at the Feast! Once it's done I'll try to upload it here too. 

So sorry I've been so absent on the blog. I'm working on getting back into the swing of things. The past few months have been kind of crazy. Not overly busy, but spiritually hectic. The last few months have been a huge growth period that I have struggled through but am incredibly thankful for. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be here. God has blessed Brennan and me left and right. We're finally starting to learn how to be joyful through trials because we know what they bring. God is so good, all the time.