​Update and Prayer Requests: November 2021
Valerie and Nicasio Martinez
Translating God's Word with and for the people
who speak Quiatoni Zapotec
​
We hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving and had lots to thank God for!
Since Nicasio and I have basically been doing the same ole stuff this month, we thought we’d share some about Beto, who is Nicasio’s right hand man, and his wife Candi.

Beto translated the Psalms and continues to work on revising them. He’s beginning to use a translation resource that now has commentaries on the Psalms in Spanish.  He’s also been recording Acts for people to be able to listen to it on their cell phones.

Beto is also starting to translate Exodus. (He’s already done Genesis.) He said, “I’ve started reading about the names of God. This is what seems hardest to me: if we should use ‘God’ or if we should use ‘Yahweh’ or ‘YHWH.’ In some places, I’ve used ‘Yahweh,’ but this will make it necessary to use it everywhere. This is hard to decide.”

When Beto and Candi came to visit last week, Candi told us how she’s been recording the Gospel of John in Zapotec and sending short bits via Whatsapp to two groups of family members. Two people from those groups want to join our Zapotec church service!

Candi also told us how grieving her mother’s death has been made even harder by some very unkind (and untrue) things her uncle has said to her and her siblings. Candi said that she’s grateful that we are studying whole books of the Bible because it helps her deal with these things. Her brother, who also attends Zapotec church, is having a harder time. Candi and Beto have been praying for and counseling him.

We are so thankful for Beto and Candi, for their love for Jesus, for how they initiate projects, for how they are sharing the Good News of Jesus, for their wisdom is counseling family and friends who come to them with problems. As you thank God with us for them, will you also pray for solutions to Candi’s medical problems?*

A few small things out of the ordinary for us: Nicasio and I spent some time this month on filling out year end and next year forms as well as updating our emergency information. We are also working on getting all the information together to make our wills. (All this reminds me of how my dad used to say, “Why does everything have to be so complicated?!”)

Family news:
Nicasio’s sister and her husband came from Mexico City to spend a week with Mom and Dad. Nicasio gladly took his brother-in-law’s offer to help with fix-it jobs, so besides fixing some things for Mom and Dad, he and Nicasio spent a day fixing the roof on our storage shed. All the other kids came to visit while Alicia was here, too!

We are very thankful that what was suspected to be covid again turned out to be that Mom had bronchitis. We’re thankful that the medicine has been effective and she’s feeling much better.

In other family news, Grandbaby Royan had his first birthday on Thanks­giving Day! Rusty joined Tara and Mike for a family Thanksgiving dinner and we were treated to a nice, long video call with all of them. So fun to see Royan walking and so busy with his toys! It’s fun to interact with him via video calls but we would so like to hug him—and the big kids, too!

Thank you for your interest, prayers and support making God’s Word available in Quiatoni Zapotec. We appreciate you!
​
Looking forward to celebrating our Savior’s birth!
love, Valerie and Nicasio
www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez
*We had been planning on helping Candi with her medical problems just before the covid restrictions started. So it’s been on hold since then; now that things are improving, she’s moving ahead with seeing the doctor. We thank God that there was extra money given to pay for their daughter’s emergency appendectomy, which will be put towards Candi’s medical expenses.

Update and Prayer Requests: October 2021
Valerie and Nicasio Martinez
Translating God's Word with and for the people
who speak Quiatoni Zapotec
Nicasio recently visited our pastor to take him our tithes. He said that Pastor is off oxygen but very, very thin. We’ve heard that he is preaching again. Thank you for your prayers for him. Please pray for us as we continue to monitor how covid-related things are going here for when we should return to in-person church services.
Beto’s mother-in-law passed away shortly after we sent out our September update. They are thankful that she is no longer in pain and that she knew Jesus as her Savior.
Nicasio has been revising the book of Acts to stay ahead of what we are studying in (online) Zapotec church—although right now that’s not much of a problem because we are at the beginning of chapter 21. In verse 5, it tells how the believers and Paul knelt on the beach and prayed. Nicasio decided to talk about how we should pray, both our physical posture and what we should pray about. One verse he referenced was Matt 6:7, to not be repeating the same thing. He said, and others agreed, that it’s easy to do a lot of repetition when praying in Spanish because it’s easy to do when you don’t really know what you are saying, but it Zapotec, it’s hard to repeat and repeat because you do know what you are saying! (Remember that most church services, even in the Quiatoni area, prayers, sermons, and songs are almost always in Spanish.) Now we are studying the Lord’s prayer before going back to Acts 21.
Nicasio is also revising Acts to give the last chapters (22-28) to Esmeralda who has been back-translating Acts for us. Due to covid restrictions, it’s been more of a challenge to get the next chapters to her and then get them back from her after she’s translated them back in Spanish. You may remember that we have back-translations done so that a colleague can “read” our Zapotec and check the translation to make sure that it’s correct and complete. Please pray that God will work in Esmeralda’s heart as she reads and thinks about the book of Acts so she will come to know Jesus as her Savior.
Nicasio was invited to accompany UABAJO’s (“his” university) rector and a few others to a Zapotec speaking town about 45 minutes away. The rector was presenting a book in Zapotec published by UNAM, the largest public university in Mexico. Nicasio was asked to go as an expert in indigenous languages. He was happy to be able to meet the rector, who is originally from Mitla, and spend some time talking with him about possible liaisons between the UABAJO and Quiatoni, specifically for publishing similar book on medicinal plants in the Quiatoni area.
Nicasio has gotten lots of positive feedback from the students in his Indigenous Languages class for the university’s Master’s program of translation and interpretation. They have found the practical exercises of writing in their own languages just as challenging as the reading that he has assigned them.
Please continue to pray for Nicasio as he works on his PhD thesis. He can’t get the files from his hard-drive and needs to talk to his advisor about how to manage without that data. Thank you for your prayers for encouragement for him, too.
A little update on the small Quiatoni Zapotec grammar book I wrote: I’ve been working on translating it into English and adjusting it for an English-speaking audience. In the process, I’ve found some mistakes in the Spanish edition; so I’m fixing those, too. Why do I find mistakes after I’ve printed the book?! (I guess it’s better to find them after rather than never!)
I’m still working on typing in all the illustrative sentences in the notebook that I found. There are 694 words listed in the notebook and each word usually has three sentences to go with it. (I’m currently on word 330, so I’m almost halfway through the notebook!) Not only do these sentences provide illustrative sentences for the dictionary but I’m discovering new words and correcting definitions and/or adding definitions to words already in the dictionary. I enjoy working on this; sometimes it feels like I fall down a hole chasing “rabbits” (words and meaning) and have a hard time finding my way back to the starting spot! I’m so thankful for this wealth of material.
Now that our state is in “green” of the covid restrictions, I’m getting back to working in the Children’s Library and the Homeschool Resource Room in Mitla. I’m thankful for my friend Marge who has helped and been a wonderful companion during the attack on the mountain of donations!
Thank you for standing with us as we push towards the goal of giving God’s Word to those who speak Quiatoni Zapotec—and help others towards similar goals. Thank you for your prayers, support, and encouragement!
Praying God’s blessings on you.
love, Valerie and Nicasio
www.cten.org/NicasioMartine