Update and Prayer Requests: January 2022 Valerie and Nicasio

Translating God's Word with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec

A month or so ago, one of the adult education teachers in Quiatoni asked Nicasio to check over the Lord’s Prayer that a group in the Catholic Church had translated. Nicasio agreed and gave them a few suggestions on the translation and corrected some spelling mistakes. Later the teacher sent him a message saying, “They are using the Lord’s Prayer in Zapotec in the mass. And everyone is happy. It’s the first thing in the mass. It is a proud moment to hear the people repeat the verses, translated into Zapotec. It gives you goose-bumps! This show that the people like it and accept Zapotec in a written form. Thank you!”

We are thankful for the initiative of this group to translate the Lord’s Prayer, for their openness to improving on their work, for their making it part of the mass, and for the people’s acceptance of it. Thank God with us for all this!

We have mentioned that Nicasio enjoyed teaching a class on Indigenous Languages in the Translators and Interpreters Master’s Degree program. The university asked him if Vivian, who taught the class on dictionaries and glossaries, would teach a class next semester on translation. Since she doesn’t have time, they asked if a colleague could teach it. To make a long story short, Nicasio will be the coordinator for the class while various SIL* people will teach individual classes. This will be a new experience for Nicasio and he hopes to learn a lot from the classes. Please pray that the right people will agree to teach the classes and that this will prove to be a good tie between SIL and the university.

I will be attending an on-line course twice a week (at 8 am, not my best hour!) for ten weeks on Scripture engagement. It “gives the big picture of Scripture Engagement, building and expanding on long established insights about how people engage with Scripture - and why sometimes they don’t... Our desire is to see real Scripture Engagement: people encountering God’s Word in life-changing ways.” I appreciate your prayers as this is new ground for me.

When I chatted with Candi (Beto’s wife) earlier this month, she said that she is losing weight! Thank you for praying for her and please continue. (She needs to lose weight to have her gall bladder removed and to reduce the chances of diabetes.)

We thank God for you and your interest in our ministry of Bible translation with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec. Thank you for praying for us and supporting us in many different ways.

love, Valerie and Nicasio
www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez
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