Missions Around the World
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Update and Prayer Requests: May 2022
Valerie and Nicasio Martinez Translating God's Word with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec May started off with a bang! We asked for prayer last month for the Zapotec music group and their first event since the pandemic started. The short, untangled version of the long, tangled back-story: A lady from Quiatoni’s second largest town had asked Nicasio to sing Zapotec songs while she and her family prepared food for her son’s wedding (which would be the next day). She said that non-believing family members would be there and she wanted them to hear Christian songs in Zapotec. Nicasio got permission from our pastor (another long and involved story), the Zapotec music group got busy and spent a day and a half practicing—the first time together in two years! Nicasio was impressed by how quickly they got back into it and that they didn’t need as much practice as he’d anticipated. When we got there and the group got all set up and were singing, a lady came to me and asked what we had available on CDs because her mother couldn’t read. She already had our song CDs and was happy to get the Gospel of Mark, Galatians and the Birth of Jesus on CDs. When she paid me for them, she didn’t want her change, saying, “You keep it. Y’all are doing a good work and an important work!” Five or six more people bought all three song CDs and none of them wanted their change! (One man’s change was one and a half times what he was buying!) When the food preparations were winding down because it was almost time to go to the bride’s house for part of the traditional wedding, the lady who had invited the group asked Nicasio if we could go with them to the bride’s house and provide music there, too! Even though that meant packing up everything, driving to the next town (happily it was on our way home!) and setting everything up again, Nicasio agreed. The songs and the parts that Nicasio read out of the Gospel of John in Zapotec were very well received at both places. Different ones of our group overheard things like, “He was reading out of the Bible in Zapotec and we could really understand it!” and “We really like the songs because they are in Zapotec!” The lady who invited the group had asked Nicasio what they charge for an event; he told her there wouldn’t be any charge but if she’d like to give something to help with expenses, that would be accepted. She was very generous with her “something” and a few other people, including the groom, also gave Nicasio “somethings” to help. Nicasio was pleased to share it with everyone who had gone with us and helped make it a success. Later in the month, we went to the closing program that Beto had for his reading and writing in Zapotec class in that same town. It was a very small program, the eight students and their families, but it was given a lot of prestige because the town mayor and his men arrived in response to Beto’s invitation. Later, the town hall’s big van came to take the students and their families across town to where Candy (Beto’s wife), her sister, Beto’s mom, and Rogelio’s family (he started the project to rescue Quiatoni Zapotec’s numbers) had prepared a meal. The closing program went really well. Beto had focused his reading and writing program on riddles and tongue twisters. The students were from 3rd to 9th grades, one gal was just learning to speak Zapotec! Each one confidently took the microphone and read from his large “book” the tongue-twister and the two riddles that he had written. Each one waited for someone to guess the answer to the riddles—even though a couple of them had written the answer large enough for everyone to see! The mayor gave a nice speech about how we know how to speak Zapotec but don’t know how to write it so it’s good that the children are learning to write in Zapotec. Beto had asked Nicasio to speak, too, and he emphasized how important it is for people to use their minority languages even though they can speak the national language, too. This was a big project to Beto to undertake and even though the classes are done, he still needs to analyze his results and write it all up to present as part of his requirements to graduate with his bachelor’s degree. We are very proud of him and of how Candy and their daughters have supported him through his college years. (My dad often said, “I wonder how many more Nicasios there are out there in the Quiatoni mountains.” Beto is one of them, and I know my parents would have been just as proud of Beto as they were of Nicasio.) Everything else that happened in May pales in comparison to these events! We did keep on with our regular stuff, jobs, and studies this month, though. I also attended a five day (online) seminar on verbs; the participants will be making presentations about some facet of verbs in the language they are studying on June 16th. Please continue to pray that Nicasio’s US visa will be granted, and we’d be delighted if the required interview in Mexico City were waived. And please pray for me as I travel to and around Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, from May 31 to June 19. Thank you for your interest in our ministry of Bible translation. You are an encouragement to us and we hope that we encourage you with these glimpses of what’s happening in the Quiatoni area. love, Valerie and Nicasio https://www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez I know we just sent out our newsletter and hope that you are interested in what we did in April. So here’s our:
Update and Prayer Requests: April 2022 Valerie and Nicasio Martinez Translating God's Word with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec Last month we told you about the back-translators and why we need people to translate the Zapotec back into Spanish.* The back-translator writes the Spanish meaning under the Zapotec, not word for word but by thoughts or phrases. When the back-translator returns the book to us, Beto types the hand-written back-translation into the program that we use for the translation. Then the back-translation and the Zapotec translation can be easily sent over the internet to the colleague who will check the book. If the colleague is familar with Zapotec, seeing the Zapotec sometimes will answer questions—or bring up new ones! Since Esmeralda finished and sent us the back-translation of the book of Acts, Beto typed it all into the translation program. So the next step is to sent it to a colleague to check it. Please pray that one of our colleagues who checks translations will have time to check Acts for us. Acts is a long book! Beto and Nicasio have been working on revising and improving the scripts for dubbing the Deditos videos, (https://deditos.org/en/home) which are Old Testament children’s videos, although we are sure adults will enjoy them, too! Old Testament information is so important for understanding the New Testament. We hope to record the voices as soon as covid restrictions relax some more here. When we were studying Acts 21:27-29, about the Jews accusing Paul of taking a Gentile into the Temple, Beto saw that “word pictures” of the Temple and its courts wasn’t enough, so he made a short video in Zapotec explaining the history of the Temple and its courts. We are thankful for Beto’s creativity and love of digital things! Nicasio has applied for his US visa to be renewed. We’d appreciate your prayers that it will be granted and that he won’t have to go to Mexico City for the interview. (Apparently interviews are often waived for people of his age.) Would you also pray for our internet during the (online) Zapotec church service? It often goes off during our prayer time and sometimes during the study time. The Zapotec music group has been invited to play and sing at a wedding reception in Quiaton’s second largest town! Let the practicing begin! They haven’t played or practiced together since we stopped meeting together in March 2020. Nicasio has received permission from our pastor to accept this invitation (necessary since we are under discipline) so the group will be practicing this weekend and maybe evenings next week since the wedding is on May 8th. Thank you for praying for this, too. I (Valerie) will be in (NW) Ohio and (NE) Indiana for two weeks, the beginning of May, with our kids. I hope to be able to do some visiting so if you’d like to be on the list of potential visits, let me know! (Nicasio and I are planning on attending a missions week in Sandusky, Ohio, the first week of October, so we hope to see people in that area then.) We appreciate your interest in and your prayers for us and for our ministry of Bible translation for those who speak Quiatoni Zapotec. love, Valerie and Nicasio https://www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez *In case you’ve forgotten or missed that, back-translations allow a colleague with more translation experience to check our translation so it will be the best it can be. Correction: I will be in the US the beginning of JUNE! April 26, 2022 Dear Brothers and Sisters, Thank you for your generous gift in February. We so appreciate your generosity and your desire to see God’s Word translated into Quiatoni Zapotec. You make it possible! Thank you! Good Friday morning, just when we were about to have breakfast, Rebeca called and asked if we could come to their house to have memelas for breakfast. Memelas are smaller and thicker than regular tortillas; after they are cooked on the griddle, some pork rendering is spread on each one and then some crumbled, fresh cheese and they go back on the griddle to get warm and melty. So delicious when you are sitting there, near the griddle and you eat them hot, with some delicious home made salsa on them! We said “Yes!” and then got busy figuring out a birthday present for Rebeca because Nicasio had seen on FaceBook that it was her birthday. We decided on a small, pretty bowl that I had bought on a trip to Puebla City. We had a delicious breakfast (including hot chocolate and/or coffee and a sweet roll) and a delightful time visiting with Rebeca and her mom, Sofía. Rebeca and Sofía are very faithful about attending the Zapotec church service and tell us that they learn so much by studying God’s Word in their own language. Rebeca told us that her mom had asked if we should do like the Catholics do during Lent and Holy Week: not eat meat. That led into a discussion about how most churches (Catholic and protestant) in our area tend to have special services on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday but Easter Sunday is “business as usual.” Sofía said, “Yes, that doesn’t seem right, does it? It’s like Jesus died on Good Friday and He stayed dead until next year when Palm Sunday and Holy Week come around again. We should be celebrating on Resurrection Sunday that He came back to life!” We hope you had a happy Easter celebrating our risen Savior! Our April 2022 Quiatoni Crier is attached. We trust it will be an encouragement to you. Thank you again for your financial support, prayers and interest in translating God’s Word into Quiatoni Zapotec. May God richly bless you! love, Valerie and Nicasio www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez Download the Quiatoni Crier Newsletter below: 
Dear Friends,
I have been reconstructing the email address list for our monthly updates because when my computer crashed at the beginning of February, my email took the brunt of the crash. If your name doesn’t appear correctly or you would prefer I use a different email address or anything else, please let me know! I appreciate your help with this. love, Valerie Update and Prayer Requests: March 2022 - Valerie and Nicasio Martinez Translating God's Word with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec Within a few days this month, several good things happened with some of our back-translations. You may remember that back-translations are the result of someone who speaks Quiatoni Zapotec and Spanish reading one of the New Testament books that has been translated into Zapotec and then he or she translates it back into Spanish. We then send the back-translation to be checked by a consultant, a colleague who’s had more experience in translation and some extra training. With the Spanish back-translation, the consultant can check our Zapotec translation even though he or she doesn’t speak our Zapotec. It’s best to have back-translators who haven’t worked on the translation (because they would know what the translation should say) and who don’t know much about the Bible (again because they would know what the translation should say). Mingo has been one of our back-translators after I ran into him in our local market several years ago. He had been one of my first language teachers back in the mid 1980s and was willing to try back-translating. He did a fine job on Hebrews and really understood what Hebrews is all about. After he finished Hebrews, Nicasio asked him if he’d back-translate Matthew. Mingo asked, “Is it as hard as Hebrews?!” Nicasio told him, no, that it would be easier but much longer. He agreed to do it. During the time he was working on it, he began having trouble with his eyes and finally just couldn’t work on it any more. Please pray for Mingo, for his eyes, and for what he’s learned about Jesus from doing back-translations. The town he lives in is very resistant to “other religions,” meaning anything other than Catholic. This month we drove out to see Mingo and pick up the Gospel of Matthew, however much he’d been able to do on it. He wasn’t home but his daughter gave us the book and her dad’s phone number, and said she’d give her dad the message that we’d picked it up and left some wages for him. Nicasio tried calling Mingo a few times to have some closure with him about Matthew but the calls didn’t go through. Then one day, Mingo called Nicasio. They had a good visit and Mingo told Nicasio that he’s now using drops in his eyes, which were helping but not enough yet to do much writing. We are thankful to continue to have a good relationship with Mingo. Our other back-translator is Esmeralda. She has been working on Acts, another very long book! We had been sending her a few chapters at a time as Nicasio finished revising them. Not long after Mingo called, Esmeralda called to say that she’d finished back-translating Acts! Nicasio asked her if she’d be willing to finish the Gospel of Matthew. She said yes but that she wouldn’t be able to work on it right away because she was going to have surgery. Esmeralda let Nicasio know when she’d be sending him the last chapters of Acts so he could pick them up from the bus driver and he told her that he’d send her Matthew back on the same bus. Please pray for Esmeralda’s surgery to go well and for her, too, to come to know Jesus as her Savior. Beto is in his last semester for getting his Bachelor’s degree. To graduate, he has to do an investigative project and write a small thesis on it. He decided to investigate if using riddles and tongue twisters would improve students’ Zapotec reading ability. Interesting question, isn’t it? He has seven young people signed up to do his project and travels to Quiatoni’s second largest town each weekend to work on this. Please pray for travel safety for him (and Candi; she goes along as his helper) and good results from his project. Beto’s current project for our Zapotec church service is dubbing a short (seven minute) video about the tabernacle and the temple. The translation course in the Master’s Program that Nicasio is coordinating is going well. He says that he’s learning a lot, too! He’s thankful for our colleagues who are giving their time to teach the classes and for the good relationship between the university and SIL. We were delighted to have Rusty here for a week! It was a fun time of just being home with him and he and I going shopping together. The week after he got home to Indiana, he had blood work and scans done to check for any signs of the testicular cancer he had surgery for in March 2021. He says, “I’m happy to report that my 1 year post-op cancer screenings show no signs of cancer! I’ll see the doc again in September for another update. Thank you for praying alongside us.” Mike, Tara, and Royan have been doing well. Royan (one year and four months old) is starting to get into everything and really developing his personality. They could use prayers as they handle end of life things for Tara's mom (she has had stage 4 lung cancer for 4 years). Nicasio’s parents are doing well, still living pretty independently next door to us. A while ago, we noticed that his dad had gotten very deaf so Nicasio took him to the doctor. The doctor prescribed some drops to soften and eliminate the wax build-up in his ears. We already see a difference in what he can hear! Thank you for being a part of the New Testament translation into Quiatoni Zapotec! You are a big encouragement to us as you support us with your interest, prayers and gifts. Thank you! love, Valerie and Nicasio www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez 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 Update and Prayer Requests: December 2021
Valerie and Nicasio Martinez Translating God's Word with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec We hope your Christmas was special, in whatever ways make it special for you and yours! Ours was very quiet but included joining our kids via a video call to watch them open their presents. One of our biggest blessings is what good friends our three kids are. Last Thursday during Zapotec church, Nicasio asked people to share what they are thankful for from this past year. We were so encouraged to hear how many times people said that they were thankful that we are having Zapotec church online. We know it’s not ideal but because our church isn’t observing any safety precautions, we are thankful, too, for technology that allows us to see and talk to each other safely. Another theme for their thankfulness was the way we are studying the Bible; that we study in Zapotec and that we study straight through one book at a time. From things they have shared, we see how much they have grown in their understanding of what a Christian’s life should look like and how they are working towards that. Beto said that he’s thankful that Jesus hasn’t returned yet because that gives him more time to share the Gospel with people. Sofía agreed with him and said that she used to be scared and not know what to say to people but now “I can just tell people. Thank you for how we are studying the Bible here.” Meche, who leads the music when we have church in-person, has been out of work since the beginning of covid restrictions. (She did house-cleaning and making traditional type clothes at home to sell to tourists but there haven’t been any tourists, of course.) Part of what she was thankful for was that about when she was starting to look for work, a dog ran into her and she fell, hurting her knee so that it was very painful to walk. She had to quit looking for a job but a Christian lady contacted her and asked if she would make traditional type clothes for her to sell! Meche thanked all those who have helped her and her mom financially during the pandemic and thanked God for providing what they need each day. (In the spring she had told Nicasio that she was so thankful for all the rain because they’d been able to gather wild greens for meals.) Nicasio’s parents shared how thankful they are to have survived covid and that they have their own house next door to us. They said they couldn’t imagine how that would happen since they hadn’t brought anything with them when they came because Dad was so sick with covid. “But thanks to many Christian brothers and sisters and our children, we have everything we need!” Dad thought they wouldn’t be able to eat sweet corn or raise beans but Nicasio encouraged him to plant the whole yard. Mom wanted to have chickens. They have had lots of corn, beans, and chickens! Beto’s wife Candi said that this year had been really hard for her, with her mom so sick (diabetes) and then her death in November. She said she was thankful for everyone praying for them and for the financial help they were given. Both Beto and Candi were thankful for Yari’s successful emergency appendectomy, recovery and for the financial help they were given for that, too. Candi also shared how she needed to go to the doctor. (We had planned on making this happen just before the covid restrictions started in March 2020.) She was scared because she thought it was going to be diabetes (which many in her family have) but the medicines cleared up a bad urinary infection; while she showed no signs of diabetes, the doctor did give her information about how to eat and exercise to reduce the chances of it. The other part of her health problem is that she needs to have her gall bladder removed but she needs to lose almost 30 pounds before they will operate. She would appreciate your prayers as she works on this difficult job. Both Nicasio and I said we are thankful that Mom and Dad are living next door and are doing so well. Nicasio said that one of the good things that has come out of them having covid is that all their kids come and visit them, and then we get to see them, too. Another thing I shared was that I am so thankful that our kids are following the Lord and are involved in their churches. Mike and Tara are on the music team, Rusty teaches in his church’s Wednesday night and Sunday morning programs for the children. Nicasio has really enjoyed teaching his class on Indigenous Languages in the Translators and Interpreters Master’s Degree program. A highlight for him was the presentation that a friend and colleague gave (at his request) about glossaries and dictionaries. Nicasio said that his students appreciated it so much and learned so much from it. (There are three more classes in January.) Rusty says that he is happy to put 2021 behind him but he’s thankful for the Lord’s goodness through it all. Most recently he really enjoyed spending Christmas with Mike, Tara and Royan. (He will have a check-up about the testicular cancer in March, one year after his surgery. We are praying for a continued clean bill of health.) Mike says: We have been enjoying the month since Royan's birthday trying to keep up with him as he runs around getting into everything. We are looking forward to watching him grow and are excited to be doing some updates to our house. We would really appreciate your prayers for going back to in-person church. At a meeting with those who attend the Zapotec service, we decided to start going back in-person at the beginning of February, provided things haven’t gotten bad again. This update is longer than usual—I guess it’s more of a 2021 update than a December update! We appreciate you for taking the time to read our updates, share in our burdens and our joys, for your support of the Bible translation for the Quiatoni Zapotec people. We pray God’s blessings on you in the New Year of 2022. love, Valerie and Nicasio www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez 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  Update and Prayer Requests: September 2021
Valerie and Nicasio Martinez Translating God's Word with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec Dear friends, we are sad that we have several items of bad news. With very heavy hearts, we heard that Karina (our colleague-friend who’s been intubated in the hospital for six weeks) passed away Friday night. We don’t know any more at this time. Her family and our colleagues who were helping to care for her would appreciate your prayers. Beto’s mother-in-law is dying from diabetes. Her husband, their children and their families would appreciate your prayers. Pastor Delfino (the pastor of our local church) is on oxygen at home because of covid. His wife passed away two weeks ago from covid. Again, your prayers are appreciated. I keep forgetting to tell you that Nicasio found a room to rent for his office! You may remember that in February, Nicasio gave up his office that’s next door to our house (on our other piece of land) so that his parents could live there. They have adjusted well to living there and being more independent. One big perk is that their children who live in Oaxaca City are able to come and visit them more often. Meanwhile, our living room became the “attic,” with all Nicasio’s office stuff stashed there. (Good thing we didn’t have any visitors in the house during that time; we saw visitors only on the porch.) Then in May, Nicasio found a place that fitted what he needed and is just a few blocks from our house. After getting internet service provided for and a few pieces of furniture, he moved into his new office in June. Thank you for praying for just the right place for him! After working off and on for about six years on a small book describing Quiatoni Zapotec’s grammar, it has finally jumped through all the hoops (checking it for accuracy, terminology and Spanish) in early September! I was very happy to print 25 copies of it and look forward to distributing it. I hope it will be helpful to the bilingual teachers and people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec. (You might remember that people put down indigenous languages by saying that they don’t have any grammar.) The title in English would be A Peek at Quiatoni Zapotec’s Grammar. Nicasio is really enjoying teaching his class on Indigenous Languages for the Master’s program of translation and interpretation. He likes all the reading he’s doing in preparation—and thanks to my niece, has discovered an African author who is influential in decolonizing the mind, that is, encouraging people to write in their own indigenous languages instead of the main European languages. Nicasio’s also enjoying the positive feedback from his students; how they are discovering the worth and value of their own languages and cultures. All our regular activities continue: Nicasio is revising the book of Acts; he pastors a small group of young people; he’s teaching a couple of people on-line to read and write in Zapotec; he pops over to see Mom and Dad several times a day; and he and Beto take turns teaching in the Zapotec church service. I continue working on the bilingual dictionary, keyboarding hundreds of illustrative sentences I found in a notebook (from the early 1990s!), and working on a book about the back-strap loom. Beto continues to work on translating the Psalms, studying and recording Acts, and working on digital projects to make the translation and recording of it available on cell phones. Rusty had a doctor’s appointment last week to go over his bloodwork and CT scan (check-up for the testicular cancer; he had surgery in March for it). Rusty was delighted that the doctor said, “Everything looks good. See you in six months!” since he thought it was going to be three months for the next check-up. We are so thankful for this great report! As always, we thank you for your interest, prayers and support for our ministry of Bible translation and for all of us involved in making God’s Word speak Quiatoni Zapotec. love, Valerie and Nicasio www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez |
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