Looking Ahead

What the Plan Was

Our goal upon arriving in to town was to figure out which language group we would be working with long-term prior to leaving for Australia.

There are presently two language groups on the table. We will visit both language groups and spend time praying about whether or not God would like us to work with these people. If both groups are a no-go, then the next step will be survey work to see what other language groups are in need of translation in the Madang and Sepik Provinces of Papua New Guinea.

Why That's Not Going Down

However, due to the nature of the beast, it doesn't seem possible to begin visiting either of these places before we leave for Australia.

In the window of time we have after the Annual General Meeting (AGM) and before we leave for Australia, there are no helicopters that will be traveling in one of the areas, which would necessitate commissioning a helicopter, about $5000 round-trip. This is a hefty expense that gives us pause, especially coming into country under-funded.

The area around the other language group's village where our translators live is very rough hiking, made treacherous and arduous by the rainy season. One translator was delayed coming into town as a two hour hike from his village to the road took him two days.
While we're praying for other ways in to visit these places, the answer to our prayers maybe a command to be patient.

What We're Doing Now

In the meantime, we'll be working as any other town based team, serving in what capacities we can for the 17 different language groups that are considered Active with PBTPNG.

When we go to visit one language group, we'll be doing village checking (reading the current version with people who haven't worked on the translation to check for accuracy, clarity, and naturalness). Presently, I'm working on researching best practices for Village Checking, devising a plan for our checking session, and developing an extensive list of questions for the segments we plan to check.
After that, I'll probably work with teams of translators who need help when they come into town to work on their translations.
Jacob is working on morphophonemics for a suffix in that same language. When they add an ending to a word, they do it inconsistently, and Jacob is trying to figure out a rule for what's happening and how to make it consistently handled. He's also been developing job descriptions for some of our national literacy workers, which is very important because our work visas are contingent on us training and equipping nationals for employment. (That's how the government protects the jobs of nationals!)

After that he hopes to help said language group with some literacy work that they haven't been able to do for lack of literacy specialists in country. Jacob fills that void!

The Trip to Australia

We'll head off to Australia February 20th, my 34th week of pregnancy, the last minute in which we can travel internationally. Our medical visa is good for 3 months, so hopefully the baby won't delay and we won't have problems getting the baby's emergency passport and visa for travel to PNG!

Back in Country

When we return (May 20th), hopefully we'll already have a plan in place (devised while we were in Australia) to go visiting the two languages. And then it's a matter of getting out to visit both places and deciding if one of them is where we'll be allocating. If not, we'll start survey work. If so, however, we'll get started on preparing ourselves to allocate. This means getting our stove ($215), a solar panel system ($2,500), a water tank ($1,700), etc. and all the little pieces we need to set that up, figuring out how much food we'll need to bring and how we'll prep it for longevity (canning vs dehydrating), and starting a little bit of language learning as there are speakers of both languages who live in town!

Allocating at Long Last

Our target date to allocate is October (though needing to do survey work could easily throw that off schedule.)

This timeline also ensures that the new baby is 6 months old before allocating, giving the baby a chance to get a measles vaccine before we leave for the village.

So the goal is to spend 3 months in the village by the end of 2016! Oct, Nov, Dec!