Friday, June 6, 2008

Another Great Weekend Coming Up!

Whew! Another busy weekend coming up. On Saturday, June 7, Kathy & I are helping run a day-long seminar in Toronto for about a dozen people who are seriously considering serving with Wycliffe and who want to have a better idea of what’s involved. Besides an introduction to the organization, what it does, and where it works, there will be sessions on linguistics, literacy, translation, and support work, along with an ethnic meal for lunch. And, of course, there’ll be lots of opportunities for Q&A during the sessions, and time for individual discussion with other Wycliffe members during breaks. Along with Kathy & I, there will be six other staff present.

Kathy will be doing the presentation on literacy and lead part of the support work session. She’s also in charge of preparing the African meal for lunch. Good thing she’s a better multi-tasker than I am! And she’ll have some help in the kitchen to keep things cooking (ouch, that's punny! :) when she has to do her part of the presentations.

I’ll be teaching the session on linguistics (using simple exercises in phonetics, phonology, and grammar), and on Bible translation (pointing out the challenges posed by difference between the language & culture of the Bible and the language & culture of the people for whom the Bible is being translated). If you’ve seen either our “Welcome to Ouagadougou!” or “An Evening With Wycliffe” presentation, you’ll have been exposed to some of this, but on a lighter level.

Of course, we still try to make it entertaining as well as informative. That’s why I spent the past several days revamping all the material. Yeah, I can’t just leave things well enough alone, can I? This is the third time we’ve been involved in doing this seminar and I radically change my presentations for each one. Why? Because sometimes it takes some trial & error to work out the best way to do things. Each time we do it, we think of new & better ways to do something, or at least realize that something needs to be changed! I almost always look back and groan about something I did or didn't do. The first time, I had too much material to cover in my sessions. The second time, my phonetics section was too lame, and the Bible translation session was too long and academic. Let’s face it; it’s not a good sign when I’m bored with my own presentation! Thus the major overhaul this time, incorporating some of the fun stuff we’ve developed for our presentations to regular church audiences, while still retaining the core teaching material.

Then on Sunday, I’m speaking at a partner church in Toronto, and Kathy & I are doing a modified “Evening With Wycliffe” presentation there later in the afternoon (guess we should call it "An Afternoon With Wycliffe", eh? :). It’s gonna be a long night as I continue to work on getting ready for all this, so I’d better get back at it. Hope you all have a great weekend too!

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