Let me take you back a few years.  In early 2020 I (John) taught a workshop in Solomon Islands for over 20 national translators working on translations in seven languages. At that time, I was teaching them how to use Paratext – the main software used in Bible translation. The plan had been to go back in the middle of 2020 to teach a course in translation principles. Unfortunately, COVID happened, that workshop was canceled, and for the next several years it wasn’t possible to travel to the Solomons. The translators, however, went ahead with their translating.

During the last two years, I and a couple of other consultants were seeing that most of the teams were struggling to produce good quality translation, and we realized it was largely because they had never been taught a course in basic translation principles. We decided that needed to happen, so in late March my brother-in-law (and boss), Pat Andrews, and I made a trip to Solomon Islands to teach the first half of a translation principles workshop. It was very rewarding to be able to teach the 21 participants for two weeks about how to handle different translation issues. They all expressed how thankful they were to learn the material and how it would help them to make their translations more understandable and more natural. Pat and I took turns teaching lessons, which was nice as I had forgotten how tiring it is to teach! I unfortunately got sick the last 2 days of the workshop, but Pat was able to take over and finish up. The teams are now going to be using what they learned to revise the first 5 chapters of whichever book they have been working on, and then Pat and I and another consultant will check to see if they are applying what they have learned. Then in October we plan to return to teach the second half of the course.

As for Brena, thankfully things went really well for her while I was gone. She enjoyed settling into our new house and did some gardening, reading, and hanging out with her sister Beth (Pat’s wife).

Now that I am back in Arlington, I have started going to the Seed Company headquarters here several days a week. It is nice to have interaction with colleagues that I have never had a chance to get to know when we lived in Papua New Guinea.

While our classroom was very basic (and all the electricity was supplied by one receptacle!), it worked very well for teaching.

We tried to give the participants a lot of time to do exercises related to the different topics.

My brother-in-law Pat taking his turn to teach

The 21 participants from seven languages

PRAISE:

• Thanks for praying for us as we attended the missions conference at a small church in South Carolina in mid-March. It went really well, and we enjoyed sharing about the need for Bible translation and about our work with Wycliffe.
• We have had a number of people commit to supporting us financially and we are only a few hundred dollars from meeting the monthly amount we need!

PRAYER:

• Continue to pray for us that we will find a church that we can get involved in. We have tried several but are still not ready to make the final decision.

TO BE IN TOUCH:

John: john_bruner@wycliffe.org (personal); john_bruner@tsco.org (work)

Brena: brena_bruner@wycliffe.org

**NEW Address: 903 Pontiac Ct., Arlington TX 76013

WEB ADDRESS FOR PARTNERSHIP:

https://www.wycliffe.org/partner/Bruners

MAILING ADDRESS FOR PARTNERSHIP:

Send gifts to: Wycliffe Bible Translators, PO Box 628200, Orlando, FL 32862-8200 (The check should be made payable to Wycliffe Bible Translators and include a note that says “preference for the ministry of John and Brena Bruner”.)