Michael S. and I made two rowboats, one for his family and one for mine.

Historic Tangoa Island

(Photos: Mala takes me in a canoe; Tangoans hew a canoe; view from the Batcock's house on Tangoa;view from South Santo.)

I rode my bike from Talua to the point where Santo is closest to Tangoa island today, and waited for a kindergartner to paddle across and help me cross the channel. Another two boys (Jole and Mala) hopped into the canoe, for a total of more than 300 pounds. Though the water was like glass today, it was scary to cross the channel, having heard stories of men getting their arms ripped off by sharks when they swam across.

It's a historic island, where the Teacher's Training Institute was located for decades, and where Jeff and Sue Batcock completed the translation of the Tangoa New Testament.

Goat climbs tree, surprises missionaries

Imagine our surprise to see a goat climb the Tahitian Chestnut tree outside our front door!

Vernacular Scripture for the Kindle

Translators are always looking for ways to get vernacular materials into people's hands. Now that the Kindle is only $114 (albeit with Buick ads) it's a reasonable option for distributing scripture and literacy materials for tribal or endangered languages. I don't suppose you'd buy one for every person in a village, but maybe one for each school, and put on it all the materials you've ever produced in that language, plus... (would you put English/French materials on it too?) Advantages: the screen is the prefect size; the battery lasts a long time; it's extremely easy to create a .pdf; it takes seconds to upload; none of the materials would go missing, they would never be ruined, the staples wouldn't rust, pages wouldn't fly out. Disadvantage: only one person can use it. What do you think? Post your comments on the blog.
Note that you can develop interactive materials for the kindle, and it also plays mp3s, but only randomly, and you have to know how to navigate the kindle to get to them.
Nuts and bolts of how to do it: since vernaculars use unusual fonts, the books need to be printed to .pdf files, which means the kindle cannot change text size, can't perform searches, won't hyperlink the table of contents, and won't look up words in the built-in dictionary. The books need to be printed to A5, or 5.5 x 8.5, to show up well, because the kindle shrinks .pdf files to fit the screen.

Santo Trip

I spent two weeks teaching cultural anthropology at Talua for students in the B.Min. program. It was rewarding to see the lights come on as they realized the ways in which their own animistic background affects their Christian worldview. After that I went deep into the jungle. I passed the quonset huts Mitchner described, and could not miss the eerie "mile a minute" vine that was introduced by the military and has now taken over Espiritu Santo Island. We went through four language groups in 20 miles, to Angor village where I'm checking the Merei translation of Luke 19-24. Here's a picture of Angor village and the consultant check.

Bee fieldtrip

Caleb said he'd like to see Pastor Gilbert's bees, so I called and asked if we could set up a fieldtrip. It turns out that Gilbert was going to feed sugar water to the bees the next day, so we all joined him today (despite the cyclone in the northern islands pounding rain on the kids in the back of the truck). See attached video for our trip. Gilbert has about 200 hives throughout Efate. Some agriculturalists rent the hives for cross-pollination. He's hoping to teach Tannese how to use their bees to make money with the sale of honey, but there's a steep learning curve, and it takes a while to become income-generating.

At the end, he gave us a bottle of "Gilbert's Honey" to enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksH3nPu3BS8

Modern day parable for Vanuatu

If Jesus were telling the parable in Vanuatu today, would he say, "Nobody puts new rice in old rice bags. If he does, the weevils from the old rice will spoil the new rice. Instead, they soak the old rice till the weevils float. And everybody knows that old rice is better."

Whale in Lenakel

We saw a whale that's been hanging around just off Lenakel's coast the past few days.

How to connect the nintendo DSI to a video projector

Caleb got the idea to project his nintendo DSi on the wall with our Elmo

Gas Station Prizes on Tanna

The gas station (well, there are two now), is holding a promotion. Buy 5 litres, get a raffle ticket. Here are the prizes:
1st prize: 1 50 gallon drum of diesel
2nd prize: 1 young cow
3rd prize: large foam sleeping mat
4th prize: small foam sleeping mat
5th prize: 1 carton beer
6th prize: 25kg rice
7th prize: a basin
8th prize: machete
9th prize: 2 mother hubbard dresses
10th prize: 2 mother hubbard dresses

Blowhole

This little video shows the lava bombs shooting right out of the blow hole.

Lack of a good definite article affects the meaning

A, or THE? This is how my Tom back-translated our translation of Mat 13:44: 44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought a field.

It SHOULD have said, "...he sold all he had and bought THAT field (that is, the one that had the treasure box on it." But our definite articles aren't that clear in Tannese. So, we had to make it explicit: "he went and bought the field that had the treasure."

15th Anniversary

We had our 15th anniversary on Tanna (well, we had our 8th, 10th, 11th, and 14th there too). We had a wonderful meal at one of the best restaurants in Vanuatu, Tanna lodge: mushroom chicken, scotch fillet, pan fried poulet. The kids had their usual swim in the rough waves on the one of the only stretches of beach on Tanna that doesn't have a coral reef.

Best Buddies

Abby and Kate have a best buddy song. Here it is.

Our new dog

When Mendy and the kids came down to Tanna, we were met at the airport by Meriam and Eliud. They wanted us to take this doggy they'd promised Abby earlier. Its previous name is Sta (star), but we're going to call him Tobey, or maybe Toby. A good dog with just a little yapping. Should eat our unwanted leftovers (get the idea?) It's already getting fat.

Volcanic lightening on Mt Yasur Vanuatu

You've heard of volcanic lightening? Here's a (poor quality) video of it on Mt. Yasur. June 13, 2010.

Ash from Mt Yasur

The good news is 1) it stopped raining and 2) the wind is blowing the ash out to sea today. Here's a video of two eruptions.

Caleb edited in a lightsaber, into a video
See it here

Jesus Film in SW Tanna language

We dedicated the Jesus Film today, in the SW Tanna language. For the first time ever, people in SW Tanna were able to actually understand the film, since it was in their own language. See a brief clip on youtube here (It's of Zacchaeus- they love this clip here, it brings lots of laughter).

Hannah

We had Hannah's party in Lenakel with the Stapletons and Greg Carlson. Here's Hannah opening her earrings. (And Caleb's typical joyful self).