“If you had the opportunity to do your translation program over again,” I asked the veteran translator, “what would you do different?” His answer astonished me, it was not at all what I had expected.

My wife and I had just completed translating a set of stories from the Gospels outlining the Life of Christ. The translation consultant who was checking our book had worked for 25 years to complete the translation of the New Testament for an Amazon indigenous group.

“I would take more vacations,” he said.

Asking some follow-up questions, I discovered that he had been taking vacations more often and for longer periods than we had ever taken in our lives and yet felt he should have taken more! My wife and I decided immediately to change our “work, Work, WORK!” orientation and plan for significant times away from work to rest, relax and recover. This decision led us to join other missionaries on the centre to build a simple house near a beach where we could get away for a weekend and for longer times during school holidays. Some of our best family memories come from those vacation times.

We had more energy for our work once we had met our own family’s needs for rest. I loved getting away from everything to sit alone in a hammock to think through past accomplishments and dream, plot and plan for future actions.

I thought of that incident recently when a group of us were talking about the need for older people to be prepared to mentor and advise younger folk. The air soon filled with stories of how our sage counsel and wise advice were rejected.

“Young people just don’t listen,” was the complaint. “They think that just because they understand computers and other high tech devices better than we do, we have nothing of value to teach them.”

“Yes,” added one grandma, “it’s like they are Teflon coated, nothing we say sticks to them.”

As we discussed this situation together, we concluded that the problem was not so much that young people were unwilling to listen but that we older folk were giving advice in the wrong way. We admitted that we often tried to give guidance when we had not been asked for it. We also realized that we may have left teens with the impression that we knew everything and had never made any mistakes.

“I remember the first time I got a speeding ticket,” I once told a group of teenagers. They stopped talking and texting and leaned forward to hear the rest of the story. I went on to tell them about doing stupid things in Bible school and how I got expelled. I had their full attention as I told one story after another of where I had goofed up and how I would do it differently if I had the chance to do it over. Instead of Teflon, they were like Velcro, as they latched onto these testimonies, and, hopefully, drew their own conclusion leading them to avoid my mistakes.

There is good reason to use testimonial stories since there is power in them. A text in Revelation 12:11 tells about some people who “overcame Satan, by . . . . and the word of their testimony.” Just think, we can defeat Satan in people’s lives by telling others what God has done for us, in us, through us, or even in spite of us.

I pray for opportunities to tell testimonial stories that produce “Bring it on. Tell me more,” Velcro attitudes in my hearers. I trust them to draw their own conclusions and avoid saying, “Now this is what you should do.”

That would be like ripping off the Velcro and putting on the Teflon.