Tag Archives: cross-cultural missions

What’s the Word for ‘Thanks’?

Posted on by

What’s the Word for ‘Thanks’?

“How do Canelas express thanks?” I asked my wife, “I have not found a single term that means ‘Thank you’.”
“Yeah, are Canela people never grateful?” she said. “If they are, how do they express it?”
During our early years as Bible translators in Brazil, Jo and I asked ourselves, “So, what is implied when people say, ‘Thanks’?”

I remembered standing by our car in a parking lot one cold day in Canada. I had the hood open and stood in front holding the ends of the jumper cables coming from our battery. A few moments later, a car pulled up, the driver popped his hood open, and I clipped my cables to his battery. Within seconds I had started our car. As I unhooked the cables from his battery and closed the hood on his car, I shouted. “Thank you, that worked great!” “He gave me a grin and a thumbs-up as he drove off.

As Jo and I thought about this, we made up a list of what is implied when people say “Thanks:”
1. What you gave to me was good; it was just what I needed.
2. What you gave me satisfied me and made me happy.
3. I owe you one.
4. I feel bad you had you had to put yourself out to give me what I needed.

Looking at the little list we recognized how different languages express thanks. When we gave a Canela woman a piece of soap, she said, “It’s right, it’s good,” expressing #1 on the list.
When they were very pleased with our gift they would say, “Because you gave this to me, I am happy!” expressing #2.
Other languages focus on different aspects. For instance, Brazilians say “Obrigado” meaning “I am obligated to you.” expressing #3.
Several Asian languages say, “I’m terribly sorry” which focuses on #4, the fact that you took the time and made the effort to meet their need.

Expressing Thanks is Not Natural
Every parent knows that human beings are born as the most self-centred beings on earth. It is all about our food, our comfort, and our pleasure. Parents spend a lot of time teaching their toddlers, it is not all about them. They need to learn to share toys, await their turn, and to express thanks. Parents constantly model gratitude by saying, “Thank you,” when a child does even the smallest thing in response to a request.

Selfish ingratitude started with Satan, the most impressive, beautiful and powerful angel created by God. Satan owed everything he was and all his abilities to God who created him, yet he was not thankful. He refused to acknowledge God as superior, the Great Provider, and instead launched an angelic rebellion to usurp the throne of God. God exiled Satan to earth, where he has polluted the minds and wills of people with this same ungrateful attitude. Romans 1:21-32, lists the resulting horrors, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” (NIV) Not expressing thanks to God was the first in a long list of dozens of types of evil, depraved behaviour.

Our Sin: Taking God’s Blessings for Granted
Submerged in an ungrateful culture, it is so easy to take for granted all the things we got as gifts from God—many of them through little work or effort of our own. Think of our physical life and health, our spiritual life and growth, our families and friends, our freedom and affluence, the abilities and opportunities open to us, and especially God’s Word translated into our own language.
Billions of people in developing countries would give anything to have what we take for granted.

How can we be more thankful? We could start by realizing we in North America are richer than 90 percent of the world’s people. We could continue to compare ourselves with those who are sick and without health care, those who live under oppressive regimes, who have lost their friends and families, who have never had a chance to learn to read, and who have no Bible in their language.

Unless we regularly thank and praise God for all that He provides for us and then go on to share our blessings with others, our ingratitude will lead to increasing selfishness, a hardening of our hearts, and eventually a ruined relationship with our Great Provider.

Canela Christians love to sing a hymn to Jesus with the line, “Because you came, we are very happy.” Meaning, “Thank You for coming to earth!” They are right. Jesus, the Saviour, was God’s greatest gift to humanity—how we need to thank Him for coming and then share this news with others.

Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family

Posted on by

Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family
Many churches practice responsive readings of Psalm 136, where the pastor or worship leader reads the first line, and the group responds with His love endures forever. Here’s how Psalm 136 starts:

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
      His love endures forever.
(After a few more lines urging thanksgiving to God, the theme swings into a line-by-line description of what God did for Israel:)
to Him who alone does great wonders,
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
      His love endures forever.
to Him who led his people through the wilderness;
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down great kings,
      His love endures forever.
and gave their land as an inheritance to His people Israel
      His love endures forever.
This type of responsive reading was practiced in songs and chants for several thousand years by Jews and later by Christians as well.

After studying all 26 verses of Psalm 136, I thought of making up a responsive reading about the “great wonders” God did in our own family. Here it is. We plan to use it the next time some of our family members come together.

As you read of God’s Wonders in the Popjes Family History, I hope you will be inspired to make up something like this for your own family.

 Responsive Reading of the Popjes Family History
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who preserved the Popjes Family during the 2nd World War
      His love endures forever.
And brought out the family to emigrate to Canada
      His love endures forever.
To Him who revealed Jesus to Jack as Saviour and Friend
      His love endures forever.
And led the family through three cities to settle in Red Deer
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called a girl to be Jack’s friend,
      His love endures forever.
And take Jack to an evangelical church
      His love endures forever.
And led Jack to attend a Bible College in Calgary
      His love endures forever.
To Him who brought Jack and Jo together and blessed their marriage.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called Jack and Jo to become Bible translators
      His love endures forever.
And led them to live and work among Brazil’s Canela people
      His love endures forever.
To Him who helped Jack and Jo to translate His Word into Canela,
      His love endures forever.
To Him who made many Canela people from all the villages His children.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of heaven,
      His love endures forever.

 

 

 

Bible Translation—A Waste of Time?

Posted on by

Just Get Them Saved, Never Mind Translating the Bible.
A Brazilian pastor shook his head in bewilderment when I mentioned that my wife and I were engaged in a Bible translation ministry with an indigenous group.
“Your ministry will take fifteen to twenty years?” he said. “I have led many people to accept God’s offer of salvation through faith in Jesus. I quote a few key Bible passages and then lead them in a prayer of salvation. So why are you spending decades to translating the New Testament and more, when you could evangelize Canela people with just a few key passages?”
He was called away at that point, so I had no chance to answer this well-meaning brother. My explanation would have stretched his thoughts into new areas of understanding.

Huge Cultural Differences
He did not realize how different his situation was from ours. For many generations, Brazilian people have lived in towns and cities where evangelical churches are well known.
Moreover, Brazilians have had a Bible in their language for nearly four hundred years. Canela people, on the other hand, have no Christian history, no churches in their villages, no pastors to teach them, and no Bible in their language.
We could indeed evangelize with just a few passages and a prepared prayer. But then what? When Satan attacked these young believers, how could they defend themselves? Without a Bible in their language, how could they respond to his temptations?

How Jesus Met Temptation
Matthew tells the story of Jesus who was hungry after fasting out in the wilderness. That’s when Satan came three times to tempt Him to prove he was the Son of God.
“If you are the Son of God,” the Devil said, “tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus replied, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
At the second temptation, Jesus replied, “It is written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
At the third, Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’ ”
As Jesus quoted the written Word of God, it became a Sword to attack Satan, and finally drive him away.

Paul’s Powerful Metaphors
Years later, the apostle Paul advised believers, “Take the helmet of salvation and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” (Eph. 6:17). And in Hebrews 4:12, the Word of God is described as “alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints, and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Our Effective Action
Canela believers, even wearing the helmet of salvation, could not defend themselves against Satan and drive him away without the Sword of the Spirit.
Jo and I were giving them the Word of God—in their hands, in their hearts, and in their mouths.

God’s Secret Weapon

Posted on by

God’s Secret Weapon

The Problem
Each time Jo or I told a story to the Canela people about Jesus performing a miracle, they told us a story of the great exploit of some Canela culture hero from their legends and myths. We tried to tell them that the stories we told them were special, true, real, and unique. Our stories were about the Great Father’s Son. They didn’t understand the difference. We prayed that someday they would.

Then it got worse. The Brazilian government changed, and the new officials would not allow any missionaries to live and work among any indigenous peoples. We felt like we lived in exile away from our home and friends in the Canela village. We prayed that God would intervene.

 The Permit
We kept on working at the mission centre in the city, completing seven easy-reading booklets and the books of Luke, Acts, and 1&2 Thessalonians. When the newly printed books arrived, we made a formal request to the government to visit the Canela village to deliver these ten books.
We praised God when we received a notice that permission had been granted but with exceptions. I had to fly to Sao Luis to see the government official. He gave me the permit and asked me to read it, paying careful attention to the last sentence. “The books of sacred Scripture are not  included in this permit.”
“Sign this permit,” the official said, “to promise you will not leave the Scripture books in the village.” I shot up a prayer and signed the document. At the centre, we all prayed for God’s solution.

The Excitement
The next day, John, a fellow missionary, and I loaded a steel drum with seventy-five sets of books packed in plastic bags onto his pickup truck and left for the Canela. They received us with great joy and excitement especially when they saw the seventy-five parcels of ten books in their language. The chief and elders immediately ordered me to the central plaza to report.
I showed them each of the seven reading books. The elders were pleased to see several of their favourite legends in print. When I finished, the chief pointed to the three remaining books, the Scripture books. “What about those books?” he asked.
“Oh, those are different. I can’t leave them here, even though we made them for you to read.”
“Why not? What are they about?”
“One is about Jesus, the Son of the Great Father, when He lived on earth long ago. And the other is about what the followers of Jesus did, the thin one is the counsel of Paul, one of the elders of the Jesus group.”
“Well, you can at least tell us what is in those books,” the chief said.

The Explanation
So, for the next hour, I read excerpts from each of the Scripture books.
“We really want those books!” the chief exclaimed, “Why can’t you leave them?”
“I promised not to leave them. But I’ll leave them with my friend Sr. Duca in Barra town,” I said, “You can go there and pick them up and bring them in yourselves.”
The Canela elders complained, “It’s seventy kilometres to town. That’s four days of walking!”
“Do those government people have these stories in their language?” the chief asked.
“Yes, they have. All the stories about Jesus were translated into Portuguese long ago. Brazilians have been reading them for many generations.”
“Then, why can’t we read those books and choose whether we want them or not? They did!” the chief exclaimed.
“Just leave them here,” one of the elders advised, “We won’t tell anyone you did.”
“No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” I said, showing them my copy of the document, “I promised the government chief that I would not leave them in the village and signed this paper.”

The Chief’s Anger
Suddenly, the chief sprang up, pulling his machete from its sheath. He laid the sharp edge on his forearm, and, with his face inches from mine, shouted, “If I cut my arm what comes out? Blue stuff? No! Red blood. We Canelas are human beings just like those city people! Why do they treat us as if we aren’t people? Why can’t we have what they have had for a long time?”
I couldn’t answer, and we sat quietly for a while. Then the chief said, “The elders’ council will talk about this some more, and in the morning, we’ll tell you what we have decided.”

God’s Reveals His Weapon
At sunrise, the chief ordered, “Put all those books back into that steel drum on your truck. Then, drive back up the road through the gate where the Indian land ends. My son will follow you on the government tractor and will bring the drum back and distribute the books. You will have kept your promise, and we will have all the books.”

We heard later that the first books everyone wanted to read were, of course, the special books, the forbidden ones. It was a clear example of Psalm 76:10, “Human defiance only enhances your glory, for you use it as a weapon.” (NLT). God used the government’s angry prohibition to draw attention to the uniqueness of His Word. From then on, the Canelas considered the Bible stories as special, true, and unique.

When, over ten years later, the Scriptures were published the book was called, Pahpam Jarkwa Cupahti Jo Kahhoc. God’s Highly Respected Word.

(This is an excerpt from the memoir of the Canela Decades we are currently completing, From Adventure to Spiritual Battle.)

Jumping to Conclusions: Bad Exercise

Posted on by

Jumping to Conclusions: Bad Exercise
Sometimes we jump to unwarranted conclusions. It was Friday, July 31, 1987, when I heard the news headline on Brazilian radio. “A major tornado has hit a provincial capital in southern Canada.” I listened carefully, expecting to hear about Toronto, Ontario, which is on the same latitude as South Dakota. Imagine my surprise when the announcer said, “Edmonton, a city in southern Canada, suffered major damage with twenty fatalities.”

Edmonton, Alberta? Canada’s northernmost provincial capital? The gateway to the North? With its long, cold winters, how is it in southern Canada? My wife and I looked at each other and shook our heads, as much in dismay over the grief caused by the tornado as over the reporter’s ignorance.

But, later, I realized I had jumped to the wrong conclusion. When looking at a map of Canada, I understood why the reporter considered Edmonton to be in southern Canada. That’s because it is! It is well over 2,500 km from Canada’s northern boundary and only 500 km from the southern border. It’s not just in the southern fifty percent of Canada; it’s in the southern fifteen percent!

Eli‘s Worldview Versus Hannah’s Reality
I recently thought of that long-ago incident when I read the story in 1 Samuel 1 of Eli, the priest seeing Hannah, the childless woman, moving her lips but not uttering a sound. He glanced at her and knew he’d seen that behaviour before. So he rebuked her for being drunk. Wrong! She was anything but drunk. She was fervently praying for a child.

Eli’s worldview led him to the wrong conclusion. The reporter correctly saw Edmonton as a provincial capital located in southern Canada. In contrast, Edmontonians see themselves as living in the farthest north provincial capital, ignoring that five times as much Canadian territory is north of Edmonton, including Whitehorse, a provincial capital of 30,000 people. How we jump to conclusions!

People tend to misinterpret actions by others who have a different worldview. It happens between adults and children, immigrants and long-time residents, retired seniors and college students, international travellers and local residents, and between the haves and the have-nots in our society.

Topless Canela Women
One day, a cargo truck stopped in the Canela village on its way to a Brazilian settlement. Six young Brazilian men, catching a ride on the truck, had never been in the Canela village before. When they saw the Canela women and girls were bare-breasted, they jumped to the false conclusion that this was a village of loose women and began to behave accordingly. Taking off their shirts and smirking lewdly into each other’s cameras, they draped their arms over the shoulders of half-naked Canela women. As Brazilians, they came from a hyper-sexed society, which, like our North American culture, views breasts as sex objects, while to Canelas, breasts were baby-feeding organs.

Canela Banking System
When we started our twenty-plus years of living among the Canela, it seemed like we were surrounded by beggars since our neighbours kept asking us for things. Only after we understood the culture more thoroughly did we realize they were not beggars at all. They were practicing a centuries-old credit-based trading system. When a hunter brought home fifty pounds of deer meat, he would have plenty left after feeding his family. With neither salt nor refrigeration, he had no way to preserve it. So, when neighbours came and asked for some meat, he would gladly give it, knowing he was building up credit with them to cash in the next time they had excess food, or he needed their help in his field. No paper, no IOUs—the village-wide credit and debit system was based on mutual understanding and family memory.

So What?
The next time we see someone do something that strikes us as odd or unusual, we should probably ask ourselves, “Is this person of a different age, culture, race, gender or nationality?” If so, we must recognize that this “odd” action may be perfectly acceptable in the other person’s worldview.

Exercise is good for us, but not when we jump to the wrong conclusion. That just shows our ignorance.

 

The Christmas of the Spiritual Battle

Posted on by

The In-Village Work Completed At Last
I felt so happy and excited it seemed as if Christmas had begun on Thursday, September 28th, 1989. I looked up from the page of Canela translation and said to Jaco, our best translation helper, “Yeah, we’re done! This is the last page. You and I have worked and learned together since you were a teenager, and now you are a married man with a family and responsibilities. Thank you, Jaco, for being so faithful. You kept taking time to work with me to translate God’s Word into your language.” Jaco grinned broadly, sharing my delight at completing a massive project–translate, check, improve, and approve every one of 370,000 words in the Canela partial Bible. We kept grinning at each other as we celebrated with coffee and Jo’s cookies.

“I will be processing all our work on computers,” I explained. “It will take many months, first in Belem, and then in Brasilia, but by early next August, when no one is working in their fields, Jo and I’ll be back in the village with boxes full of printed Bibles; everyone will see your work, and you will finally hold the Book of God in your hands.”

Satan’s Fury and Revenge
That was the plan, but I had failed to remember that we had an Evil Enemy. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood . . . but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12.) Satan is a poor loser. After having imprisoned countless generations of Canelas, he knew that with the arrival of God’s Word, the recent trickle of escapees would turn into a complete jailbreak. He was furious and wanted revenge. God was still ultimately in control, but, as in the case of Job, he allowed Satan to inflict some injury.

Two months later, the day Jo and I finished dealing with the new material, we got word that Jaco was very sick, and his family was bringing him to Belem for us to care for him.

Jaco looked fragile when he and his family arrived. He was mentally confused and could not walk unaided. I immediately took him to our doctor, gave him medicines, and took him for a dozen tests, but he got worse instead of better.

Ten days later, he had gall bladder surgery, during which time he had a cerebrovascular accident and went into a coma. When I explained to Kajari, Jaco’s wife, why he was in a coma, she said,

“After you left the village, he was repairing our house, and a heavy beam fell on his head. We thought he was dead, but he got up again. He’s been sick and confused ever since.” The doctor said that head trauma probably caused the brain bleed. I took Kajari to see him in the ICU twice a day, and we prayed over him constantly for weeks, but there was no improvement.

“Satan is sure a poor loser,” I said to Jo. “He is mad at losing his hold on the Canelas. And it seems God is letting Satan take his anger out on Jaco and his family.”

Yet Another Attack
But Satan was not done yet. On Christmas Eve, we got a phone call from Cheryl in Canada, “Mommy, Grandpa in Oliver just died, and Grandma is also very sick. Please come home right away.”

I can remember nothing about Christmas, except Jo packing to leave for Canada the day after Boxing day. It was a huge hassle to get a ticket at such short notice, board a flight to the US, and then to Canada. She arrived, in Oliver, utterly exhausted, the day before the funeral. Jo, our three daughters and Jo’s Mom comforted and supported each other during the funeral and the days following. Since Cheryl was slated for gall bladder surgery a week or so later, Jo stayed to be with her.

Kajari’s Sacrifice
Meanwhile, I received word from the director of publications, “If the first two weeks in August is the best time to have a Bible dedication celebration among the Canela, you need to start work here on January 1st.

“Kajari,” I said when we were on our way to visit Jaco, “I need to go to Brasilia to work for four months to make the Bible ready for the printer to make books. So, I need to leave very soon.”

“But how will I see my husband?” she interrupted, crying, “Don’t leave me!”

“I have already asked four of our friends to take you to see Jaco as often as you want every day.”

Through tears, she said, “My husband has sacrificed to help you make God’s Book in our language, but I have never done anything to help. So, this time, I will sacrifice. You can go. I will depend on your friends to take me to see my husband.”

I left for Brasilia, and two days after I arrived, Jaco died. The Wycliffe plane took Jaco’s coffin, Kajari, and her baby directly to the village. Jaco’s friends and the rest of his family had already left for home on the bus.

Celebrating the Victory
God then intervened, and Satan’s attacks ceased. Jo joined me in Brasilia, and on May 9th, we celebrated with praise to God and turned the 750 camera-ready pages over to the printer.

On Friday, August 10th, Jo and I were in the village with boxes full of Canela Bibles, excited and eager to celebrate the victory. Joining us in our delight were my Dad and Mom, Jo’s Mom, my brother Henry, and his wife, as well as our three daughters, one with her husband, the other two with their boyfriends, and of course many Wycliffe colleagues.

Kajari was, of course, the first person to receive a Bible, “This is your husband’s work.” After that, I called each person who had earned a Bible by memorizing an unbelievable number of Bible verses. On receiving their Bible, each one opened it, started reading, sat down with the others, and kept on reading. I nearly cried when I saw they kept reading even though several village leaders and I made speeches. Yes! Oh yes!

A few hours later, Jo and I stood off to one side and watched the celebration. “I felt like it was Christmas eleven months ago,” I said to Jo, “but I was wrong. Today is the true Christmas for the Canela people. God’s Written Word has come to them in their village, to reveal Jesus, the Living Word who came to Bethlehem that first Christmas.”